Paradise Lost

Next Sunday morning, be back because we will have four folks jumping into the baptismal with Carter and myself. And they’re still going to do all the same stuff. They’re still going to read their testimonies. We’re still going to rejoice in it and celebrate with them. It’s going to be a great time.

Also wanted to double click on another thing that Becky had said. So this Tuesday morning, we’re doing the Pack and Pray event. It’s going to be a really good way for us to physically bless some teachers and thereby some students this upcoming school year, but also on top of that, just the spiritual blessing of us getting to pray over the things that have been gathered and they’re going to be taken to the schools.

So I wanted to use this time right now as we are going into our moment of congregational prayer to pray for the packs that we are going to send to the schools and for the relationships between our folks and the folks in the various schools that the Lord would use us in some way to meaningfully bless them. So we might have a slide. I got that information sent real late in the process. So let’s do this. Grab a neighbor and let’s just pray for one of the local area schools like E.B. Ellington Elementary or Baptist Hill Middle High, LLCS, Minnie Hughes. That’s that. Okay. All right. So just pray that the Lord would use the pack and pray event to bless these schools, specifically the teachers and the students, and that God’s kingdom would grow somehow through this. Y’all take it away and I’ll bring it back together here in a moment.

Father, God, I just, I want to thank You. Lord, I want to thank You that it was on Donna’s heart and it was on others’ hearts, Lord, to continue to make supplies for local teachers and students. Father, that it was on their mind, just say, hey, yet again, for another school year, we were on the same team. Lord, these educators and administrators, Lord, we’re on the same team because we too want to bless the children and the families of the low country. But Father, we also know that we’re not on the same team because we care about building Your kingdom.

Lord, I pray that the pack and pray event, Lord, would not just meet some physical needs in the classroom this upcoming school year, but Father, would meet some spiritual needs. God, that delivering some supplies would create a conversation about the gospel. Father, we as followers of Jesus are, we’re told to always be ready to give a reason for the hope that’s inside of us. So God, You want us to always have this posture of readiness to share about Yourself. You’ve told us that our mission as disciples of Jesus is to make more disciples of Jesus. You’ve told us that the church exists to glorify You by bringing more people into it. Father, not just through attendance, but Lord, that people would come to faith in You.

And Father, I pray, pray, I pray that what happens Tuesday morning, Lord, would lead to more students and more teams teachers at Baptist Hill, E.B. Ellington, LLCS, and Minnie Hughes, Lord, that they, Father, would be spiritually impacted, please.

Father, I confess is not the right verb. Lord, You know full well how I feel about not doing the summer bash tonight. God, I’m disappointed. But Lord, I pray that my heart would be broken for the folks that don’t have shelter from the storm. God, there’s a physical storm coming, Lord. And Lord, I’m upset that I don’t get to have my pool party. But Father, there’s folks out there that may understand what’s happening and they’re trying to figure out where do I sleep just to get out of the rain. Lord, I pray for them. And I’m asking that You would bless them. God, that You would cover them physically, but also spiritually, Lord, that You would give them safe harbor somewhere, please.

Lord, I pray for myself right now. Father, that You would please help me to only preach what Your Word has to say, but preach all of what Your Word says. Father, would You get me out of the way? So Lord, that the sermon that the people hear today will be better than the one I preach, please. Jesus, would You make Yourself look really good through this? You would help all of us to understand what our next step and our faith in You is. Lord, please, we love You. Amen.

So if you have been tracking with us at all over the last few months, or If this is your first time with us today, this Sunday is the day that we are beginning a new preaching series called Revival and Restoration, where we’ll be taking a journey through the Old Testament book of Nehemiah. So if you have your Bibles, you can go ahead and turn to Nehemiah right now. If you open it up halfway, you’re in the Psalms, hang a left, and then you’ll get there eventually, okay? It’s gonna be after 1st, 2nd, Kings, Chronicles, and Samuel, but before you would get to something like the Psalms. So there you are.

