Dedication and Revival

It was said earlier, yeah, this is a church that’s been loving Christ and loving the Low Country since 1841, and we are incredibly proud of our history and our heritage, but also incredibly excited for the bright future that God has for us ahead. If you, if you don’t know, today is actually a one-year anniversary for me and Becca coming down here and me becoming pastor here at Sauldam Baptist Church. Yeah, the, the song that we sang a minute ago, “Here I Am, Lord,” that was, was the special way back in September of 2023 whenever I came to preach in view of a call, and I think that Donnie and perhaps some of the other choir members were trying to, like, I don’t know, like subliminally, like get me to commit to coming here or something like that. But we are so excited for being here, so grateful that the Lord led us to Sauldam Baptist Church, and man, would not be anywhere else for sure.

So, man, as we come into this time of our service, just want to, yeah, explain a little bit. One of the things that we are doing these days as part of our service is we’re having a moment of congregational prayer. You know, I believe that prayer is not just something that I ought to do from here for us, but prayer is also something that y’all should do where you are for us as well. And this morning, the “us” is not just us here at Sauldam Baptist Church; it’s also us as a country. You may, may not be aware, Tuesday of this week is going to be a big day for us as Americans. It’s an election day, you know. So, man, by all means, like, one of the ways that the Bible describes our life as believers is that we would pray for our leaders, we would be subject to our leaders, and we would be full participants in the civic and social aspects of what it means to live in a country. So, man, by all means, go to the polling stations if you haven’t already done that. But what we’re going to do right here is we’re just going to pray. We’re just going to pray that the Lord would do what He always does, which is He’s going to guide us, His people, to be witnesses unto Him in every situation of life that we get into.

On Tuesday, some folks in our country are going to be disappointed, and some folks in our country are going to be excited. And right now, on Sunday, we don’t know who is who. What we do know is that on Wednesday, guess what’s still true? Jesus is still King. Our hope still is not in a country, and we still have a lasting home with Jesus that we’re going to get to go to regardless. So this is what we’re going to do: we’re just going to pray. We’re going to pray ultimately that we as a church would be good witnesses of Jesus. We’re going to pray, of course, that the lives of people around the world would be bettered by what happens on Tuesday. So if you will grab a neighbor, we’re just going to pray for a few minutes, and I’ll wrap a bow on it. Okay, y’all take it away. Thank you.

Father, thank you, Father, thank you so much. Thank you that we get to gather here this morning, God, that we get to enjoy You, the miracle that is being saved and having our hearts of stone made into hearts of flesh that would have love for You like we sang about. That’s a miracle, God. Thank you for the other miracle that because of what Jesus has done, the, the dividing wall of hostility, as Ephesians chapter 2 says, it has been broken down in Christ. Christ, as Your body was broken, so was division. As Your blood was poured out, so we can, we can pour our hearts and our concerns and our cares to You. God, I am no fool; there is a lot of emotional weight being placed on the election, but God, I am also no fool. Your Word says that You reign supreme. Flesh and grass will wither, but the Word of the Lord stands forever, because the Lord stands forever. As we cast our votes, as we have conversations, help us to live for what is eternal and to place our hope there. God, we could be a lot of things, but Your Word says that we must be a house of prayer. So let us be a house of prayer, Father. We love You, God.

