Lines Drawn

Good morning, guys. Man, it’s, yeah, one of my favorite times of Sunday mornings is seeing everybody talk. One of my least favorite moments is interrupting all of that and stopping all the hellos and the good mornings and how are you and stuff like that. Man, I encourage you, yeah, stick around after service or God forbid, get here maybe five minutes before service. We make that happen too, all right? We can just sandwich this whole thing with some hellos, okay? Well, man, good to see everybody.

This morning, as we go into our time of congregational prayer, we are going to just do it out of one of these. So you may have caught this last week. This month is called the Janie Chapman State Missions Offering. So within the Southern Baptist Convention, there’s different layers of giving. There’s different layers of missions and things like that. For this month, we are raising funds specifically for church planting and missions work in our state convention. If you don’t have one of these yet, you can grab them on the back tables. These are just little prayer guides that will guide you for something specific to pray about for the next week or so, the next eight days. So we’re going to take a few minutes and we’re just going to pray about that.

Our goal as a church is simply to raise $250 to be able to give toward that. And guys, that’s front pocket change for us. Like we could do quadruple that if we would just get a little bit of cash out of our pockets right now. It’s not, I’m not even really worried about the money. What I’m really concerned about is that we would go before the Lord and we would ask Him who is not bound by any wallets, not bound by a dollar amount, who doesn’t want anything or doesn’t need anything from us, just wants things for us. Now we would ask for Him to get a hold of what’s happening in our state.

You may or may not have noticed, but South Carolina is an extremely popular place to move to these days. You look at a couple of different ways to slice the demographics. In Charleston or Myrtle Beach, two of the fastest growing places in the entire East Coast, people are moving from the center of our nation to the coast of our nation. I saw something the other day that just the populations of the states that make the Atlantic and the Pacific coasts, those states’ populations equal the populations of all the other states of our country. And many people are just gonna continue to come. So we are gonna ask that the Lord would get a hold of them and get a hold of us.

This morning specifically, we’re gonna pray for the University of South Carolina and all of its campuses throughout our state. So if you will, just grab a neighbor and pray that the Lord would expand His kingdom, that He would save people and specifically college students at one of the University of South Carolina campuses. And I’ll pack us all up here in a minute, all right? Y’all take it away and pray.

Thank you so much. Lord, thank you for the legacy of Janie Chapman. God, that we get to memorialize her by just piling a little bit of cash every year to give to Baptist Collegiate Ministries. Father, to help fund new churches that are starting in our state. Father, to help fund Baptist associations that are trying to revitalize churches or just revitalize pastors in our state. God, thank you for all the people that are moving here. Thank you, Lord. God, that just means that we get to share the gospel with more people that don’t look like us in some way and we don’t even have to leave our town. God, we can just go to work. We can just go to Publix. We can just go to Chick-fil-A and we can share the message of Jesus Christ, Lord, possibly with people that never even heard of the name of Jesus.

Father, I pray that you would use the financial giving of our state across this month. Father, that you would use the prayers of your people, Lord, that your kingdom would grow. Father, that people that don’t know you, they would come to know you, Lord, please. Father, I want to thank you specifically for my friend Sam, who’s a professor at University of South Carolina, who is using his connections with students to share the gospel. He is breaking down barriers to faith in a place that is extremely antagonistic toward it. Lord, thank you for how he’s using his Social credibility, and he’s using his clout as a tenured professor, Lord, to share the gospel and not hide. Father, may we do the same thing. May we share the gospel and not hide. Lord, I pray for myself right now as I preach. God, you know exactly where my heart’s at. God, this is outside of the weather. Lord, this is just a hard day for me. Lord, I pray that you would please help me. God, that you would stir my heart and you would warm my heart with your word and you would help me, Father, just to be faithful to proclaim it. God, would we all be good soil. Father, that your word would take root in us and it would produce fruit, please. God, may the people of Sauldam Baptist Church this morning hear a better sermon than what I’m gonna preach, please. Father, it’s in your great name that I pray. Amen.

