The Path of Joy

If you’ve been here with us for a little while lately, then you’ll notice we’ve come to our time of congregational prayer. If you haven’t been with us for a while, or this is a new time with you, then man, you can just take a seat and play spectator for a minute, okay? So we come to this point in the service where I, as a pastor, I just feel really compelled to make sure that we are praying as much as possible as a church. So we incorporate prayer every Sunday, not just for me praying from the front, but also you praying in the pews as well.

So this morning we’re gonna be praying for Operation Christmas Child. If you’re not familiar, Operation Christmas Child is a ministry that we get to partner with, where through a simple gift of what I’m feeling is a pretty hefty shoe box filled with not just toys, but also hygiene supplies and some basic needs. This is going to be sent to a little girl that is 10 to 14 years old. Where this box ends up, I’m not sure, but I know that whenever this child gets her box here in a few weeks, she is going to hear about Jesus Christ and how He is the greatest gift that we could ever receive. And as an expression of that, a little church in Ravenel, South Carolina, wanted to send her a little physical gift as well.

So we are in this season of raising money and supplies for Operation Christmas Child. We have some boxes in the back. If you wanna grab one of those, also Miss Diane is kind of amassing a bunch of our supplies. We’re gonna have a packing party here in a few weeks. There’s some few things that we’re still asking for. Some sewing kits to go in, because oftentimes these boxes, they don’t just land in a child’s hands, they land in a family’s hands. So we’ve come to realize that we can give gifts and meet needs for families, not just for children. So sewing kits, flashlights with extra batteries, because once that initial battery runs out, that kid doesn’t have a flashlight anymore. And then some small toys for little boys. We’re talking toy cars, bounty balls, little pencil bags, things like that.

So if you would like, you can either go on Amazon and purchase those things directly, or you can write a check to the church and put it in Miss Diane’s hands, and she’ll make sure that the right supplies get purchased.

So what we’re gonna do, we’re gonna pray for our boxes that we’re gonna be packing over the next few weeks, asking that these really would be just a tangible expression of God’s incredible, immeasurable love for us. So if you’re comfortable with it, or if you wanna stretch yourself, then man, just grab a neighbor and pray for Operation Christmas Child shoeboxes, and I’ll bundle it up here in a moment, all right? Y’all take it away. Thank you.

God, thank You that we get to partner with You in showing the love of Jesus Christ, not just to our coworkers and our family members here, not just neighbors or the cashier at Food Lion. God, we get to share the love of Christ with children and families around the world. And God, we get to do it through just the provision of a few gifts in a shoebox. Lord, how incredibly creative You are. Lord, to give us an opportunity for us to invest, not just physically, but also spiritually in the lives of people for generations, all while honestly staying here. God, thank You for that. Lord, it’d be really cool one day for us to be able to go somewhere and meet the children that get to receive these gifts. And I hope that we have that opportunity, but Father, for now, Lord, would we be abundantly generous? Overwhelmingly so, Lord. Would we overwhelm our supplies, Father?

God, I pray for the children that are gonna receive these. Lord, that they would know despite their circumstances or even just through them, that they would know that there is a God and He is good and He sees them and He loves them. God, would these shoeboxes, as worthy as they are in and of themselves, would they result, Lord, in generations of people coming to know You as Lord and Savior, please? God, would You help us, Lord, to be exceedingly and abundantly generous in that way? Lord, would You help us this morning as well? Father, as I open Your word, and Lord, I just try to pour out what You have poured into me. God, would You please help me to do this well? Lord, in a way that if somebody is here and they don’t know You as Lord and Savior, God, that they would walk out of here wanting that and possibly even knowing You, that they would give their lives to You over the next few minutes. And Father, for those who are here that do know You that way, Lord, would they walk out of here both encouraged by Your Word and also challenged, Father, to spread Your Word. Lord, may we be a people that are holy, pure before You, that would love You with all of our being. Please, Holy Spirit, I beg that this church would hear a better sermon than what I’m preaching. And it’s in Your name I pray now. Amen.

