Brick by Brick // Turning Back to God // Nehemiah 9 // Pastor Josh Evans

Remember, as we kind of come to chapter 9, Nehemiah, he's back in Jerusalem. He's helping rebuild the city. One of the biggest things that are the reasons he came back was to rebuild the walls that was around Jerusalem. Remember Babylon had come in over 100 years before this and completely destroyed the city. And so nothing had been rebuilt back. So here Nehemiah is being used by God to rebuild the city. So he builds the wall. And as we come to chapter 9, the wall is already complete. It was completed in how many days? Anybody want to take a stab? 52.

Very good. So 52 days it was completed. And so now that the wall is done, here's what I want you to know, is that the book of Nehemiah, it is more about rebuilding the people of Jerusalem than it is the city of Jerusalem.

And let me explain why. Because Jerusalem was an important city for the Jewish people. It was somewhat of a spiritual monument type of city, if you would. It was sacred. The reason is that the presence of God dwelt in Jerusalem. Remember Solomon had built this beautiful temple there in Jerusalem. And so this is where the presence of God was dwelling.

And we know that in the New Testament, if you're a Christian in here today, you have the Holy Spirit living inside of you. But back then in that day, the Holy Spirit had not come and dwelt believers. So for them, the temple where the priest would go in and sacrifice for the sins of the people, he'd go in on behalf of the people before God, this was a big, big deal. So in other words, there is a spiritual defeat that Nehemiah was coming back to Jerusalem and tried to improve because it's as if the presence of God had left, it was not there.

If the book was all about rebuilding the walls or building a building, then it would have stopped when the building was built. But in other words, there's still a lot of work for Nehemiah to do in order to rebuild and draw the people back into a relationship with God. So chapter number eight, where we were last week, if you remember, chapter eight was after the walls were completed, the people were led back to God, drawn close to God through the authority of scripture in their life. If you remember chapter eight, they come to Ezra, who was a scribe during that day, and they come to him and they ask him to read the word of God to them. So he begins reading, you know, the first five books of the Old Testament, the law, he begins to read all of this stuff to them, and they begin to worship the Lord as a result. Well, the word was part of what God used to draw them close to him. Well, in chapter number nine, we see another thing that God uses to draw his people back into a relationship with him.

And here's what it is. It is confession and repentance of our sins. In fact, chapter number nine gives us, in my opinion, one of the best descriptions of what true, honest confession and biblical repentance of sin really, really looks like. But let me say this, that before you confess, and before you repent, you have to first acknowledge your sins, right? You can't confess and turn from something that you won't acknowledge was wrong to begin with.

Would you agree? Nod your head if you agree with that. You have to admit that there's some wrong, or that there's some brokenness, or that there's sin.

And here's what's true of you, here's what's true of me. We do not like to acknowledge our own sin, right? We don't like to naturally admit when we are wrong. In fact, we'll do a quick poll. How many of you love to admit when you are wrong about something?

Anybody in here? Not a whole lot, right? Because none of us do, right? If you lose your mind with your kids, we try to justify that. We don't want to ever admit we're wrong to our children, right? Or if you lose your mind to your spouse, you definitely don't want to admit that you were wrong with them, right?

You want to kind of fight till the end. You know, who's going to admit it first, and that kind of thing. And that's true of our spiritual life, as well, is with God, it's easy for us to really point out the faults of everybody else, and the sins of everybody else, than it is to really confess some of the things that we need to confess in our own heart. That's why if you ever sat in a church service, and you're sitting there, and the preacher starts to preach on something, some type of topic or whatever, and you immediately start to think, well, I hope so-and-so is here so they can hear it because they need it. How many of you ever felt that way? Okay, just me?

Okay. And so, but here's the thing. It's like, we do that, why is that? Because our hearts are naturally drawn to pointing out sins and faults in everybody else except for ourselves. On chapter number nine, we see that in order for the people of Jerusalem, God's chosen people, in order for them to go into a relationship with God, to be drawn closer to Him, repentance and confession is necessary in order for us to draw closer to God.

So think about it this way, just some application, then we're going to jump into the text. Every single one of you, I believe you're here on a Sunday morning, you could be anywhere else today, and you chose to worship with us here today. Here's what I believe about you, I'm going to believe the best, that every single one of you in here wants to draw close to God.