We’re gonna be looking at Nehemiah, which is mostly a story of God reviving and restoring His people as He restores the place of Judah. So we’re gonna be walking through these 13 some odd chapters looking at what did God do back then and what might He want to do with us today? You see us here in America in 2024 and the people of Nehemiah’s day thousands of years ago, we live drastically different lives, but there are some core aspects to life, especially our life with God, that are very similar. And I would say that the church in America needs a little revival and restoration. Would anybody in the room agree with me on that? Amen.

This is a bit of a sad statistic. Did you know the Southern Baptist Convention loses 1,200 churches a year? 1,200 churches a year in our denomination alone closed their doors. 1,200 spread across 52 weeks means about two dozen. I think it’s 26.3. 26 churches in the Southern Baptist Convention will have their final meeting today and they will not be open tomorrow. There is a state of the church in America where we are deeply in need of God reviving us and restoring us.

But I think honestly, if you were to sit by yourself and you were to look in the mirror, you would also agree that you personally go through seasons where you need to be revived and restored. I mean, churches that end up closing their doors are full of people that need to have God come back into them as well. We all go through seasons where we are tired spiritually, where we are worn down spiritually, or we might even go through seasons where we are just walking away from the Lord altogether. We personally need to be revived. We personally need to be restored.

So we’re gonna look at the book of Nehemiah to see what does God have for us? I personally believe that Nehemiah and this chapter of Judah’s history will challenge all of us, but it will also revive us as we study what God did through His people back then. So if you’re already there with me, Nehemiah chapter one, the scripture will be on the screens. It’s even better in your hands right here in your lap, but follow with me.

This is Nehemiah one, one through three. These are the words of Nehemiah, son of Hakaliah. During the month of Kislev in the 20th year, when I was in the fortress city of Susa, Hanani, one of my brothers, arrived with men from Judah and I questioned them about Jerusalem and the Jewish remnant that had survived the exile. They said to me, the remnant in the province who survived the exile are in great trouble and disgrace. Jerusalem’s walls have been broken down and its gates have been burned. You jump down to the end of the chapter, Nehemiah says that at that time, I was the king’s cupbearer.

Now this is just one moment in the life of God’s people and we are just, jumping down into it. So let’s broaden our scope a little bit. You see, God created the very first people, Adam and Eve, to have a very special relationship with Himself. And His design for all people was that He would have this unbounded, perfect relationship with people. They were made in His image. Their job was to spread His image across the entire world. And things went all right for some length of time. They lived in the Garden of Eden. Everything was great. And then one day, Adam and Eve chose to disobey God’s one command, and they eat forbidden fruit. So then the people, Adam and Eve, are thrust out of the garden. And ever since then, you and I have had difficulties in walking with God. Ever since Genesis chapter 3, when Adam and Eve disobeyed God, the need for us to be revived and restored back to the Lord has been present in the world.

So you fast forward some years, and Adam and Eve have had kids. They’ve had kids, and they’ve had grandchildren. God Looks at the entire world, and He says, “Hey, I’m going to start a tribe, a special group of people that I’m going to call to My own name. And I’m going to start with a man named Abraham.” So God looks at Abraham. He changes his name from Abram to Abraham. He says, “I’m going to make you the father of many nations, the people that bless you. I’m going to bless the people that curse you. I’m going to curse. You’re going to have more children than all the grains of sand on the seashore, more than all the stars in the night sky. That’s what I’m going to bless you with.”

So He expands then, and He says, “Hey, I don’t just want a tribe, but I’m going to bring a nation into a promised land.” In steps Joshua. Joshua’s the next in the line. Joshua takes the people of Israel from wandering in the wilderness, led by Moses, and into the promised land where they can be a group of people in a definite place, still meant to be a light to the nations.

Then unfortunately, the people or the group of the nation of Israel says, “Hey, we want to be like all the other kingdoms, and we want a man to be king, not God.” God warns them. God says, “Don’t do this. This is not going to be good for you. Whoever you choose, whoever it’s going to be, no matter how well they start, it is going to end poorly.” They don’t listen to Him. So they have a king who has another king who has another king. That guy’s name is Solomon. Solomon, the most wise person in the entire world, he was blessed with a wisdom that has never been matched ever since then. But even he, in all of the wisdom that God gave him, was not wise enough. He has a son, and there’s another guy. They take the united nation of Israel, and they divide it into two groups: Israel in the north, Judah in the south. And just like God promised, it might start well, but it is going to end poorly.