Well, I just wanna say thank you to everyone for helping Becca and I welcome Honor into our family. She has been an absolute delight, except from like 5 p.m. to 10 p.m. Outside of that, she’s really good. Now, she’s awesome. We have, seriously, we deeply love her and we feel so much love from you guys. Thank y’all so much for supporting us. We call ourselves Team Simmons in our home, so thank you for helping wrap around Team Simmons.

We have learned that there are some changes that have happened with our family. Annie has learned to become a caregiver to a baby, whether we ask her to or not, you know? So she is more than happy to assist and to tell me what to do to calm down Honor. It’s like, okay, it’s a check of my pride, and I’ll be honest with that. Luke, he has changed. He used to be the baby of the family. Now he’s the middle. He’s the only boy at this point, and he is just kind of wrestling with all that. I’m really proud of him, though. He hasn’t once stolen any of Honor’s passes. I’m just like, man, good for you.

But there’s, and then, you know, Becca and I, we had this change, too, of now we’re outnumbered by the kids, and, you know, the moment you go from two to three is the moment everybody else becomes like a football guru. They say, you were playing man defense, now you’re playing zone defense. I’m like, you don’t know. It’s a, whatever, man. It doesn’t stop anything, you know? And there’s a lot of changes, but there’s this constant for us. We are Team Simmons. We got this language from somebody else. It’s how we talk about our roles and our responsibilities in our home. We say, on Team Simmons, we tell the truth even when it hurts. On Team Simmons, we take responsibility. On Team Simmons, we do our job.

It makes me wonder, as I’m thinking about Team Simmons and how our team is changing, what are some of the greatest teams you’ve ever been part of? As I just kind of go through the list, the first team that was truly great that I was ever on, Chick-fil-A, Wake Forest, all right? So we are in, we are freshly married. This is 2015. We’ve moved up to Wake Forest, North Carolina for me to attend seminary. I just need a little job that I could work around a school schedule. And Chick-fil-A was happy to oblige. I don’t know where all the rankings stack up at this point, but at that time, that particular Chick-fil-A, we got more cars through the drive-through than any other Chick-fil-A on the entire East Coast. We made more money every year than every other Chick-fil-A, and other Chick-fil-As would send their managers to our location to learn how to do Chick-fil-A the Chick-fil-A way. Which means, I walk into a Chick-fil-A these days and my experience is almost ruined because I’m constantly nitpicking and I’m talking about stuff that’s like, man, if Sauldam doesn’t work out, Chick-fil-A, here I come.

And then another great team is the pastoral team at our previous church. I got to serve under one of the greatest leaders that I’ve ever met. His name is Russell Johnson. He’s now pastoring a church out in Texas. And what made that particular team great was he was just so clear what the goal was. And he said, hey, this is our goal as a church. All of our other little goals, they’re going to support this one big goal. And we’re going to work toward that. And God, I think, really used that. And it was a lot of fun to be part of that.

team. But honestly, the greatest team I’ve ever been a part of was Lugoff-Elgin Middle School Wrestling. All right. I’m going to show a picture on the screen. If you’re a little weak in the stomach, avert your eyes. 98 pounds of fierce muscle right there, guys. I was not a very valued member of that team. But Lugoff-Elgin Middle School, we won the state championship for wrestling four years in a row. I was more than happy to be the practice dummy for the other guys. I would regularly lose in state tournaments to my own teammates. It’d be like in the first rounds. They would just do some maneuver that I never really understood. And I’d pin them like, all right, okay, now I get to go back to eating normal food and drink the Gatorade on the side. And I’m going to get a ring out of this. It’s totally fine. But you know, it’s just, we’re all on teams. And every team needs to find something that motivates it, something to give it confidence. We can go ahead and take that picture down now, guys. Maybe that’s like a leader. Maybe a leader motivates the team. Maybe it’s an adversary, somebody to fight against. Maybe it’s a cause, something bigger than the sport or the activity that you kind of root around.