pray that you would use this time to reinforce our love for you that you would deepen that that you would purify it that you would get my words right please God we do love you and it’s in Your Great Name that we pray amen amen amen well if you do have your Bibles you go ahead and open up to Nehemiah chap 12 that’s where we’re going to be camping out you go ahead and get to the second second half of the chapter in verse 27 I’ll meet you there in a minute as you’re getting there I want to ask you a question though what is your life purpose why are you here what’s the purpose of your life sir okay I didn’t actually expect any response thank you guys okay let’s pretend you didn’t do that I’m going to rattle off a couple of purposes okay and we’re all going to know serving God you’re right Valerie serving God that’s the right purpose okay but let’s just suspend that okay I think some of us we live for a purpose kind of like of marriage or family or kids success and we think man if I marry the right person or if I have the right kids or if my kids achieve the right things or go to the right schools or get on to the right teams man that is success that is the purpose of why I live some of us I would say we tend to live for a purpose of career achievement or even financial success if I get the right job if I work for the right company if I attain the right position then that means I have purpose and value or hey if I’m in this tax bracket and if I can buy these toys and live in this ZIP code or this type of neighborhood or home that is success others of us we live for a purpose more like happiness or comfort which means we invest all of our time and our energy in hobbies or just in things that make us feel good you know some people live for a purpose of health just living a long life don’t really care about having a lot of money don’t care about living in all the nice places man I’m just trying to mitigate sickness and disease and death for as long as possible these are purposes that some of us struggle to not live for that I think all of us in some way because of sin are hard wired to live for certainly if you were to ask the people of our community if you were to ask the people of your workplace of your neighborhood of your family he said hey what are you really living for these types of things might come up but these are all far too small right Valerie that’s right we have a bigger and a better God-given purpose and I would say no matter your life stage no matter your apparent giftings God’s purpose for you I would say is global it is eternal and man it’s real You were meant to have a global worldwide impact through your life you were meant to have an eternal impact that’s going to exist past your death and you’re meant to have a real impact that actually changes the details of people’s day-to-day existence your life is meant for a purpose from personal accomplishments to presidential elections nothing else touches these three all at once nothing else is global eternal and real all at once the book of Nehemiah is a story of God gracefully restoring His people to their original purpose how He revived them through that that included a lot of things as we’ve seen over the past few months and today we’ll see yet another today we’ll see what God did through purifying His people so my goal this morning is to reveal the tie between God’s purification and our purpose and to help orient us toward our purpose as well if I were to summarize or give you just the main idea I want you to have for this it would be this God purifies for His purposes simple as that God purifies for His purpose this passage has three truths about purification and purpose that we all must embrace to have the the totality of a life with Jesus that you are made for okay let’s look at it together the first one is this if you’re a notetaker I want you to write this down purification is preparation all right purification is preparation open up your copy of God’s word Nehemiah 12:27 I’m reading at the dedication of the wall of Jerusalem They sent for the Levites wherever they lived, and they brought them to Jerusalem to celebrate the joyous dedication with thanksgiving and singing, accompanied by cymbals, harps, and lyres. The singers gathered from the region around Jerusalem, from the settlements of the Netophathites, from Beth-gilgal, and from the fields of Geba and Azmaveth, for they had built settlements for themselves around Jerusalem. After the priests and Levites had purified themselves, they purified the people, the city gates, and the wall.

All right, if you are new with us, or if any of this sounds a bit obscure to you, that’s okay. I’ll explain a little bit. The very last thing mentioned in that verse, verse 30, says, “the wall.” All right, Nehemiah, aside from being a story about God reviving and restoring His people, it’s also this moment in time where God used a couple of people in particular to rebuild His city of Jerusalem. For the person of Nehemiah, that centered largely on the wall that encircled the city. You see, after hundreds of years of Jerusalem being attacked and besieged and beaten up on, the walls had been destroyed. So God brings Nehemiah to the city of Jerusalem to restore it and to physically rebuild that wall around that city.

What you need to know right now, regardless of the context, is that God finishes His work. God finishes what He does. He finishes what He starts. He never starts something without finishing it. God will always accomplish what He wants to do. Some of us this morning, we just need to be reminded that God is in control. Do you believe it? God is in control. He has a good plan, and what He begins, He will finish.

So God, through the man Nehemiah, finishes this wall, and before God would start His new thing, something else had to happen between the wall and the new thing. That was purification. So all the Levites, all the priests, they’re brought in from out of town because they would have served on an itinerant basis. There’s more Levites and priests than the day-to-day work required, so they were farmers in the off-season. So they are all brought in together for training camp, okay? And they’re brought in and say, “Hey, before we really get down to the spiritual business, if you call it that, let’s have a season of purification.” So these folks, they purify themselves, they purify all the people, they even purify the city gates, they purify the walls. They’re just purifying everything. Now commentators believe this purification included a season of fasting from food, abstaining from marital intercourse, ritual washings, and more.