Well, it’s an exciting morning for us here at Homecoming 2024. If you will, you can go ahead and turn in your Bibles to Nehemiah chapter eight. We are gonna continue studying a moment from the Bible that also, as the Lord would have it, is a bit of a homecoming. Over the past few months, we’ve been preaching and looking at the story of Nehemiah, all right? So if you’re not quite sure where that is, that’s all right. Open to the middle. You probably landed in the Psalms. Hang a left and go a little while and you’ll hit Nehemiah eventually, okay? Whenever the name starts sounding obscure and ends with Aya, you know you’re close, all right?

So we’re gonna keep looking at a moment that is a homecoming service. It is a homecoming celebration. The people of Israel have been exiled from their land of Judah, the land of Israel. They have been living in various countries as other empires have come in and conquered and dispersed their own people. That is happening, as the Bible says, as a direct result of their rebellion and their sin. So God is judging them through this and they are in exile. However, God is doing a new thing and He’s bringing the people back to their homeland. He’s bringing them back into Jerusalem and they are coming home. They’re coming home. And this has catalyzed a season of deep joy for God’s people, understandably.

You know, we’re all very excited today. I’m excited to have some lunch with y’all. I’m excited to see some faces that I haven’t seen in a while or to meet some folks. You know, I’m really excited today and I can imagine that the people of Nehemiah’s day would have been just as excited. They would have been deeply joyful.

Now, I tell you though, there are some things that our world tells you would bring you joy that just don’t quite meet the cut, right? Right. Like ESPN would love for me to believe that the path to a joyful life is for me to sit on my bottom and watch college football all day yesterday. Now, I’ll tell you, I only did it for half the day, okay? But at the end of the day, I don’t necessarily feel joyful. I just kind of feel oddly tired. It’s like I haven’t done anything, but I’ve wasted my energy, yeah? Or the world will tell you, you can have joy if you just follow whatever path you want in life. Just kind of define your calling, define your identity, step into that, lean into that, and you’ll be happy and you’ll be joyful. But that doesn’t really work either.

Sometimes well-meaning pastors like myself even communicate, hey, if you just give more, if you just come to church more, if you just pray more, then all your problems will go away, and then you’ll be happy, you’ll be joyful. And that doesn’t really work either, does it? No. There are plenty of sources of false joy in this life that just don’t quite meet the cut.

I’m gonna make a statement this morning that I think is a bit politically incorrect, but is for us today, all right? If you’re a note taker, you write this down. If you’re not, it’s okay too. Here’s the thing. Deep joy comes through total obedience. By God’s design, we experience joy as we obey God. Our experience of joy, I would say as a Jesus follower, is a direct reflection of your obedience to Jesus. It’s a one-to-one correlation. If you’re not obeying Him, you will not have joy. If you are obeying Him, despite anything you go through, you can have joy. Joy. All right, that’s what we’re going to be looking at this morning. The people of Nehemiah’s day experienced this dynamic firsthand as they were reorienting their lives around obeying the Lord. The whole story of Nehemiah, I was saying a A minute ago, the whole story just records how God used a few men to restore and revitalize His people after a period of exile. And then last Sunday, we started in Nehemiah chapter eight, which is the first day of this week-long celebration that they call the Feast of Booths, the Feast of Tabernacles. All you need to know for that is that they were remembering the time when God saved them from the land of Egypt. And they were commemorating that by living now how they used to live then when they lived in the desert in the wilderness and they were living in makeshift tents all the time. They said, “Hey, let’s remember what that was like. Let’s live in tents here, even though we got homes. Let’s just remember God’s goodness and His faithfulness despite our difficulties.”

So last week’s sermon was day one of this week-long celebration. They gather to this man named Ezra. That’s Nehemiah’s coworker in this project. They gather to Ezra to listen to the Bible be read, not for 10 minutes, like a devotion, not for 30-ish minutes like I’m doing right now, not even for, or sorry, but for six hours we saw last week. Six hours, two college football games. They sat and they listened to Ezra teach the Bible. Incredible. And what happens is they start weeping over their sin. Remember we looked at that. They were weeping because they realized as they’re hearing the Bible, they’re recognizing we don’t live up to this. There’s a holy God that wants good things for us and we’re falling short of His standard. They’re weeping. And all the people say, “Don’t weep. No, this is a celebration. Don’t come into lunch after church today like it’s a funeral. No, we’re not doing that. We are celebrating today. We’re not mourning.” That’s what the people of Nehemiah’s day were doing.