Those nations, the divided nations of Israel and Judah, become exiles. What I mean is, the nation of Assyria comes and conquers Israel in the north, and then Babylon later comes and conquers Judah in the south. Lucky for us as English speakers, all this goes in alphabetical order. Wild. North, south, Israel, Judah, Assyria, Babylon. This is great for us here in America.

So then, the people of Israel are exiled. The northerners off to Assyria, the southerners to Babylon. Eventually, the kingdom of Babylon gets conquered by the Persians. The Persians are the people in charge in Nehemiah’s day, and that’s what brings us to this. That’s why the month of Kislev is referenced. That’s why Nehemiah says that he’s in the fortress city of Susa, and that’s why it’s important that at that time, Nehemiah is the king’s cupbearer.

The city of Susa is a fortress city in what is now southwest Iran. This would have been a winter palace for the Persian king. This would have been where he would have gone whenever it was a little warm back home. So he is ruling the total empire of Persia from this one place. You get to see it on a map here in a second. That is where Nehemiah has been brought to. He’s been taken out of his homeland in the southern portion, the red dot Jerusalem. He’s put over into little east over in Susa, and Susa is where he lives.

Now, here’s the thing about the exiles that would have happened to the Israelites and the Judeans. Some would have been left back home. Most would have been taken out. The folks that would have been left back home weren’t exactly your full-ride scholarship folks. They would have been people that would have been easily dominated, so to speak, by the nation in charge. Nehemiah’s presence in the king’s court as the cupbearer says that Nehemiah is a person of esteem. He’s probably incredibly intelligent. He’s got a lot of emotional intelligence going on. The folks that would have been left back home would have been easily subdued by the Persians.

So that brings us all to this. I’m going to read it again. Now you’ve got a little history. “The words of Nehemiah, son of Hakaliah, during the month of Kislev in the 20th year, when I was in the fortress city of Susa, Hanani, one of my brothers, arrived with men from Judah, and I questioned them about Jerusalem and the Jewish remnant that had survived the exile. And they said to me, ‘The remnant…’”

In the province who survived the exile are in great trouble and disgrace. Jerusalem’s wall has been broken down and its gates have been burned. Man, what a terrible situation that they are in. There’s one really good word to describe the state of affairs back home. Despair. When it said that the walls are broken down and the gates have been burned, what you ought to see is a city in ruins. In the Bible, when you have broken walls, you’ve got broken worship. They really would have thought their territorial gods would have protected them and enabled their worship. But whenever the city had been conquered, the walls had been broken, the gates had been burned, they’re totally vulnerable, totally susceptible. Their entire way of life is stopped, including their spiritual worship.

So when Hanani and his friends come back from Judah and it says, everything’s broken down. The walls, they’re not there anymore. The gates are burned. What Nehemiah hears, Yahweh’s not being worshiped. There’s a similar story that’s told in the book of Ezra. It’s just to the left of Nehemiah. Ezra happens about 40 or so years before the story of Nehemiah. And this is what Ezra says. In the first year of King Cyrus of Persia, in order to fulfill the word of the Lord spoken through Jeremiah, the Lord roused the spirit of King Cyrus to issue a proclamation throughout the entire kingdom of Persia. This is what King Cyrus of Persia says. The Lord, the God of the heavens has given me all the kingdoms of the earth and has appointed me to build Him a house at Jerusalem and in Judah. Any of His people among you, that is any Jews, may His God be with them and may he go to Jerusalem in Judah and build the house of the Lord, the God of Israel, the God who is in Jerusalem. Let every survivor, wherever he resides, be assisted by the men of that region with silver, gold, goods, livestock, along with the free will offering for the house of the God in Jerusalem.