The question I want to ask you: what comes into your mind when you hear the word purity? What comes into your mind when you hear the word [Music] purity? For me, growing up, when I heard the word purity, I thought prudish behavior, avoiding fun, and weird rules. Anybody else know how to finish this? “Don’t drink, smoke, or chew, or…” Oh, come on, you guys know this. “…go with girls that do.” Right? That was a rule that I heard growing up. If I wanted to be pure, my parents told me that, “Hey, if you want to abstain from the bad stuff, you want to live the right life, just don’t drink, smoke, or chew, or…” Is this new for you guys? This is the one country thing that I know that y’all don’t know. Oh man, I’m getting a headshake from Michael. You already knew that, right? “What? I’m only from the north of Colombia.” Goodness gracious, this is derailing so fast.

What comes into your mind when you hear purity? Well, what God wants to come to your mind is deep joy and preparation and intimacy with Him. What God wants you to think about when you think about purity is enjoying good gifts in the right context.

Nehemiah and the people, they had some spiritual aspirations for their country. Imagine it. They had just completed months of working together to be able to rebuild the wall and to refurbish the temple and to reinitiate the worship and the offerings and the sacrifices. They had some desires. They knew there was a world that God had called them to be lights to. They knew there was some work to get down to, and God said, “Hey, hold on. Before you get started, though, let’s have a season of preparation for it. Let’s have a season of purification. Let’s get back to the right gifts in the right context.”

Nehemiah and the people, they could not accomplish all they intended without God purifying them. Skipping purification would have sort of, it would have short-circuited their intimacy with God and their impact as God’s people. So here’s a truth for you this morning. This is for you, okay? If God is purifying you, He is about to bring you to a specific purpose in your life. If you feel like God is pulling things away that you enjoy, it may be that God’s trying to reveal, “Hey, you’re living for a purpose aside from the one that I’ve got for you, and I’m trying to call you into a different activity.” I’m not trying to get Hocus Pocus spiritual about all this, but I’m wondering if we resist God bringing us into a season of a renewed purpose with Him because He’s just saying, “Hey, that gift, as good as it is, it may be time to let go of that gift.” For us as a church, when God purifies us, when God says, “Hey, this thing that you all enjoy, man, it’s it’s good, but man, it’s just not it’s not the right context anymore. I’m bringing you into something different.” That’s that gives a little bit of purpose to your pain, doesn’t it? God purifies us for His purposes, and that purification is a way that God prepares us.

Lest I just be a downer, though, the second thing I really want you to get out of this is that purification leads us to joy and celebration. Man, if you’re a notetaker, please write that down: purification leads to your joy, and your joy will lead to celebration. Verses 31-43. Man, I’m not going to lie, it’s got a lot of names in it. It’s got a lot of difficult details, but here’s what you need to get. All right, if you’ve got your copy of God’s Word, just look at it with me. I’m going to kind of summarize and work through it. Nehemiah brought the leaders of Judah who had just been purified. He brings them on top of the wall that encircles the city. Nehemiah then appoints two large processions to give thanks. One is going to go on the right of the wall toward the Dung Gate, the Hinnom Gate for that, and then the other is going to go on the left. Okay, these two processions are going to meet on the other side at the temple. Verse 40: “The two Thanksgiving processions stood in the house of God, the temple, and so did I and half the officials with me.” Verse 43: “On that day that they did this, they offered great sacrifices and they rejoiced because God had given them great joy. The women and the children also celebrated, and Jerusalem’s rejoicing was heard far away. It was heard from far away.” Okay, what we have here is the original Nehemiah’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. Okay, in a couple weeks we’re going to sit down on Thanksgiving Day and someone we’re going to plop in front of the TV and we’re going to watch the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. Got nothing on this. The the blimps and the floats, all that doesn’t even really matter because these folks are celebrating something that really matters. There’s two incredible ironies about this. The first one is about where they start. The second is about where they go. All right, look, it’s going to be on the screen with me. Chapter 2 and chapter 4 hold some interesting details for for us about what this moment looked like. You see, way back in chapter 2, it says this: Nehemiah, this is when he just gets to Jerusalem. All right, God has brought him here to rebuild the wall. Nehemiah hangs out for a couple days, not trying to stir too much stuff up. He gets up, he says this: “I got up at night and I took a few men with me. I didn’t tell anyone what my God had laid on my heart to do for Jerusalem. The only animal I took was the one I was riding.” Nehemiah starts his original assessment of the wall at what’s called the Valley Gate. All right, he starts at the Valley Gate. That is where one of these parades started. All right, okay, starting to sense it a little bit. The second thing, verse or chapter 4, verse 13. So this is after some of the work has begun. Chapter 4, the work has started, and like anything, there is a little bit of pushback going on. So there is a couple people in particular that are mocking Nehemiah for the work that he’s doing, and they say, “That wall he is building looks weak, man. It’s it’s not sturdy whatsoever. It couldn’t even support a fox on top of it. A fox would break down all this hard work.” They’re doing but what we see in our passage is what happens. This wall is wide enough for parades to walk on it. It’s strong enough for men and women to be parading and walking and marching on, and it’s holding up under their weight. The parade starts where Nehemiah originally started. It starts at the Valley Gate, back where the whole problem, the scope and the magnitude of the issue was revealed. That’s where it starts. Where it goes, it goes along this path that nobody thought was going to stand up. Anyways, incredible irony of the fact that as God was completing His work, He was giving them joy, He was giving them celebration, and in the most ironic of ways, man, it makes me wonder what is ironic in my life that God is trying to accomplish His work through the things I struggle with, the things I don’t want. What is God using in particular to make much of Himself with? And not only that, it makes me wonder, is my life a joyful parade of celebrating God’s work or not? Would people look at me and say, “Jeremy, you are just an arrow pointing to God and how good He is,” or would they say, “Jeremy, you are a bit of a wet blanket focused on your problems and insecurities”? What do people say when they look at you? Would they say, “Man, you are a walking sign of God’s goodness”? Would they say you are a parade in a procession of joy for God?