So today’s passage, what I’m about to read right now is simply day two. All right. So let’s open it together. This is Nehemiah chapter eight, verses 13 through 18. Scriptures on your screens. It is so much better right here in your hands though. Nehemiah chapter eight.

On the second day, the family heads of all the people, along with the priests and the Levites, they assembled before the scribe Ezra to study the words of the law. They found written in the law how the Lord had commanded through Moses that the Israelites should dwell in shelters during the festival of the seventh month. That’s what I was just talking about. So they proclaimed and they spread this news throughout their towns and in Jerusalem saying, you can just hear it, “Go out to the hill country, bring back branches of olive, wild olive, myrtle, palm, other leafy trees to make shelters just as it is written.” The people went out, they brought back branches, they made shelters for themselves on each of their rooftops and courtyards, the court of the house of God, the square by the water gate and the square of the Ephraim gate. The whole community that had returned from exile made shelters and lived in them. The Israelites hadn’t celebrated like this from the days of Joshua, son of Nun until that day. And there was tremendous joy. It was Caroline’s favorite word, tremendous joy. Ezra read out of the book of the law of God every day. From the first day to the last, the Israelites celebrated this festival for seven days. And on the eighth day, there was a solemn assembly according to the ordinance.

Guess what we’re preaching on next Sunday, the eighth day. Okay, I’m not, I’m not super creative. Buck said in the meeting the other day, he said, “Jamie, I figured you out. You just do verse after verse, man.” It’s like, yeah, I’m not very creative. That’s where it’s at.

So that’s our passage. How would you summarize this moment? I’m curious. If we’re sitting in Sunday school earlier and we read this, how would you have summarized it? Now, I think for us, we see once again, God’s word, when it is trusted, when it is believed, it produces joy in the lives of God’s people. Joy came as they practiced what God prescribed. They obeyed the word and they had joy. And guess what? Thousands of years later to today, it still works that way. All right. Deep joy still only comes through total obedience. In fact, I would say your Christian joy hinges on your obedience to Christ. But now there’s two spectrums. There’s two extremes. I want to make sure I’m not saying right now. Okay. The first is what we call legalism. Legalism is where you uphold the rules of Jesus over a relationship with Him. And it’s where you say, if only I obey all the rules and I avoid all the bad stuff, that’s the path of life. That’s even how I get saved. That’s how I go to heaven. That’s not what I’m saying. Jesus wasn’t, He didn’t come to this world to tell us to obey all the rules. He came to save us because we can’t obey all the rules. So I’m right now not saying that if only you obey all the rules, then you’ll be happy because that’s not true. So there’s legalism on one side. And then there’s lawlessness on the other side. And I was talking about that a minute ago. The world and our obsession with being politically correct and being kind says that you can’t tell anybody else what they can do. They get to define all their truth for themselves. And the Bible says, neither are the way of life. The Bible says, in fact, if you obey God, that is the way of life. There is joy to be had for us as Christians. And it is through total obedience.

In this passage, we discover four dynamics of total obedience. If you’re a note taker, then man, this is where I really want you to lock in. Four dynamics of total obedience. Verse 13 has the first one for us. Total obedience, man, it is eager. You see, on the second day of this celebration, all the family heads and the priests, the Levites, they all return to hear God’s word being taught and being studied even more. See, they understood God is restoring and revitalizing His people. And naturally they want more, more of God’s word, more holiness, more joy, more life. So once again, a group gathers proactively, eagerly to come to Ezra to study the words of the law. You don’t get a picture or a sense that Ezra is going around Jerusalem saying, hey, Bible study in 10 minutes. Hey, 15 minutes. Y’all need to head over to the gate over here. He’s not doing that. He’s not gathering everybody. They’re all coming to Him.