Nehemiah, you go ahead and turn in your Bibles to the book of Nehemiah. Go just straight in the middle, then turn left, and you’ll get there eventually. Nehemiah led a team during his day. And we at Sauldam Baptist Church, we’re also on a team today. Let me catch us up to Nehemiah chapter 4, verse 15. Nehemiah, the book starts with the people of God. They are groaning. They’re groaning because they have long since been exiled from their homeland, the city of Jerusalem. They have been taken over multiple times. They have been deported multiple times. They are exiled, and the state of the city is in complete disrepair. The people are groaning, and they come to this guy named Nehemiah. He is a Jewish man, but he’s living in exile in Persia. That is the empire that has most recently exiled the people of God out of Jerusalem. They come to him, and he hears the groans. He hears the issue. He says, I got to do something about it. So he starts praying. He says, God, what am I supposed to do? I’ve got this influence. I’ve got this clout. Now I have the responsibility of knowing that my people, Your people back home, they are suffering. What in the world do we do? So after praying, he goes to the king. He makes this incredible request. He says, hey, you remember how you stopped all the rebuilding of Jerusalem a few years ago? How about we restart that? And I go and do that. God’s favor, God’s hand is on Nehemiah. So the king grants that request.

Nehemiah arrives, and shortly after arriving, Nehemiah goes on this nighttime ride, and he looks at the state of the city. He takes his animal. He rides his animal at midnight. He goes along the entire wall of the city of Jerusalem, about a mile and a half ride, and he sees just how bad things are. Nehemiah feels incredibly burdened for his people and where they live. So then after assessing the damage, he starts rallying everybody up. He says, hey guys, God’s hand is on me. This place is not okay. We must rebuild this place. So the people rally behind Nehemiah, and they start rebuilding this wall. They are clearing debris. They are rebuilding. Soon enough, though, there’s some haters. There’s some enemies. There’s some opposition, and they start coming against Nehemiah, and Nehemiah starts talking to them saying, you’ve got no right here. You’ve got no share here. You just need to get away from all this. By the way, the king has approved this. Really, by the way, the God of the universe is blessing this. So you have a choice to make.

So that’s kind of the story of Nehemiah. What would empower Nehemiah to go through this? What would empower Nehemiah to lead his team of officials and workers and builders? What would help Nehemiah? It was this. It was the conviction that if God is for us, who can be against us? Say it with me. If God is for us, then who can be against us? We will see that out of the story of Nehemiah. Look at it with me. I’m just going to read a verse or two at a time. It says this, Nehemiah 4, verse 15. When our enemies heard that we knew their scheme and that God had frustrated it, every one of us returned to his own work on the wall. You see, this points straight back to the passage that Pastor Al preached last week. If you get an opportunity this week, just go to the website, pull up Sunday sermons. Look at what Al preached, an incredibly encouraging message about how Nehemiah led all the folks to continue the work despite the opposition.

You see, the people that were upset that Nehemiah was leading the people to rebuild, they started making threats against all the Jews saying, “We’re going to attack you guys. We’re going to dismantle y’all. The work that y’all are doing, even a fox could take it down. Even a little animal could break it all apart.” Nehemiah says, “Don’t worry about them.” And God frustrates their plans. Nehemiah has complete belief that God is the one that’s working and guiding and doing it all. So the enemies hear that. They hear that Nehemiah knew about their scheme. They hear that God had frustrated it. So everybody returns to the work.

Verse 16, “From that day on, half of my men did the work, while the other half held spears, shields, bows, and armor. The officers supported all the people of Judah who were rebuilding the wall. The laborers who carried the loads worked with one hand and held a weapon with the other. And each of the builders had his sword strapped around his waist while he was building. And the one who sounded the ram’s horn was beside me.”

So you see Nehemiah, he is starting to make some decisions. He’s making some changes. Things on team Nehemiah are changing as well. God has frustrated the plan of the enemies. So then Nehemiah says, “Okay, it’s probably time for us to shift some of this workforce.” In fact, he divides the workforce in half. He splits it in half. Some are going to become builders while some are going to become battlers. And even the builders themselves start carrying weapons.