Now I cite that to say, the walls are broken, the gates are burned. It is a moment of despair, but God is on the move. As we go through the 13 chapters of Nehemiah, what you will see is that God is on the move. No matter how bleak, no matter how dark, no matter how deep the despair of God’s people, He is on the move. Which reminds me again of our state of affairs in the local church in America. Yes, 1,200 churches a year out of the SBC are closing their doors. But with that, the Southern Baptist Convention has never started more churches than it has right now. More churches are being started now than have ever been started through our denomination ever before. More churches are being revived and restored through God’s work in local communities now than has ever happened ever before. In fact, my prayer for Sauldam Baptist Church is that God truly, He truly would use us to revive churches in our area. That He would use us to help the entire low country have a new chapter of its life with God. That He would use us to send families. This is, I literally mean this. We would send families to help other churches that would be closing their doors. That they can enter a new season in their life with God too. That’s my prayer for Sauldam Baptist Church. That when we get to that 200 year end, anniversary, we will be able to celebrate with a lot of folks and say, look at what God has done across our time. And that it wouldn’t just be us here, but that there’d be people from other churches joining us saying, man, because of God’s work there at 5945 County Line Road, we got to continue and enter a new season in our life with God.

That is what the people of God were experiencing during Nehemiah’s time. That is what churches are experiencing today. He is reviving and restoring churches and the church. And we get to be a part of that. But Judah in the time of Nehemiah needed something. They desperately needed God. They needed the comfort of the Lord. In fact, Nehemiah, his name literally means the comfort of the Lord. So as you open up your Bible and it says the words of Nehemiah, you can read the words of the comfort of the Lord, the comfort of the Lord. Names mean something, especially in the Bible, names mean something. So here, when it says that Nehemiah means the comfort of the Lord, that means that God would use Him to comfort and bless and revive and restore His people. So Nehemiah responds to this news that he gets from his brother with confession. Look at it. Verses four through seven. When I, Nehemiah, heard these words, I sat down and wept. I mourned for a number of days, fasting and praying before the God of the heavens. I said, Lord, the God of the heavens, the great and awe-inspiring God who keeps His gracious covenant with those who love Him and keep His commandments, let Your eyes be open and Your ears be attentive to hear Your servant’s prayer that I now pray to You day and night for Your servants, the Israelites. I confess, I confess the sins we have committed against You. Both I and my father’s family have sinned. We have acted corruptly toward You. We have not kept the commands, statutes and ordinances You gave Your servant, Moses.

Man, what gives Nehemiah? What a response. Nehemiah is just doing his thing, serving the king in Susa. He gets this news of what’s going on hundreds of miles away and Nehemiah can’t help but mourn. He can’t help but mourn over the actions of people that he’s not even a part of. Nehemiah is hundreds of miles away and hundreds of years removed from the rebellion and the sin that caused the exile to begin with. Yet Nehemiah still identifies with the people and he still owns it for himself. He says, I may not have been there 150 years ago when this whole thing went down and I may not be 150 miles over there right now, but these are my people and God is still calling me to do something on behalf of them. And he couldn’t start doing that until he identified with them and until he confessed, which makes me ask this question, man, what breaks my heart? What pushes me to action? God longs that we would mourn over what He mourns over.

We’re in prayer time this morning and I’m praying about the summer bash and I’m talking with God about how I’m frustrated that we can’t do this. And literally it was in that moment that God convicted me. He said, Jeremy, you’re upset you can’t do your party. There’s people downtown that don’t have a home. You’re upset about not being able to hang out at Harold’s house. There’s people downtown that don’t have a house. What are they going to do during the storm? And it was in that moment I realized I wasn’t mourning what God mourns. I was mourning what Jeremy mourns. What do we mourn? What moves us to action? For Nehemiah, it was the spiritual state of his people. And he knew for comfort to come to Judah, they’d have to confess their sin. And Nehemiah takes the lead.

If you’re a note taker, if you are someone that’s looking for the one big point, this is it. The comfort of the Lord goes with the confession of His people. I’ll say it again. The comfort of the Lord goes with the confession of His people. Nehemiah, he spends a few verses here confessing. But the thing is confession has two elements. Confession can be proclaiming the truth, but confession is also throwing off sin. Let’s look at those two separately.