And I know, I know for us to have the joy we crave, we have got to eagerly approach God and His word. I would say orienting your day around time with Him. Last Sunday, I gave you an invitation called scripture before screens that we got from another pastor. And it’s simply this, that you would spend time with God in His word before you look at any screen, before you look at email or text messages or the news or just TV. Orienting your day around Him, eagerly approaching Him. When we do that, good stuff happens in our life.

I was reflecting this week as I’m preparing for this morning about someone in our church that I would say is deeply eager to obey the word of God. I’ve got a picture for you. A few weeks ago during the Wednesday night Bible study time, I gave the floor to Carter. So Carter is leading our students now on Sunday nights, by the way, if you have a middle or high schooler every Sunday night, six to seven thirty, right? Six to seven thirty, where they’re meeting over in the old church, getting together, doing some worship and preaching in small groups. That’s all for free. A couple of Wednesday nights ago, Carter is leading the students and the adults through a discipleship and evangelism tool that he has kind of come across and he’s helping our church get acquainted with. In that picture, there’s about 35 or so, a mixture of adults and students. The thing is he did this three weeks prior on a Saturday morning, and there was a little less than 35 of us here, and that’s okay. God brought who needed to be there. He brought, in particular, one middle schooler, all right? I’ve cleared it with mom. So, Oliver, man, you’re my man, okay? So here’s the deal. Oliver also plays football, and he’s coming up to that weekend, and he’s like, mom, I’ve got a football game, but I also really want to go to this evangelism training with Pastor Carter. Can I skip football and go to church instead? Man, what mom in the world doesn’t want to hear those words. Oliver, you gave your mom a gift there, okay? You need to ask for big things for Christmas, okay? Now, Oliver doesn’t just come to the training. He’s a full participant. I see him taking notes. I see him doing the whole thing. And then we disperse after the training to actually go and use the tool that Carter gave us. And wouldn’t you know it, my Man, Oliver, they’re at the Somerville Farmer’s Market, and I think Carter points out somebody, says, “Hey, Oliver, you ought to go share the gospel with that guy.” And he doesn’t fight. He doesn’t buck back. He just does it. You did it, man. Let’s hear it for Oliver, for real.

Man, man, when I was in middle school, my mind was not set on eagerly obeying the Lord. But I mean, He just gave me an example of what it looks like to orient your life around that. And may he be an example to all of us that we would eagerly come before the Lord, that we would want to obey Him, we would want to hear what He has for us. That is, man, that’s a dynamic of total obedience.

The second one you see in this passage is that total obedience is immediate. Verses 14 and 15, “Upon hearing the Word of God and the commands about what they’re supposed to be doing to celebrate a festival.” The leaders that had gathered to Ezra, they immediately spread the news and they call others to practice what God had said to do. You don’t get the sense that they discussed very much about if they should obey. They didn’t have a roundtable meeting about it. They didn’t pray, “God, should we obey what You told us to do here?” They said, “Wow, the Lord has told us to do this. Let’s go do it.” And they just did it. They immediately responded.

Becca and I were at a church we’re so grateful for. And the pastor there, he would say it this way. He would say, “Delayed obedience is disobedience.” I’d say waiting to obey God is choosing to disobey Him now. That’s kind of hard to hear. But man, if you’re a parent or a coach or a manager, you understand exactly what I’m talking about, right? I’m getting a couple of amens, a couple of head nods. When you’re in a position of authority and you give a directive to someone that works for you or is under you, and they choose not to listen and do what you’ve told them to do. Disobedience.

And we’re all guilty, okay? I don’t stand up here as someone that’s always done everything that I’ve been told to do immediately. I’ve got my fair share of moments where I really blew it. But I think what we see in this passage is God honoring the fact that these, these, these folks that gathered to hear His word that are just trying to put it into practice as well and as quickly as they could. I think God really honors our attempts. And when we wait to obey Him, it’s like we’re testing His patience with us.