I believe that. Now, I don't know your heart in here or whatever, but I think because you're here, I'm just going to take your presence in a church on a Sunday morning at 11 o'clock, that your desire is to draw close to God. What we are going to see from this chapter is that in order for you to do that, in order for you to accomplish why you're here, you have to confess and repent of sin that is in our heart. Look at the first three verses of Nehemiah chapter nine. It says this, now, in the 24th day of this month, the children of Israel were assembled with fasting and with sackcloth and earth upon them.

Now, before I move to verse two, this is coming off the tales of chapter number eight. So remember in chapter number eight, we find ourselves the Jewish people on the Jewish calendar, it is the month Tishri, and that month was super important to them because there were three different festivals that the Jewish people would celebrate and commemorate. And so there's three different feasts that they were a part of, and all of them, these three happen in the month of Tishri.

The final feast was the Feast of Trumpets, the Feast of, or not the Feast of Trumpets, the Feast of Tabernacles, the Feast of Booths. If you remember that, we looked at that briefly last week where they would take all these branches from different trees and they would make this temporary tent to be a dwelling place and they would live in it for eight days there in Jerusalem, just to remind themselves each and every day of how God provided, okay? So what we find here in chapter number nine is only a couple of days beyond the Feast of Tabernacles that we looked at in chapter number eight.

So a couple of days after that, everybody is assembled together with fasting, with sackcloths and earth upon them, that's just dirt from the earth. Verse two, and the seed of Israel separated themselves from all strangers and stood and confessed their sins and the iniquities of their fathers. They stood up in their place and read in the book of the law of the Lord their God, one fourth part of the day and another fourth part they confessed and worshiped the Lord their God. So the people here, as they are drawing close to God, here's what we find here in chapter number nine. No, chapter eight talks about their commitment to the word.

Well, here in chapter number nine, here's what we find first. The people repent of their sin. The people repent of their sin. Now repentance, that is, it literally means to turn, okay? So you turn from sin and you turn to something else, which would be a relationship with God or turn to him. So you turn from sin and to him.

What does this look like? Here's what I'm going to tell you. They give you a great picture of what true repentance looks like. First, here's what the people did when they repented. They fasted. They fasted. Now, I think the Lord's trying to tell us something about fasting because here's the thing is fasting has come up, I believe this is the third time I've really brought up fasting in a Sunday morning service in the last like three months and I think the Lord's trying to show us something about fasting because if you're like me, fasting is not something that we participate in a lot. It's not a spiritual discipline that we participate in. Most of the time, we neglect fasting. Now, Bible reading, you guys are like, yep, we try our best.

We don't always succeed, but we focus in on that. Prayer, that's another spiritual discipline that we focus in on, but not always succeed, right? Fasting is one that I bet if we were to go around the room today, not a lot of us practice often, okay? And so here we find that they fasted. You see that in verse number one is that as they gathered together, they fasted together. Here's what fasting really is. Fasting is an opportunity that we take that says that the spiritual or the supernatural is more important to us than anything that earth has to offer. So in other words, what they're saying when they fast is this, God, you mean more to me than anything that this world means to us.

So fasting, most of the time it was from food and so they would fast from food and they would spend that time of fasting where they would just not eat and things like that to show God that they want what heaven has to offer them way more than food, right? How many of you love to eat? Raise your hand, okay? I love to eat. I mean, I love it. I mean, I plan my day around the meals that I'd take, right? And so I asked my wife first thing in the morning, hey, what's the plan for dinner? Because I'm excited about it. I want to look forward to something all day, right?

She gets annoyed with that question, but I just love it and I like to look forward to kind of what our plan is and that kind of thing. We all love food and so the reason why fasting from food is so important is because for us, it would be like this, hey, God, what you have for me is more important than the food that I want to eat today. But here's what I'll tell you. Fasting doesn't have to be from food all the time. Fasting can be from anything that means something to you. It can be from Netflix or from a TV show that you enjoy, right? It can be from any TV.

It can be from social media. It can be from anything that you like to spend time doing and what fasting is, is you are going to say, I am going to replace it with time with the Lord. In other words, what you're saying is what he has for me is more important than whatever you're fasting from.

So fasting, it gets you ready for what God wants to do in your heart. So here, this was just an opportunity that children of Israel, they are being drawn back into a relationship with him. And so fasting, they wanted God to know that they mean business. They wanted God to know that they're serious about their relationship with him. They want to be drawn to him. I wonder how many of us really mean, I said this earlier, I assume you want to be drawn to God, right? We want to be drawn to God.