I’m meeting with a couple folks this morning. They have been coming to our church for a few months now, and one of the things that they said has really stuck out to them is how when they came in, they said, “Man, this feels like family. There’s a warmth here. There is a love here.” Man, does that love go with you whenever you leave 5945 County Line Road? Does it go with you to the hairdresser? Does it go with you to Publix? Does it go with you to the bank? Does it go with you to work so that people don’t just know that you are a member of a kind church, but that you are a son or a daughter of a kind God? Is your life a joyful procession of God’s work in you?

I keep saying joy and celebration because that’s what these people were doing. I’m going to read a couple verses across this passage just for us to get an idea of what’s happening, okay? Verse 27: “At the dedication of the wall of Jerusalem they sent for Levites wherever they lived and brought them to Jerusalem to celebrate the joyous dedication with thanksgiving and singing, cymbals, harps, lyres.” Verse 36: You have all of these folks, they are walking and they are carrying the musical instruments of David the man of God. All right, verse 42 and 43: You have another group of people, they are singing. Verse 42, verse 43: They are rejoicing so loud, mind you, that their rejoicing was heard from far away. That means people outside of the city are listening to them singing and playing their instruments. They are listening to all this celebration. Verse 46: “For long ago in the days of David and Asaph there were heads of the singers and songs of praise and thanksgiving to God.”

What comes in your mind when you hear these verses describing this moment? Man, if it’s not a full band walking down the street, then man, you don’t have the right image in your mind. What’s going on is a loud celebration of God’s good work and His purification in them. Makes me think about us in our worship gatherings, right? God wants our worship and our singing to be demonstrative, engaged, got some volume to it. We’re singing “Here I Am, Lord” a few minutes ago, and I hear y’all singing, and man, it is such an encouragement in my heart to hear y’all lifting your voices and offering yourselves to God, saying, “God, here I am, send me.” God wants what happens in here to be heard outside of here. If someone were walking by the sanctuary, they ought to be able to hear us. In the same way, when someone rubs up against you in your life, they ought to hear you singing the goodness of God. That is supposed to be our life.