Now here’s the deal. Obeying God is uncomfortable, but I would say waiting to obey God is even worse. Man, we have all been there, right? We’ve all been there when we knew the Holy Spirit was convicting us about a sin that we’re supposed to stop doing. We say, “Lord, You’re right. I’ll stop this tomorrow.” Or, “God, You’re right. I need to have this conversation with them. I’ll do that next week.” When in fact, I think what God’s calling us to is, “Hey, pick up the phone and apologize for being rude.” Or, “Hey, pick up the phone and say, ‘Hey, when you said X, it hurt my feelings. Can we talk about that?’” Or when the Holy Spirit convicts us about something that we’re watching, looking at, or even consuming physically, I think God’s desire, His heart for us is that we would immediately respond to that.

The New Testament calls that yielding to the Holy Spirit. When the Holy Spirit is speaking and prompting and moving, and telling us, we are asked and told to yield to Him. I was talking with the students at Fall Retreat last weekend. We were just talking about life with God and what it means to walk with Him. And there’s one of the students that were there that’s learning how to drive. And I said, “Hey man, what happens when someone else has the right of way and you don’t yield?” And he understood. He said, “You get in a car accident. You have a crash.” And we do that to our lives all the time. The Holy Spirit has the right of way. And He’s telling us, “Yield to me. Yield to me.” And we don’t. And we hit Him. We just kind of crash our lives a little bit.

Now we think because of a white lie, you might just have a fender bender. But man, the thing before the Lord is, anytime we don’t yield to Him on something, the results can be catastrophic, man. Because God doesn’t just want things from you. He doesn’t just want perfection from you. He doesn’t just want goodness from you, whatever that can mean. What God wants is, He wants peace and life and joy for you. So He speaks to you and He calls you and He says, “Hey, man, you’re headed in a bad way. Just listen to me. Stop this.” And if only we would listen to Him. If only our obedience would be immediate.

So, I’ve got to ask a natural question that’s going to make the room feel even more uncomfortable than it does right now. Are you delaying obedience? Is there something God’s calling you to do or not do? And you’re choosing to wait instead of choosing to obey the best you can. And my invitation for you, don’t let the sun go down today without acting. If you want to just talk through what that first step could look like, I’d be happy to talk. I don’t have all the answers, but I know that the Holy God of the universe is trying to talk with you. And I would love to enter the conversation.

The moment you do obey God, you will make a positive impact on the world. I know that to be true. And that’s also the third dynamic of total obedience we get in this passage. Look at verses 16 and 17 with me. Okay. So the command has gone out. The word has been spread. Verse 16, “The people went out. They brought back branches. They made shelters for themselves on each of the rooftops and courtyards. The court of the house of God, the square by the water gate and the square by the Ephraim gate.” Man, they’re just filling up every nook and cranny with these things. All right. 17. The whole community that had returned from exile made shelters and lived in them. The Israelites hadn’t celebrated like this from the days of Joshua, son of Nun, till that day. And then there was tremendous, what? Joy.

The third dynamic of total obedience is that it is generational. It is generational. We learned from chapter seven of Nehemiah that 42,000 people from the returnees had settled in Jerusalem. What we don’t know is how many hundreds of thousands or perhaps millions of people are actually in the land of Judah all around Jerusalem. What we are told is that the whole community, verse 17, the whole community that had returned from exile responded to God’s word and they obeyed it. There was a generational response. Man, what a moment or what, sorry, what began as a moment of eager and immediate obedience for a small group of people became a season of generational obedience for the whole community.

Here’s my promise to you. What begins with you is supposed to impact other people. As you obey God, your obedience ought to splash over into the lives of your family members, your coworkers, your neighbors, your friends, the teller at the bank, the cashier at Food Lion. People you talk with ought to be able to experience God’s work in your life. That’s why Sonny Morris can sit up here and talk about all the young families he sees joining our church because he has spent years and decades of pouring himself into this place. And he’s just one example, guys. I understand there’s dozens of those in our church. Don’t get it wrong. What I’m communicating is that your obedience to God has a generational impact.