Confession is proclaiming truth. Verse five, when Nehemiah gets up from mourning and fasting and praying, he says, Lord. In your Bible, it ought to be capital L, capital O, capital R, capital D. That is not the same as capital L, little r, or little o, little r, little d. All caps refers to the name Yahweh. You just say it with me. Yahweh. People in Israel would not have done that out loud 2,000 years ago. They held this particular name of God in such high esteem, they would not say it with their own lips. Because Jesus Christ has come, we can say it and we can rejoice. We could say Yahweh.

When God reveals Himself to Moses at the burning bush in Exodus 3:14, and He says, hey, my people are in Egypt and I want you to take them to the promised land so that they could be a nation unto Me again. I’m going to send you and you’re going to speak to Pharaoh and you’re going to speak to Israel and you’re going to take them there. And Moses says, okay, burning bush God, who shall I say is their God? Moses has been outside of Israel for 80 years. The burning bush voice says, I am who I say I am, Yahweh. The name Yahweh literally means to be. God in His covenant expression and in His deepest name says, I am who has always been and who forever will be. I am who I am. When Nehemiah is praying on behalf of the people, he says, the incredible I am. I need you, I am. You’ve got to be with us. I am. I am the God of the heavens. I am you. I am great and the awe-inspiring God. He continues, who keeps His gracious covenant with us, who keeps His commands. Verse 6, let your eyes be open, your ears be attentive. I pray to You on behalf of Your servants. Nehemiah is just proclaiming the truth about God. You are the eternal covenant promise-keeping God. You’re the one who’s always been there for us, even when we weren’t there with You. You’re the one who is strong. You’re the one who listens to us. You’re the one whose heart beats for us. That is who You are.

I tell you, there is no Christianity separate from proclaiming the truth about God. That’s why we sing songs like this. Our Father everlasting, the all-creating one, God almighty, through Your Holy Spirit, conceiving Christ the Son, Jesus our Savior, our judge and our defender, suffered and crucified. Forgiveness is in You. Descended into darkness, You rose in glorious light, forever seated high. I believe in life eternal. I believe in the virgin birth. I believe in the saints communion and in Your holy church. I believe in the resurrection when Jesus comes again, for I believe in the name of Jesus. I believe in God our Father. I believe in Christ the Son. I believe in the Holy Spirit. Our God is three in one. I believe in the resurrection that we will rise again, for I believe in the name of Jesus.

Christians have been singing that song for 1700 years. Those words were penned in 341, likely drawn from a Christian hymn from AD 200 some odd. This is the heart of our belief as Christians. Nehemiah proclaims the truth about God. He confessed the truth about God. And proclaiming truth about God naturally leads to the second form of confession, which is where we throw off sin. There is no way to adequately and accurately look at how incredible God is without acknowledging how low we are. Nehemiah confessed his sin and he confessed Judah’s sin. Verses 6 and 7, that’s just all it is. We have acted corruptly toward You. We have not kept the commands, the statutes, the ordinances that You gave Your servant Moses. Again, the exile happened because of Israel’s actions hundreds of years before Nehemiah was even born. Yet Nehemiah said with full gusto, I have sinned. We have done wrong. There would be no revival and restoration for Judah without the confession of sin. And everyone that I read in the church revival movement in America today says the same thing. There’s no revival in local churches without the confession of sin.

You know, sin is kind of like static on an antenna TV. I had one of those growing up. Anybody else have one of those? Where you were the remote control and you know, you want to watch the football games, you got to get off the couch and you got to mess with these things for about 20 minutes. And you know, the whole time people are just watching you. They’re not even watching the TV. They’re just watching you make a fool of yourself, right? As you’re trying to jangle these things in the right sort of angle to make sure that you’re getting some sort of signal, sin is the same way. It’s the fuzz. It’s the static on the screen. And until you get rid of the static, you can’t see the picture of who God is. You can’t have a meaningful relationship with Him. You can’t enjoy God. For us to enjoy God, we got to get the static out. For us to get a right picture of who God is, you got to get the static off the screen.