Well, I wonder how much it's worth to you. Are we willing to fast in order to draw close to God? Because this really is an opportunity for them to show how much this means to them and how much getting close to God means to them. But not only does their repentance require fasting, we see here, they mourned over their sin. They mourned over their sin.

In verse number one, you see a couple of things here. They mourned over their sin by way of, they said that they put on sackcloth and earth upon them. Sackcloth, anytime when you see it in scripture, it was a symbol of mourning or a symbol of repentance.

It's mentioned throughout scripture. One of the most common ways sackcloth was used was, if you remember the story of Jonah, when Jonah finally went to Nineveh and tell them the prophecy of God and what God was going to do to them, what did they do? When they turned to God, they put on sackcloth. Well, we see it throughout scripture that they put on this sackcloth and say, what is sackcloth?

Sackcloth was like a goat's hair, if you would, and it was super itchy, and it was uncomfortable, and it was like a burlap bag, if you would. And what they would do is when they would mourn or they would repent over the sin that they had committed, they would put this on them as a sign, an outward sign of how their heart inwardly feels about the sin that they are participating in. Well, not only did they have sackcloth, they had the dirt that they sprinkled on.

That's what it means when it says earth upon them. They would put dirt on their head as a reminder of how dirty they were to God. In other words, sackcloth, which was super uncomfortable, and dirt, which was super messy and nasty, it was almost like they were doing all of this to themselves so that when they come before God, they could recognize how dirty and how wicked and sinful they are before a holy, righteous God. You see, they mourned over their sin, and this was an outward demonstration of how they felt inwardly.

But not only that, number two, their repentance also showed in the way that they separated themselves from unhealthy relationships. Look at verse number two. It says, and the seed of Israel, the children of Israel, they separated themselves from all strangers, from all strangers.

Now this means a little different than us, the word stranger. In this case, God's chosen people was the Jewish people. Now when Jesus came and died on the cross, the gospel, those who could enter into a relationship with God, it wasn't just the Jews, it was for all people. So back in that day though, it was just for the Jews.

If you wanted to know God, you had to be Jewish. And so for them, what had happened in Jerusalem is they had allowed all these other nations to come into Jerusalem. And when you invite all these other nations to come in, what was happening was they were bringing their false gods, and they were bringing all this idolatry into Jerusalem. And so in order for them, remember the goal is to draw close to God, in order for them to draw close to God, they had to separate themselves from all of the idolatrous relationships, they call it strangers, that had infiltrated itself into the city of Jerusalem.

Let me tell you this, that for you to draw close to God, you might have to release some people and things around you. Listen, you might not have like a little statue in your house that you worship, but here's the problem. In modern day church, we have tons of idols in our hearts. Like one idol in our heart could be finances, right, money. Money's an idol a lot of times.

It drives us. Say what is an idol? An idol is anything that you look to for trust and for comfort and safety apart from God.

If you're looking to money or you're looking to your family or you're looking to whatever it is, it could be anything, and you're looking to that as that is my security, then you probably have an idol on your hands. And what we have to do, if we're going to repent and we're going to remember, turn to God from the things of this world, then we have to separate ourselves from unhealthy relationships, possibly with an idol or possibly with somebody that is bringing you down in your spiritual life. I used to tell this to students all the time when I used to preach in youth ministry. It's like this, it's like, listen, some of you, the reason why you can't draw close to God is you're surrounding yourself with a lot of people that want you to draw close to the world. And that's why it's important for us to eliminate and separate ourselves from unhealthy relationships with idols and with people that are not going to help us in our spiritual journey. But also in chapter or verse number two, we see that they confessed their sins.

It says that they stood and they confessed their sins and the iniquities of their fathers. Now that's always amazing to me because when I confess any sin that's in my life, I don't ever really think to confess the sins of those who have gone on before me. I don't think I've ever went to God and say, God, really sorry about what my dad did, whatever, right? I mean, I don't know if you do that or whatever, if my kids did that for me, they'd be there for a while.

I'll tell you that. And so, but I don't think I've ever thought about, you know, my, my grandfather and all my family, like asking for forgiveness and confessing their sins. But here's the picture that you get because that might not make a whole lot of sense to you. The picture that we get, you got to remember this comes days after they had just spent time reading the law of the Lord. Now if you go back to the law, if we were to take some time and read the first few books of the Old Testament, we're going to see the children of Israel, right? And we're going to see how they wandered in the wilderness and we're going to see how they doubted God and how they didn't believe God and they didn't trust God.