We will never know this side of heaven who all gets these Operation Christmas Child boxes and will put their faith and their trust in Jesus Christ and who they will share that news of joy and hope with and whose other lives are going to be changed. Just because you bought some flashlights and some toy cars and a baby doll and you wrote a little note and you put it in a shoebox, that’s going to get sent to I don’t know where. Your response to God’s word, your obedience will bear generational impact and consequence.

And I want to speak specifically to men here. Look back at verse 13 with me. On the second day, the family heads of all the people, along with the priest and the Levites, they are the ones that assembled before the scribe Ezra to study the words of the law. Here’s the deal, man. At that time, men were the family heads. That means this Bible study, it was all guys. It was all dads. It was all men. And the men here have a special responsibility, a special impact. Hey, what I just want to say to the Men here that are with me right now, I want to say thank you for being here. I’m going to trust that you had an incredible role in getting your family here this morning. I’m going to trust that last night you were the one that sparked the conversation. Conversation that said, “Hey, sweetheart, we ought to get the kids ready in the morning to get to church. It’d be a really good thing for us.” I’m going to trust that later today, whenever you go home, you’re going to say, “Hey, man, guys, what did you learn at church today?” I’m going to trust that tomorrow night, whenever you’re about to sit down to dinner, you’re the one that initiates, “Hey, let’s pray for this and thank God for what He’s given us.” If that’s not you yet, man, join me. Let’s go.

The men of the room, you bear a significant role in your family and in your community around you. I’m not going to throw around some audacious stat about what will happen in your family if you start coming to church. I don’t need to because you already see it. If you’ve got a wife, the look on her face when on a Saturday, you say, “Hey, what do I need to do for us to be able to get to church tomorrow?” So that I’m talking to dads there. Let me now talk to men that are not dads. And I just want to say, you as well have an incredible role in our society and community. Your faithfulness to respond to God’s Word and to invite others into it will have generational impact. You don’t need to only have biological kids to have spiritual children in the church or in the family.

In fact, as the Apostle Paul was writing to his friend, Timothy, a man, I don’t believe that Paul or Timothy had children. I don’t believe that they were married. Yet Paul is writing to his friend, Timothy, and he says, “Hey, what I have spoken in your life, you speak into others’ lives who can do the same thing after you.” These are just a couple of men that love Jesus and they’re telling others about Him. And what happened in Timothy’s life is that he shepherded and pastored the church in a city called Ephesus for years, which produced other pastors and other missionaries and other families that look like yours. They’re just trying to walk with Jesus together.

Man, if you’re a man in the room, I am so proud of you being here. My invitation to you, Saturday night, sparked the conversation about being back here or being somewhere. You don’t have to be here, but man, what you do need to hear from me is that you have a role in the life of your family, but it’s not just families. I came across this quote the other day that I think is especially apt for us. It says this: “The only way to make the present significant is to invest in the future.” Let me read it again. “The only way to make the present significant is to invest in the future.”

I use an illustration here to kind of drive it home. I assume you have more money to your name than what’s sitting in your wallet under you right now. Is that correct? All right. That money that you have to your name, is it under a mattress at home or is it an account somewhere? I assume your cash isn’t under your mattress. Is it, Becky? Soft no. It’s not, right? You are making the present significant by financially investing in the future in some capacity. Our lives are the same way. We have a stewardship we’ve been given from God. And if we just try to take what God’s given us and we put it under the mattress of our lives, not investing it in others, then what we’re doing now, I would say it doesn’t really last beyond us.

I believe we are all here today because we want to ensure that those who come after us get to walk with God in a deeper way than we are right now. God has given all us positions of influence regardless of your life station. Your words, your actions, and your prayers bear eternal consequence. Are you leveraging it? Are you leveraging what God has given you for the joy of those around you? Say yes or no.

We are here today celebrating homecoming with 183 plus years as a church because others before us didn’t live for us. They lived for us. They leveraged their influence for God’s glory and our joy and we want that legacy to continue. Amen? I’m Thinking about in 17 years, and we’ll be looking at 200 years as a church. What do I want to be true of us then? Or man, 183 plus years. If we are only focused on the last 183, we won’t get to the next 183. Your obedience to God has generational impact, and total obedience to God is generational in nature.