Let’s zoom out for a second and imagine with me how tense and anxious the city of Jerusalem would have been. Anybody else get a little nervous when change starts to happen in your world? So a bunch of changes are happening. People are already nervous anyways. People are already wondering, “Okay, what’s next? I like a new wall, but what’s going to keep happening?” And then threats all of a sudden are coming against the people. So the people are wondering, “Huh, is all this work going to be just wasted? Is it for not? Are we even going to be able to finish this?” They’re even not just making threats of dismantling the work. They’re saying, “We’re going to take your life.” People are incredibly anxious.

So Nehemiah then, he goes and divides the workforce. And all of a sudden, you wake up one day and you report to work. And your buddy that you’ve been working alongside of rebuilding this wall, he’s now a guard. So he’s strapped with a spear and a sword. He’s wearing armor. And you just know at any second, there could be an ambush around this half-built wall you’re working on. At any moment, you might hear some sort of alarm. You might hear some people shouting, “Attack, attack.” At any moment, you know that the work might stop and you’re in a, all of a sudden you are fighting for your life. And don’t forget, you’ve got a wife, you’ve got kids. Maybe your husband’s working on the wall. Maybe your son is working on the wall. And you’re wondering, “Are we ever going to be able to do this? Is God really going to see us through? Or is this going to be like everything else over the last 150 years of Judah’s history? Exile, domination, destruction.” They would have been incredibly anxious.

So Nehemiah gives them some more rallying words. Verse 19 and 20. Look at it with me. “So then I said to the nobles, the officials, and the rest of the people, the work is enormous and it’s spread out. We’re separated far from one another along this wall. Wherever you hear the sound of the ram’s horn, rally to us there. Our God will fight for us.” Man. Yeah. Sorry, guys. Mixed up my notes just a little bit.

So Nehemiah would have understood that people are incredibly anxious and he gives them just a few words to settle them down. He understands this wall that they are rebuilding. It’s about a mile and a half long. You take the entire workforce that had been stretched along that mile and a half, then you divide it in half. So they’re stretched even thinner. You Take those people who one day they wake up and all of a sudden they’re masons. They’re all of a sudden they are bricklayers. They are wall builders. And then the next day they wake up and all of a sudden they’re guards. They’re soldiers. These people would have been incredibly anxious. So Nehemiah gives them some comfort. He gives them some words of help. He helps them see, hey, we’re not alone. Our God, He is going to be with us.

So He creates this alarm system. He says, wherever, verse 20, wherever you hear the sound of the ram’s horn, rally to us there. If there’s an attack, if there’s an ambush, if something goes wrong, we’re gonna blow this horn, just come to us there, and we’re gonna rally together. We’re gonna make it work.

So what happens as Nehemiah encourages his team? Verse 21, we continued the work. While half the men were holding spears from daybreak until the stars came out. Man, those people doubled down. Nehemiah gives them a few words of encouragement. He just gives them a little something to pep them up, and they just continued the work. They just continued to go.

That wasn’t the only problem, verse 22. At that time, I also said to the people, let everyone and his servant spend the night inside of Jerusalem so that they can stand guard by night and work by day. Imagine, the city and the wall are in such disrepair. There were families that said it would be safer for us to sleep outside of the boundaries of the city. Can you imagine how broken down that wall is? That a husband and a wife would say, you know what? It’s better for us in the cave or under the stars than it is to be grouped together with everybody in that death trap. There are people that think it’s a better idea to be outside of the safety of numbers and outside of the structure of the city. They said, we’re just gonna sleep over there. Nehemiah says, no, come on guys, we need to all bunch together. Let’s regroup. Let’s come together. Let’s all get in the city at night.

The immediate impact is that people continued to watch. They continued to work. Verse 23, I, my brothers, my servants, the men of the guard with me, we never took off our clothes. Meaning, they never even waited long enough to bathe. They’re not even relaxing. Everyone carried his weapon, even when washing. They just splashed a little water on their face, take a nap for a little bit, eat some food and keep going.

Man, Nehemiah is this incredible leader. He’s this incredible team builder. But it’s not because of Him. It’s because of this conviction he had about God. It’s the main point, we’ve already read it. If God is for us, then who can be against us? That line is not new to me. And Nehemiah didn’t write it either. You might recognize it. It’s actually out of Romans chapter eight. The verses will be on your screen.