And we're going to see all this idolatry and different things. What I think is happening is they are just coming off the coattails of reading all of that. And they're probably thinking, God, I'm so sorry for everything that our people have done to you. They don't deserve you.

You came to them and wanted a relationship to them and yet they rebelled and ran the other way. But the reason why they weren't just confessing the sins of their forefathers but also themselves is I think that they also were able to see that in their own hearts, they were actually committing the same evil sins that all of their forefathers were already committing. So they were just confessing sins in their life. Listen, let me tell you this, is that for you, in order for you to draw close to God, you have to call sin what it is according to God's word and you have to be willing to confess it. We don't realize that we serve a holy, righteous God and sometimes we think that we can just enter into his presence with sin in our life. We think that we can just enter into our presence and he's just going to answer our prayers and do everything that we want him to do and we have a bunch of junk in our life. Listen, if you think you can enter God's presence with tons of sin in your life, unconfessed sin, if you think you can just come to him and get him to do whatever you want to do, you don't know who God is.

Or better yet, you don't understand who God is because when we get a glimpse of his perfect righteousness and his perfect holiness, the only proper response is confession of how broken, worldly and sinful and rebellious our hearts truly are. So you see that they confessed but then in verse number three, they read the word. So look at this, in verse three, I think it's interesting, they read the word for a fourth of the day and then they spent a fourth of the day confessing.

Just picture this. This might be an idea for 2025 as we're planning our year calendar or whatever. What if we have some days where we come together, we read God's word together just like this, but then I wonder how many of you would show up if we had a confession day, right? Confession afternoon. What if I said this that, hey, today we're going to come back here at three o'clock this afternoon.

I want to invite you all to be back. Join your families and we are going to spend a few hours confessing sin. I wonder how many of you would come.

I'll be honest with you. I probably wouldn't come. That's one of those things I delegate to Pastor Bailey and say, do this, okay, because I don't want to do it.

I don't want to be a part of it, right? Because like none of us like to acknowledge sin, none of us like to confess sin, but here, and this is what's amazing to me, they do this together. Like this is like the Jewish people confessing sin together collectively as a group, and I think that there's some application there. It's like the church, right? It's like the church, we preach about confession and we preach about repentance, but when somebody comes into our midst, into church people, a bunch of religious crowd, when they come into our midst with some pretty bad stuff in their life, we all get a little bit nervous, right? That's not what church is supposed to be. Church is supposed to be a place where people can freely come into this place with their junk, with their mess, with their sin, and with all of that, and they can come into this place and they can confess it without any of us judging them for the sin that they've committed, right? That's what the church is. But too often, you know what the church does is when somebody gets right with God here about something that they have been doing wrong, you know what the church people do?

Like, oh, I can't believe they did that. Stay away from them. We don't want to be anywhere near them because of what they did. And it almost, we create spaces in our church where we are fearful about confessing sin in our life. Let me tell you this, church should be more of a hospital for broken, sinful, evil, wicked people than it is a country club for a bunch of religious folks. It's not what the church is.

And so we should welcome those things, and here you get that sense. Not one time in chapter number nine do they judge one another for the things that they're confessing. And I imagine if you look at what the children of Israel were a part of sometimes, I'd imagine there is some messed up stuff being confessed. And everybody is collectively being drawn to God together through confession, repentance, and reading the word.

But then number two, what we see here in chapter number nine is this. Not only do they start to repent and mourn over their sin, but then we see the people pray over their sin. In verses four through 32, we see what I think is the longest prayer recorded in scripture. It is a long prayer. We're not going to take the time to read every single word of this prayer.

I encourage you to do this in your own time. But what happens in verses four and five is the Levites, they lead the children of Israel through a prayer. And this prayer, now the Levites, they were the religious leaders, if you would.

They were the priestly family. And so for our modern day ears, this would be like the pastor of a church leading his congregation through a specific prayer. And what you find here is the Levites stand up and they begin to lead the people in a prayer.

And there's a progression here. Chapter eight, they read the word. They see the gap from what God says they should live like and who they really are. And by the way, there's always a gap between what God's word says and where our hearts are a lot of times, right? Well, in chapter eight, they see the gap.