Finally, as I return to our passage this morning, the final dynamic of total obedience we see is that it is sustained. Read verse 18 with me again. Ezra read out of the book of the law of God every day from the first day to the last. The Israelites celebrated the festival for seven days, and on the eighth day there was a solemn assembly according to the ordinance.

Now, I mean, you see this is not flash-in-the-pan obedience. No, this was something they continued for a full week. I would say that it is not about starting fast but finishing well. I could take you to a moment where I, as a high school senior, was asked to run the 400-meter sprint five minutes before the heat started. My track coach said, “Hey, Simmons, we need a body in lane six. You go get in it.” Spoke a lot of confidence into me that day. And man, if you don’t understand lane six, if you didn’t watch the Olympics a couple months ago, that’s the furthest on the outside, which meant I started in first because I’m in the front. I don’t see anybody behind me. And I’ve never trained for this race. It probably wouldn’t have gone any different, Paula, if I had trained, if we’re being honest. I’m not a stellar athlete.

The gun goes off. And if you’re in the first 50 meters, I’m feeling pretty good about myself, you know? 50 meters is not far in a track world, all right? I started as fast as I could, Mary Lou. I finished about as slow as I could, too. Wouldn’t you know it? My 50-meter lead ended by me losing by 50 meters. It’s not about starting fast. It’s about finishing well. Y’all, I crossed the finish line after they had stopped clapping. It was the saddest moment of my athletic career. I’ll be completely honest. In your life with Jesus, it is not about starting fast. Man, it is about finishing well.

We see what they did, man. They gathered to read from the book of the law. That’s just the Bible. They heard the Bible being taught every day for a full week. A single day of obedience, man, that is worth celebrating. But it probably wouldn’t actually move the needle on the spiritual depth of the people. Learning how to share the gospel one time and doing it one time, man, that’s a cool mountaintop moment. It’s a lifetime of sharing the gospel. It’s a lifetime of sharing the gospel with people that really makes the impact that I think you want to bear in the world. That first day rolled into another day, and then the next, and then the next for an entire week. Man, that is the type of habit-building spirituality that fosters real consequence.

If you don’t believe me, then just consider with me: what did you do back in January? Anybody else make some audacious resolutions for themselves? Or you also have the guy that says, “I don’t make any resolutions because I don’t want to fail.” Whatever, man. I think most of us start off the year saying, “This year I want to lose X amount of pounds,” or “I want to read Y amount of books,” or whatever the goal is for you. And you start pretty fast. All right. You start on that crash course or that crash diet January 1. January 2 comes around, and you’re really into those cookies back in the pantry you didn’t actually throw away.

Our spiritual lives are the same way. Man, if you want to become a person that treasures God’s word, please don’t tomorrow go and try to read for two hours. Tomorrow what I want you to do is read for 15 minutes. If you want to be the type of person that can share the gospel with some level of comfort and regularity, then man, don’t go to Foodline and try to pray for every person at Foodline by name tomorrow. What you should do instead is you should just meet the cashier and pray for her later. In the next week you say, “Hey, Janet, I prayed for you last week. How was your week? You didn’t know I did that, did you?” Man, starting fast is fun. Finishing well is better. And I want to help this church continue to finish well. So in January, we are going to start something, okay? We can go ahead and put the graphic up. I’ve already got the series planned for whenever we begin next year. It’s called Deeper. Looking like and loving Christ more. We’re going to look at three habits of your spiritual life that I believe if you come with me for 90 days will transform the other 270 or however many are in a year left. I believe that if we just look at three things and we try to put them into practice with some regularity, God will transform us and we will begin to look like Jesus even more. My invitation to you, come back in January as we go on a journey of trying to just go deeper in our relationship with Jesus.