In Romans chapter eight, what some people believe is the greatest chapter in all the Bible, the apostle Paul is writing about our confidence in Christ and in the Christian life. He’s writing about how we can have confidence because of what Jesus has done for us. Listen to this. Listen to these words. This is from the apostle Paul, Romans chapter eight. We know that all things work together for the good of those who love God.

Has anybody experienced something this week that you would say was not good? Everybody. Flat tire. That was me two weeks ago. I got in the news about Mary on Tuesday, got a flat tire on Wednesday. And I said, woe is me. How small my world is.

Paul says, All things work together for the good of those who love God, who are called according to His purpose. Verse 29. For those God foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His son so that He, Jesus, would be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters. Those whom God predestined, He also called. Those whom He called, He justified. Those whom He justified, He also glorified.

What then are we to say about these things? If God is for us, oh man, who can be against us? I’ll keep reading this. It’s not on the screen anymore. He did not even spare His own son, but gave Him up for us all. How would He not also with Him grant us everything? Who can bring an accusation against God’s elect? God is the one who justifies. Who is the one who condemns? Christ Jesus is The one who died, but even more, has been raised. Who is seated at the right hand of God and intercedes for us? Who can separate us from the love of Christ? Can affliction or distress, persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? Nah. As it’s written, because of you, we are being put to death all day long. We are counted as sheep to be slaughtered, but no, verse 37 of Romans chapter eight, in all these things, we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us. For I, Paul, am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus, our Lord.

So I say it again, if God is for us, then who could be against us? Nothing can stand against you if God is for you. And Nehemiah knew that. He knew it. Before Jesus ever came on the scene, before the realization of a Savior that God had promised way back in Genesis chapter three, before Nehemiah ever got to see the temple really be rebuilt and the glory of God come back in it, before Nehemiah got to see the wall be rebuilt and finished, before he got to see any of that, Nehemiah was able to recognize God is in charge. And if He is in charge, and if He’s given me this calling, then it doesn’t matter what people are saying. It doesn’t matter what’s happening. It doesn’t matter what comes against us, because God will see it through to the end.

Who in this room needs to hear this this day? If God is for you, nothing can stand against you. And Jesus Christ coming and living in your place is the ultimate sign that God is for you. Some of us believe God is for us because of the things we could do for Him. Man, if I just pray a little bit more, if I just read my Bible a little bit more, if I just come to more women’s Bible studies, if I just come to more Sunday school, if I just come to more Wednesday night fellowships, if I just even maybe fast, maybe if I put a little money in the plate, ooh, maybe, maybe if I come to Carter’s evangelism training, and I learn how to share the gospel, and even try to do it one time, maybe that will be enough for God to be for me, and for God to love me.

Religion will say, do this, and do that, and maybe one day you’ll be able to tip the scales in your favor, so that God will allow you into His presence. That is not Christianity. That is not the gospel. If you ever hear anything like that in this place from any of us, you say, that’s not right, and that is heretical. The gospel is God has done everything for you, because you can’t do it.

You see, here’s the deal. God has made you and me to live in a perfect relationship of harmony with Himself, a relationship that wouldn’t have any boundaries or any issues whatsoever, a relationship where we get to talk with Him and spend time with Him, where we get to do everything we want and be holy at the same time. But we threw that away. In Adam and Eve, the very first people, we threw that away, because we chose to not believe God’s goodness and His promise to us. So what happened was sin comes into the world through Adam and Eve, which means every person born ever since then, including you, me, and our kids, are all born into a state of opposition with God. We are His enemies.

Praise be to God, He doesn’t treat us the way we deserve. Instead, Jesus Christ, God, He sends His own Son for us while we were still sinners, so that Jesus would come and live a perfect life you’re supposed to live, but can’t live. And He would die a sacrificial death for you that you should die, but you don’t have to. And Jesus wouldn’t just live and He wouldn’t just die, but He would be resurrected from death, securing for you freedom from sin, securing for you freedom from death, from Satan, from all those things, so that you can know the God of the universe, the holy creator, the one that made you, He is for you.