Nehemiah starts confessing his sin. He confesses God’s identity and he recognizes God’s covenant and His power. Look at verses 8 through 10. Nehemiah still praying says, Nehemiah’s prayer just gets richer and richer. Nehemiah’s prayer just gets richer and richer. He cites the fact that God had already promised that if the people of Israel were unfaithful, He would scatter them. But if the people of Israel just sought the face of the Lord, if they would just try to walk with Him, if they would just keep the commands, if they would just love Him, then God would hold the people. You see, here’s the deal. God always keeps His promises. And sometimes that makes us uncomfortable because He even promised the people of Israel, He would scatter them. But just like God scatters the people of Israel and Judah, God would also bless; He would gather them. He has already been faithful to them in the past, and Nehemiah knows this. Nehemiah knows the stories of redemption. He knows about how God would take bad situations and use them for good to bless His people.

Nehemiah remembers that ultimate story of redemption where the people of Israel are escaping Egypt and they have gotten caught between a sea and a hard place. The people of Israel are escaping Egypt, and they’ve got Pharaoh and his army on their six, and they’re looking at the Red Sea, and they’re trying to figure out, how in the world do we get out of this? Moses, you let us out here just to be slaughtered. What are you doing? And God does what only God can do. He opens up the sea. He makes them, His people, pass on dry land. The Egyptians try to follow them, and the sea just gets them. That’s what happens to them. God redeems His people out of slavery through His own miraculous salvation.

Nehemiah knows that. Nehemiah says, “You are a redeemer. You have redeemed them by Your great power and Your strong hand.” So God, You can do it again. God, will You redeem this people again? Will You restore them? Will You revive them? Will You save them again? What miraculous work will You do? Or a different way to ask the question: how in the world can God use Nehemiah to help? How can God use Nehemiah to help Judah? That comes in the final verse of Nehemiah’s prayer. Pick it up with me in verse 11. “Please, Lord, let Your ear be attentive to the prayer of Your servant and to that of Your servants who delight to revere Your name. Give Your servant me, give me success today, and grant me compassion in the presence of this man. Now at the time, I was the king’s cupbearer.”

Brings a full circle. Of an entire empire under the king of Persia, there was one person that got the king’s ear morning, noon, and night. There was one person who stayed with the king all day. There was one person who got to listen in on all the court’s proceedings. There was one person that the king trusted so much that whatever he gave him, he would drink. That was the cupbearer. Nehemiah from the people of Judah is given the most important, prestigious, and intimate connection to the most powerful person in the world.

Nehemiah recognized he was God’s instrument. He recognized that the comfort of the Lord would go with the confession of his people, and his name means the comfort of the Lord. Nehemiah recognized that for such a time as this, he was placed before the king. Nehemiah recognized God’s attention to hear and to act, so he prayed for strength. He prayed for success because he knows the king of Persia, the most powerful person in the entire world, is just a man. But God is God.

How big is your God? Is your God bigger than the situations you go through? Is your God bigger than the stuff that stresses you? Is your God bigger than the metaphorical storm of life that are building over you right now? Is your God bigger than the junk that you are wading through this week? Is your God bigger than your health situation? Is your God bigger than your family crisis? Is your God bigger than all the hard stuff that you’re trying to pray out of your life? Is He bigger or not?

I feel like in the Bible, God is constantly saying, “Trust me, just trust me, just trust me, and watch me act. Watch me move. Watch me do something you can’t do for yourself.” And He’s inviting us to be part of it. We don’t get resolution on the story of Nehemiah just out of chapter one, but we do get something that I think is even better. We see how Nehemiah ultimately points us to somebody else.