Think about 1 Chronicles 25:6. You have this group of people who are worshiping the Lord. It says, “with cymbals, harps, lyres for the service of God’s temple.” I think about 2 Samuel chapter 6, verses 14-15, where David is leading the Ark of the Covenant, and that man is dancing in the streets before this thing for everybody to see him. I think about Psalm 28:2, which says, “Listen to the sound of my pleading when I cry to you for help when I lift up my hands toward your holy sanctuary.” Or Psalm 99:5, on the other side of it: “Exalt the Lord our God; bow in worship at His footstool, for He is holy.” God is worth our praise. Amen, amen. Which means God is worth our physical demonstration of what we feel and believe. It is so comfortable for us to take these and put them in our pockets when we’re singing. I think sometimes some of us just need a little encouragement and some permission to do this. We talked about it last week when I invited folks forward for the time of confession and prayer at the front. Physical acts have spiritual power. You may see me on a Sunday when when I’m standing right there and we’re singing, and I am lifting my hands, and I’ll confess I am not always feeling the gusto of this, but what I am doing is I’m telling myself God is worth this, and if I do not lead my heart physically, I may not get there here. And sometimes I am full throttle here, and I can’t help but demonstrate it here.

The encouragement is to you: when folks come into our church, not just for us to not just for for them to know we are a loving family that’s excited to welcome new members, but we are an engaged group of people worshiping the Lord. I know the choir appreciates it when y’all lift your hands. I know Miss Caroline likes it whenever she looks down and we see each other, and I’m physically responding. I know the ladies like it whenever we are singing with them. I know Mary L and Mary Anne appreciate it whenever we are physically responding, and we show our appreciation for what they do. In the same way, the God of the universe loves it when you physically demonstrate. That’s what they were doing here. They were not a dirge walking and marching around the city; they were a parade of celebration and joy. Mine and Donnie’s intention for the worship service is to help everybody grow. We’ll grow in our love for Jesus. We’ll grow in our comfort to talk about Him. We’ll grow in our ability to articulate the truth that God has for us. That’s our desire here. And as we as people lean into purity before God and alignment with God’s purposes, we will become more and more joyful, and you will demonstrate that.

I come back to the passage now. I’ll stop preaching after the people had celebrated their purity, they experience the final truth. Okay, is that sacrifice validates pure purposes. Sacrifice validates pure purposes. Look at verses 44 through 47 with me. “On that same day, men were placed in charge of the rooms that housed the supplies, contributions, first fruits, and tenths, the legally required portions for the priests and the Levites. They were gathered from the village fields, because Judah, the area around Jerusalem, Judah was grateful to the priests and the Levites who were serving. They performed the service of their God and the service of purification, along with the singers and the gatekeepers, as David and his son Solomon had prescribed. For long ago in the days of David and Asaph, there were heads of the singers and songs of praise and thanksgiving to God. So in the days of Zerubbabel and Nehemiah, all Israel contributed the daily portions for the singers and the gatekeepers. They also set aside daily portions for the Levites, and the Levites set aside daily portions for Aaron’s descendants.”

All right, what we see here: sacrifice is validating these pure purposes. All right, there’s a couple different ways it’s articulated here. The first one is that there’s these legally required portions being given because the people of Judah were grateful to the priests and the Levites. Here’s what you need to know: the men Ministry of the temple in the Old Testament relied on the offerings and the gifts of the people. That’s how it worked. Those offerings and gifts are referred to in a couple different ways: first fruits and the tenths. Tenth is also tithe. We talk about bringing our tithes and our offerings. The word tithe literally means tenth. Okay, the tithe. Let’s just talk about this a little bit. The tithe is a couple different things. Under the law of Moses, it was a biblically mandated tenth of all income. Under the Practice of Abraham who lived before Moses, it was a practice of giving back to God a sizable portion of what we have been given. And under Cain, who was before both of them, it was an offering out of the first fruits of his produce, not the leftovers. Here’s what God wants you to hear this morning: you validate what you say with what you give. I can go home today and I could say to Becca, “You are worth everything to me. I would do anything for you,” and then sit on my bottom and watch football all afternoon and evening. What I do does not prove the truth of what I said. But Jesus said, “Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” So He gave us a way to direct our hearts by directing our treasure. Like the Temple of the Old Testament, the Church of the New Testament is also fueled by the generous donations of the folks that come and attend and partner and member here.