If God gave you Jesus, will He not also give you everything you need and most of the things you want? God is so utterly for you. He just wants you to know that. If you’re not convinced of that, man, please take a moment, tune me out, and just have a conversation with God. And just tell Him, Lord, I’m not convinced, but I want that. Can you please help me in my unbelief? That is, you will never regret that. Paul, who wrote those words in Romans 8, and Nehemiah, who we will return to now, they both attempted incredible things for God. They expected great things from God because they had received incredible things in God already. You see, Nehemiah knew if God is for him, then no one can stand against what God had called him to do. Nehemiah knew it, which means there are so many things we can learn from this, but I’ve got three main lessons for you today. Three main lessons from this moment in the life of Nehemiah.

Because God was for Nehemiah, Nehemiah and the people were unified in their purpose. They were unified in their purpose. You get the sense that when Nehemiah is writing and when he is speaking, he is speaking to a collected group that is responding all together. Everyone served the same mission. Everyone worked day and night. Nehemiah and even the leaders themselves were personally engaged in the mission. I mean, look at verse 19 and 20 again and pay attention this time to the pronouns, the I’s, the you’s, the us, the we, the they. I said to the nobles and the officials and the rest of the people, this work is enormous. It is spread out and we are separated far from one another along the wall. Wherever you hear the sound of the ram’s horn, that’s the battle cry, rally to us there. Our God will fight for us. Nehemiah was saying, and we see this in verse 18 at the very end, the person blowing the horn was beside him. Nehemiah said rally to me whenever you hear the rally cry. Nehemiah was in the thick of everything. He is right there with the masons and the carpenters and the average joes helping build this wall. And he says, if things go south, come to me because that’s where I’m going to be. I’m going to be in the middle of that fight. Top to bottom, they were unified.

So this is where it gets personal for us. I believe if Nehemiah were here in this pulpit, he’d ask us, are you unified? Are you pursuing unity? Are you as a group personally engaged in the mission together? You know, one of the final things that Jesus did for us before He was betrayed and sent to the cross was He was praying in John 15 through 17. And He prayed some incredible things. And I think the most audacious thing that Jesus prayed, He said, God, Father, would You make them one as You and I one? Imagine it, the God of the universe who has always existed in complete harmony as the Father, the Son, and the Spirit with whom and within whom no division can ever come in. This God who is eternally and will forever be together and unified, who is holy and majestic and powerful and pure in every way. In every other description that my mind can’t fathom right now, God is praying to God and says, make them as unified as I am. God, Jesus’ plan for you and me is that our relationship would be so tight, we would look like God. Now, don’t press that too far, but think when I’m about to say something, think something or do something, is this protecting unity or is this hurting it? Nehemiah knew his team had to be on the same page. Every coach does. Nehemiah’s team was unified in their purpose.

I’d encourage you to do something really courageous today. This would be the bravest thing you do all week. You just take a minute and pray. God, am I in disunity with somebody at church? In fact, I know there’s gonna be a million distractions when you leave here today. Let’s take a moment right now. Just pray, just by yourself, be quiet in your heart, in your mind, and just pray, Lord, is there somebody, some Christian I need to make my relationship right with? And will You help me do that? Just take a moment. God, would You make us a pure people? Would You make us a unified people? God, we know that’s Your will and Your design for us. Would You please help us, Lord? You make us one like You’re one. Amen. Yeah. Nehemiah led these people. They were unified and that relational unity had to have driven this missional unity.

as well. They were all either physically working on the wall or protecting the people that were doing it. Nobody, I imagine, nobody here is advancing personal causes in the city of Jerusalem under Nehemiah’s leadership. It’d be as silly as watching a game of tug of war and you see the two sides pulling against one another. And all of a sudden, somebody from one of the sides turns around and starts pulling as well. That’s not what’s happening. This book, what’s happening is all the people of Judah, they are pulling together. There’s a lot of important things they could have been doing, but they knew the one thing they had to do. They had to rebuild the wall. So Nehemiah is leading them and God is blessing. They are unified in their purpose.