You see, Nehemiah recognized that he was a mediator. He recognized that he was God’s person to act on behalf of God’s people to the most powerful, important force against God’s people in the world. There’s someone else who did that for us. We sing His name every week. We cherish His name in our prayers, and He is the reason that we are here. In 1 Timothy 2, verse five, it says this. 2 Timothy, but 1 Timothy. In 1 Timothy 2, verse five, it says, “For there is one God and one mediator between God and man.” That is the man, Jesus Christ, who gave Himself as a ransom for all, a testimony at the proper time. You see, you and me, we are all like the people of Judah, desperately in need of God’s miraculous work to save and to defend and to deal with us. And the only way back to wholeness is not through gluing ourselves back together. It’s not through denying the truth about ourselves. It’s not through asserting a different truth about ourselves. The only way back to wholeness is receiving it from God and being made whole again.

But there’s a problem. Because of sin, we need God to come to us. That’s who Jesus is. The comfort of the Lord came through a baby born in a manger, denied a right room, denied a palace, though He was born a King. The comfort of the Lord comes through Jesus Christ to meet us in all of our situations, not just to make a C-minus sort of a day into a B-plus sort of a day. No, He takes us in our failures. And He says, no, in Me, you are made right with the One who has made you, so that the incredible, awe-inspiring God of the universe can call you son or daughter.

The people of Judah needed Nehemiah to stand up for them and to act on their behalf so that they may be revived and restored out of their brokenness and out of their spiritual darkness. And we have that in Jesus Christ. And the wild thing is, when you accept the grace of God in the gospel, then we get to step into a mediator role on behalf of others. So we pack bags for teachers and students. And on the surface, it’s school supplies. But man, those bags are a reason for Donna and Carter and myself and others to go and shake hands with the principals of schools and say, Hey, Sauldam Baptist Church loves you and loves the kids that come here.

That’s why we do stuff like baptism, so that we can display physically and outwardly what is true inwardly—that we have given our lives to Jesus Christ. That’s why on Wednesday nights, we open up the fellowship hall that anybody could come and have a hot meal, get to meet somebody, have Bible study. That’s why God has kept us here, that we would be a mediator to our community in the Low Country, sharing the hope of the gospel with any that would give us attention.

So as we close our service this morning, I want to invite you to do something with me. We need to consider where you’re at. We want you to just be honest, and let’s do this. Let’s do it this way. Everybody just close your eyes and bow your heads and just focus. Just this is you and Jesus. We want you just to pray for a second and just say, Lord, will You open my eyes to see what’s true about me? Lord, will You help me to see me like You see me? Then I want you to ask Him this question: Do I actually know You? God, is there sin on the screen distorting my image of You? Is there something I need to confess to You? If the answer to that is yes, then please just tune out everything else I’m about to say and just take a moment and confess, and invite God into your heart and ask Him to cleanse you and make you whole.

If you do know Him, I want you to ask Him this question: God, who have You kept me on this earth to mediate for? Who needs Your comfort and I can stand up for them? Who am I supposed to take the hope of the gospel to this week, Lord? Yeah, ask Him that question. Trust that God answers when we speak and when we ask Him questions. Satan would love to disrupt and distort and destroy this moment. If you are not confident you’ve given your life to Jesus, will you do so now and say, God, I give You my life. I don’t know all that means, but Lord, I’m tired of going my way. Can You help me go Your way instead? And if you have given your life to Jesus, if you know Him, will you just say, Lord, show me who to go to this week. Show me who to help this week.

If you want to talk more about that moment after the service, I’ll be up front. Let’s pray for now. Lord, God, thank You for today. God, I truly believe that Your comfort comes through our confession. God, that we would proclaim the truth about you, but also that we would expose the truth about ourselves. God, that we would rejoice in the fact that You sent Your Son to be our mediator, the one who gave Himself as a sacrifice and a ransom, the one who has come to make us whole. But also, Jesus, we have sinned against You. There’s a reason we need You. It’s because of the things we say. It’s because of the things that we love instead of You. It’s because of the thoughts we have. It’s because of the actions we do. It’s not because of things done to us. It’s not because of the way we’ve been raised or despite it. God, would You please continue to revive us to be what You want us to be? God, would You continue to restore us to what You want us to be? And God, would You please use us to help the same happen to other churches in our community, that the Lowcountry would be impacted because of Your work here? Lord, we love You. And it’s in Your beautiful name we pray. Amen.