Here’s my invitation to you. My invitation to you is to validate God’s purifying work in you through your own financial giving. We don’t talk about this very much in church. Even right now, I feel my heart racing just a little bit because I’m bringing up money in a social setting, and I’m told that’s a little socially odd. Anybody else feel a little socially odd right now when I’m bringing up money? I’ve got some well-meaning folks nodding their head because they’re truth-tellers. All right, we don’t like to talk about money in America. We just don’t. What’s mine is mine, what’s yours is yours. This doesn’t happen, though, without you guys being generous. Fact of the matter, my invitation to you is to direct the love of your heart through directing your financial treasure.

I think some of us come from churches or at least have sat under teaching where it felt like all they cared about was your money. All that preacher wants is to stuff his own pockets through my hard-earned cash. So I gave you an invitation. I want you to validate your joy for the gospel through giving. I’m going to give you permission to do it somewhere else if you don’t trust me. I don’t want generosity from you. God’s going to take care of me and my family. God’s going to take care of the needs of our church. But if you need to get to a place where you could trust a local church with your financial giving, ultimately trust the Lord with it, and you’re not quite there yet, keep coming here and direct your money somewhere else. But here’s what’s going to happen: the Lord is going to give you deeper joy, and you’re going to want to continue to express it, and I guarantee eventually you’re going to feel comfortable to give it here.

So that’s the first disclaimer I wanted to give, is because we don’t always talk about money, and there’s some weird feelings about money in the church. Give it somewhere, because what God intends for you ultimately is your joy. Our families can be taken care of. I’m not asking you to give me your money. What I’m asking you to do is to show your gratitude for the gospel through your financial giving. You know, we pass these offering plates every week to give you an opportunity to do that in particular. And again, if this is new for you, that’s okay. Me and Becca, when we were first married, we had to get to a place where the biblical minimum, 10%, we had to get to a place where that was our goal. Okay, we didn’t talk about money when I was growing up, all right? So this was a hard step for me. Becca thankfully had a really, really good example on her family. There was a lot of work for us to get there. That’s where some of y’all are at right here.

So here’s my offer: don’t go 0 to 60. I want you to go 0 to 10 miles per hour and just give some amount somewhere, okay? If you need help understanding what that can look like for your family in particular, I didn’t ask you before I got here. Cody, can you just stand up for me, please? So what Cody does, aside from holding their child, is that Cody is a financial planner. What he would love to do is to help you get to a place where you can steward your treasure. You’re good now. Where you can get to a place where You can understand what does it look like to give 10% of my income somewhere to ministry. Catch him after this if you’re not exactly sure how to get there, and he would love to talk with you and work with you on that. Okay, all right. I want to come back to the passage here as we begin to wrap up, because these financial gifts that all the people were bringing were for the service of the house of God. It was for the service of the temple.

I began this morning asking a question: what is your life purpose? Let’s start getting back to that life purpose in this passage. You see, the temple was this: it was dedicated as the original—sorry, the temple was dedicated for its original purpose, which was to represent the house of God. The temple was dedicated in that way because you and I, that’s our original purpose.

Come back with me to the Garden of Eden where God creates man and woman, and what He intends for them from the very beginning is that He would have a vibrant love relationship with them, where His Spirit would dwell inside of them perfectly and in harmony forever. But unfortunately, a new resident took up space in their hearts and in that relationship, and that resident was Satan. Satan comes in and he deceives Adam and Eve, and he tricks them to trade their purpose for a different one. God says to them, “Hey, spread my image and be my image bearers and take my presence throughout the whole earth.” Satan says, “Hey, live for yourselves because God is withholding from you.” And we know what happened: Adam and Eve, they listen to the liar instead of to God. So instead, instead of being the house of God, instead of being the place where God would dwell and would do His work from, Adam and Eve, they deny Him and they mar that image, and you and I do that every day.

So fast forward into the biblical story. God is resuming His relationship with people in a vibrant and physical way. He gives them the pillar of cloud and fire in the wilderness, then He gives them the Tabernacle, which is this tent of meeting, and then He gives them a temple, which would be a permanent dwelling place in the city of Jerusalem. The temple is built to be a renewed yet imperfect home for God, a home base from which God would do His work in the world, so to speak. But the temple doesn’t work; it gets destroyed multiple times. Obviously, that house was not the type of house that God ultimately was going to reside in, and we know that because onto the scene comes Jesus Christ. We, you and I, become houses of God as the Holy Spirit Himself dwells inside of us.