But the second lesson that we learn from them is because they knew that there were people against them, Nehemiah and the people also were prepared for action. They were prepared for action. Workers are carrying weapons while they’re working. You got some guys that are moving bricks with one hand and holding a spear with another. You’ve got other guys that have swords sheathed on their side while they’re trying to put bricks together to make this wall and reconstruct stuff. You’ve got people that are guarding all these workers who are ready at a moment’s notice to take action and to rally to a ram’s horn. You’ve got everybody ready to drop everything they’re doing to get to a certain point on the wall to defend. They were prepared for action. They had an alarm system built. Nehemiah regularly was rallying all the people. They were together. They were prepared.

Once again, I ask you, how are you preparing yourself for the spiritual battle Christ has brought us into? How are you equipping and preparing yourself for the spiritual battle Christ has brought us into? In Ephesians 5, Paul, the same person who wrote the book of Romans, he wrote the book of Ephesians, he says that we are in a spiritual war. Our battle is not against flesh and blood. It’s not against people that have different opinions of us. It’s not against people that aren’t from here. Our battle is not with political parties. Our battle is not even with foreign nations. Our battle is against spiritual forces.

I don’t want to make light of this. 23 years ago, later this week, something happened in the life of our nation that forever altered how Americans see the world and see themselves. I remember that day incredibly vividly. I remember turning on the TV to see the newscast and watching round two. I remember a year later and being sick and staying home from school and that just happened to be the anniversary and I just watched that on replay all day. I’m old enough to remember those things. I’m old enough to remember the fact that for the first time in a long time, America was woken up to the threat of other nations. But I think if you are putting on your Bible glasses, you would remember 9-11 is not just a display of a threat about enemies, foreign and domestic. It’s a display of the fact that there are spiritual forces at work in this world that wants to destroy people and what God is making and the goodness of what God has created.

I’ll tell you behind every sin, every war, every genocide and every school shooting like what just happened at Appalachee High School in Georgia is a spiritual enemy who wants to destroy what God is doing and to convince Christians that the fight is either not worth it or it’s about things that just don’t matter in the end. There’s only a few things that are going to last into eternity, guys. God’s bride, God’s word. Even this world is going to be remade. Our lives must be lived so that more people believe in God’s word and more people trust in Him and more people are around the throne in Revelation 7, 9 and following, where I’m going to be, where Mary Newton is. And we’re going to be rejoicing about the Lamb who has made a way for us to be saved.

God deeply wants to usher us into a spiritual battle where our weapons are spiritual. So the greatest tactic we can ever have is sharing the hope of Jesus Christ and displaying His love to people that don’t think that we’re very loving. So here’s your specific action. Saturday morning, 9:30 to 12. Carter is gonna equip us. He’s gonna give us some handles on what it looks like just to share your faith in Jesus. He’s gonna give us An opportunity to do that. I think everybody in the room that professes faith in Jesus would say, at some point in my life, I tried to share about Jesus and it felt awkward. Beck and I lived overseas for two years. Our full-time job was doing that exactly. I’ve got the spreadsheet to prove it. We did it hundreds of times in a different language. I am still nervous bringing up Jesus to people at Starbucks. I’ve got to get equipped in this, and I’m so grateful that Carter is here to lead us in this. And it’s not that Carter doesn’t get nervous either. It’s just that God has gifted Carter, and He’s given him passions and convictions, and he’s gonna share that with us. Saturday morning, 9:30 to 12. You’re even gonna get out before your game starts and just come, just get equipped for the spiritual war that we’re in.