And here’s something else I know. I know there is someone in this room today who is trying to obey God in some area of their life. And man, my encouragement to you is to keep going. What is hard today will become normal tomorrow by God’s grace, man, just keep at it. If you are just struggling to pray, man, my encouragement to you is just, man, just keep leaning into God and keep trying to pray. If you are just trying to read your Bible, man, my encouragement, just keep going, just keep trying, but don’t do it alone. Don’t do it alone. Bring some other Christians in and bring the Lord into that.

As I start to wrap up, I say in this passage, these few verses we looked at, they proclaimed good news, which spread joy. They said, hey, God has a celebration and a feast for us. Let’s go do that. Let’s obey this. But we, in 2024, we have a better news. We have a deeper joy. It says this in John 3:16, for God so loved the world in this way that He gave His one and His only Son so that everyone who believes in Him will not perish, but have eternal life.

See, here’s the deal. That God has made you for Him. And the reason that it’s hard to have joy in this world is because though we were made good and though we were made to have harmony and love with God, we fell into sin and disobedience, which means we walked away and we have ever since then, every person ever has always fallen short of God’s good standard. Billy Graham didn’t live up to it. Pastor Al didn’t live up to it. I certainly don’t. No hero of the church has ever actually stood up to God’s standard for us. That’s why God had to give. And He loved you so much that He gave you His very best gift, not just an Operation Christmas Child shoebox. He gave you His own Son. An incredible gift that was housed in a manger. God became a baby on your behalf so that He could grow up to be a man who would always obey God, who would have the deepest joy possible, though He went through the craziest and the deepest suffering and pain possible. And I’m talking about the cross.

You see, on a night 2,000 plus years ago, Jesus was betrayed by His friends for you. He was arrested, though He had done no wrong. He was condemned, though He was innocent. And He was sentenced, though there was no crime to His name. And He underwent all that with joy because He knew that on the other side, He’d get you. He’d have you. So the offer for you is that if you would give your life to Him, if you would repent of your sin, which simply just means to turn away from your sin, turn to Jesus and ask Him to forgive you, if you do that today, you can be saved. This is good news. Everything in your life can change today. If you would give yourself to Him, if you would turn from yourself, ask God for forgiveness, and offer your life to Jesus, you will be saved. And the joy that you want that evades you will be planted inside of you. And it will grow. It will grow to become a living organism. The Bible calls us as followers of Jesus. We’re just branches. We’re branches of Him who is divine. And we have life only as we remain connected to Him.

So for the person in the room who has placed your faith in Jesus, who does know Jesus as Lord and Savior, I mean, my invitation to you is remain in Jesus because you can produce nothing outside of Him. There is no thing you can make in your own life that has got any spiritual consequence outside of the grace of God flowing through you. If you’ve never placed your faith in Jesus Christ before, but you are interested in doing that, then man, you would just pray a prayer that looks like this: Jesus, I wanna love You, and I’m done living my own way. Will You please save me and forgive me? Will You please solve some of my doubts and help me to live with You? I trust You in the way I can trust You now. Amen.

If you pray a prayer like that, then man, my invitation to you is that you would tell somebody before you leave today. The person that brought you, the person that invited you, or man, if it’s, I’m not too intimidating, you come up front and I’ll be up front, I’d be happy to rejoice with you. There is good news to share with this world. There is a good command to obey. That is to ask for forgiveness in Jesus’ name. I give you an opportunity to do that here.

Let’s close our eyes and let us pray and end this time together. Lord, God, I don’t know the eternal state of everybody that You’ve brought here today. God, I’m so grateful that You do, though, that You’re not surprised by anybody that’s here. In fact, You are wooing and drawing them to Yourself. Holy Spirit, I’m begging, You would save somebody right now, that You would open their heart to be able to give themselves to You and trust and love You, please. Now, they would tell somebody before they leave.

God, for the person that already knows You, that does love You, I pray, Father, they would lean even more into Your grace. They would obey You eagerly and immediately with a generational impact and it would be sustained, that their total obedience would be for You and You would give them deep joy in the process, please. Lord, it’s a happy day. We’re happy to be here for homecoming. But Father, would You place joy inside of our lives that wouldn’t waver based off of a day of the year. God, we love You and it’s in Your name we pray. Amen.