You see, like Adam and Eve, every one of us deny God, and we go against His design for us, and we do what’s called sin. Sin is where we miss the mark of God’s standard for us, and we live for a different standard. You and I, we do that every day. We do that by living for our purposes. We do that by living for our comforts. We do that by doing things that explicitly go against what this says. We’re all there.

God so loved the world that He sent His Son to dwell with us. He sent His Son to tabernacle with us, to temple with us, to reside with us. You see, there is no way to make yourself pure—not in your yourself. There’s no good thing you can do that will make yourself right before a holy and good and loving God. As as good and as loving as God is, He is also holy, which means even your attempts at doing good things become bad things, because God is perfect, which means you have to be made pure, you have to be forgiven, and God made a way for you to be forgiven. He made a way for you to become pure, and it is through the life and the death and the resurrection of Jesus Christ. His blood is what washes us clean. His life is what God looks at for all who place their faith in Him.

So when God looks at me with all of my faults and all of my failures and all of my sin, He does not see Jesus—He does not see Jeremy’s shortcomings. He sees Jesus’s perfection on top of me. It’s like Jesus has put His arm around me, and every time the Father looks at me, Jesus says, “He’s with with me.” But it’s not Just that Jesus, who was one person, came and lived and died 2,000 years ago, and then left. No, it’s that He takes His Spirit and places His Spirit inside of you, which means I am the house of God, which makes me think a little differently about what I’m going to watch later, and what I’m going to say, and what I’m going to think, because God’s always with me. God has made you to be a house for Him, so that when people look at you, they would see Him. And here’s some hope: God carries you as you struggle to do that well here, and one day God will bring you to Himself, where we will once again live with Him tangibly, where we won’t need a temple because we will dwell with God. We won’t need a sun to light the way because Jesus Christ, the Son, will be our light for us. We will not need to give our tithes and our offerings because everything will be the way it should be. We will need to tell ourselves, “Be happy, have joy. This is the day that the Lord has made,” because our lives in eternity will be a forever song about how good God is. That is where we are going, which gives us hope on Tuesday and on Wednesday, no matter what happens, because this is a place we’re passing through. We want to take care of it, we want to steward it, and we want to bring as many people from here there as possible.

You were made to be God’s house. You were made to spread His image, which means you and I must do whatever God leads us to do that helps others return to that purpose and become God’s home themselves. So here’s the question as I start to wrap up: If God purifies for His purpose, have you been made pure by giving your life to Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior? Have you accepted the forgiveness that God wants for you? Man, my invitation to you this morning is, please accept it. I’ve still got questions. Shocker. Been walking with Jesus half my life. I’ve been pastoring this church for a year, been in ministry for 10 years. I’ve got questions. I’d rather have questions from the inside than from the outside, though. My pleading, my begging to you: bring those questions up and have them on the inside of life with Jesus, not on the outside. May you accept the gospel, please. If you don’t know what that looks like, then a good first step would be praying something along these lines: “God, I want to love You, and I want to know You. I don’t know what that looks like, but I know that I can’t do this on my own. I give my life to You. Please forgive me.” It would begin with praying something like that, and I would love to talk with you after this service.

And if you already have given your life to Jesus, then my question is: if you’ve been purified by God, if you’ve been set apart for His purposes, are you living for His purposes or yours? I’d love to talk with you about that too. There’s a lot of joy, there’s a lot of freedom here to be able to walk with Jesus. Pray with me.

Lord, I hope I’ve done a good job communicating what You have for us this morning. God, I hope that some who may not know that You love them would now be able to recognize that You have a white-hot intensity of love for them. God, I hope that those who do know You, that they would know, God, that You have good purposes for them. Lord, would You make us pure after You? For anybody in the room right now, Lord, who is still struggling with that, God, would You please convince them that You love them, You have good plans for them. Would You help all of us validate our joy in the gospel through our sacrifices we make for You, to say, “Here I am, use me, and send me however You see fit.” And Lord, help us to respond to this with worship that could be heard on the outside. God, we love You. Amen.