So we return to Nehemiah, though the most important lesson we get from him. He knew God was for him, so he was confident in God. Nehemiah was deeply confident in God. He knew that God had ruined the schemes of his enemies. He knew that God had frustrated them. He knew that God would fight for them again. He knew that God was his only source of hope and confidence. So what gives you confidence? What gives you confidence? So here’s the deal. Everything in this world will fail you in some way. There is nothing that we can totally trust in to give us the confidence that we need for this life or the one to come. Here’s what I mean. These bodies break down. And one day that we don’t know, they’re just gonna turn off. Your finances have a way of just draining themselves. And even if you’re one of the lucky few and your bank account just continues to grow up and to the right, that can’t buy you everything you want. And it won’t give you the happiness that you think it will. Family, marriage, as great as those things are, they don’t satisfy the deepest parts of you because you’re not made for family and marriage. You’re made for Jesus. Everything in this world will fail you in some way. Your confidence has to be in something bigger and better and longer lasting than anything in this world. C.S. Lewis said, if you have a desire in your heart that nothing in this world can satisfy, it must mean that you were built for a different world altogether. You were built to be satisfied by Jesus Christ. He must be your confidence. We must surrender to Him.

In a moment, Donnie is gonna come back and he is gonna lead us to sing some familiar words. I surrender all. It says this: All to Jesus, I surrender; all to Him I freely give. I will ever love and trust Him, in His presence daily live. All to Jesus, I surrender; humbly at His feet I bow. Worldly pleasures, all forsaken; take me, Jesus, take me now. I surrender all. All to Thee, my blessed Savior, I surrender all. The voice of one that is confident in Jesus Christ, whose confidence truly is in God alone, will say those words. God, I surrender to You. So man, I invite you, this final song, sing it like you mean it. I encourage you, don’t even be polite about it. Don’t just stand here, all to Jesus, I surrender. That’s just not very convincing, to be honest. I think what God wants for you is, all to Jesus, I surrender. All to Him, I freely give. You have full permission to raise your hands here. You have full permission to engage in this physically. I’m watching football with Carter yesterday, and that is a man engaged. Man, we’re watching the Carolina game, and some good things happen, which I can’t always say, all right? Some good things are happening. That man, he’s standing up, saying, yes, yes, let’s go. He’s engaged. He believes in it. You’re doing the same thing. We all do it a little differently, but you do the same thing. When you’re engaged in something, you respond physically. That’s what I invite you to. All to Jesus, I surrender.

I’m starting to wrap up here. I just want to say, some of us in the room, we need to make a moment of surrender where we truly give our lives to Him. You know a lot about Him, or maybe this is your first time in church. I think that you know on the inside, there is a God. He’s probably good. I’m not Him, and I’ve done bad things, which means there’s something between me, a bad person, And Him, a good God, and I don’t think I can fix that on my own. And what I said earlier is that God doesn’t want you to work your way into that relationship. God wants you to surrender your way into it. Romans 10:9 and 10 say, I’ll just read it for you. Romans 10:9 and 10. If you confess with your mouth Jesus Christ as Lord and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. One believes with the heart, resulting in righteousness. One confesses with the mouth, resulting in salvation.

Here’s the deal. God doesn’t need you to be 100% convinced, got it all figured out up here. In fact, that’s not what God wants. What God wants is your faith. What God wants is for you to believe despite your unbelief. What God wants is for you to lean in, even when it doesn’t make sense. So if you’re in that camp, if you want to love Jesus, but don’t know what that looks like, you’re a little nervous to do that, then man, I encourage you, once again, tune me out and say, God, I surrender. I don’t know what that means. I’m nervous. I’ve got worldly pleasures. I don’t want to forsake. I’ve got doubts. I’ve got fears, but God helped me in the midst of it. And He will.

And for some of us in the room, we need to surrender our lives in a different way. We need to let go of things. We need to let Him have all of us, not just Sundays. I say it again. Donnie, you go ahead and come on up, man. I say it again. If God is for us, who could be against us?

Pray with me. Lord, I hope I’ve honored You in this. God, I hope I’ve made much of You in Your gospel. God, I hope that some are here, that if they don’t know You, they feel compelled to come to You. Holy Spirit, would You please, God, would You please do Your work, Lord? Would You please, God, draw somebody to Yourself? Lord, if there’s somebody here that doesn’t know You yet, would You just use these words to woo them and help them to see how trustworthy and loving and good and gracious You are, please? For all of us, Lord, let us surrender. Let us give ourselves. Let us bow at Your feet and forsake all things for You. Lord, it’s in Your name we pray. Amen.