So in chapter nine, what happens? They mourn, they confess, they read more of scripture, and they repent. And now after they've done that, they begin to pray back to God and praise him. I want to mention a couple of aspects of this prayer. First, they remembered in this prayer, they remembered the character of God in their prayer. It's almost like remember Jesus when he taught us to pray in the New Testament. Jesus says, when you pray, you know, you go into your closet and all this kind of stuff, and you say, Our Father, which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.

In other words, you recognize who you're talking to before you ask of anything. But if your prayer times anything like mine, sometimes we go to God and do his presence, and we have a to do list. Like God, give me God do this, God help me remember what I didn't study last night, God, I need you to fix this, God, I need you to provide for this, God, I need you to handle this, God, I need you to remove that person, God, I need you the boss to fire that person I don't like we need you all this kind of stuff.

And we have this long list of things that we asked him to do. But sometimes we forget to recognize who we're talking to. So their prayer, they begin to Levi's are leading them, they begin to recognize who God's talking to recognize the character of God. First you see in verse six, they recognize God is sovereign. Look at verse six, thou, even thou art Lord alone. What a verse that was made heaven, the heaven of heavens, with all their host, the earth, and all things that are there in the seasons and all that is there in and now preservice them all and the host of heaven worship with the what a verse, what a verse, they recognize that God is sovereign by saying you are Lord alone.

In other words, there's nobody like him. God is orchestrating over all things. He stands alone at the top, he is in control and over all things God is sovereign. But also in verse number six, we saw this, they recognize that God is our creator. God is our creator. In other words, he created the heavens, he created all things and by the way, all things were created by him and for him.

He is all powerful, if you would. He goes on to say he is righteous. God is righteous. In verse seven and eight, look at what it says, thou art the Lord, the God who did choose Abram and brought us him forth out of Ur of the Chaldees and gave us to him the name of Abraham and found us his heart faithful before thee. In other words, it was accounted unto him for righteousness.

You remember that? And that's the point. God is righteous and because of his righteousness, we can now be righteous because of the righteousness of Jesus that has been placed in our life. They recognize this, that God is our deliverer. In verse nine through 11, you see that they remind God, God, you delivered us from Egypt when we were in captivity, you delivered us by the Red Sea, you took care of us, which leads us to the next one. God is our guide.

Verse number 12, moreover thou lettest them in the day by a cloudy pillar and in the night by a pillar of fire to give them light in the way wherein they should go. God is our God. Verses 13 and 14, God is our standard. He mentions how they praise God that he gave us the law and it's a reminder that nobody can live according to the law, right? Only God can, only Jesus can, right?

He is our standard. And then in verse 15, they say God is our provider. How God provided manna in the wilderness, how God provided water for them to drink. Here's the point, is what they're doing is now that they have read the word, they've confessed sin, now they're praying and praising God for who he is. In other words, it's like they're saying, hey God, you delivered us from Egypt, praise God for that. You are our God, you are our shepherd, you are our creator, you are our deliverer.

And the list goes on and they continue to just praise God for who he is. I wonder when the last time in your time with the Lord, that's what your prayer sounded like. It's like this, when you go to God and you have read his word and you've confessed sin, confessing how there is a gap between what his word says and how we live.

And when you confess your sin before God, it should result in worship. It should result in you saying, God, I remember when you healed that family member. I remember when you led me when I had absolutely nothing, no idea what I was doing.

I remember when you provided for me when I didn't have the money to pay my bills. God, I remember when you guided me, I remember when you saved me, I remember when you delivered me from the power of sin. You see, the point is, is when was the last time we go before God and we praise him for who he is and what he has done for us. But in their prayer, not only was it recognizing the character of God, but in their prayer, verses 16 and 17, here's what's amazing to me. They're still praying, prayer's still going. They confess their sin.

Like again, you can read verse 16 and 17. They begin to confess the sins again, things that they've already confessed. Here's the point, is I think that confession, it's not something that happens just one time. Oh, I'm saved, so I'm good. The point is it's daily.

Every single day we sin, right? Get into traffic, lose your mind. Any of you do that from time to time?

Right? I do. I get really angry, really mad. And if I ever see on the road and you see me mad, just please forgive me ahead of time, okay? I just struggle, right? So I have to ask God for that. I lose my temper, I'm impatient, I'm judgmental, I'm prideful.

All of those different things I struggle with every single day. The point is what you see here is the amount of times that they confess, it's almost like this continual thing, this ongoing thing that every breath that they take, it's almost like they're reminded every single second how unworthy they are and how sinful they are and how holy He is. And then third in their prayer, they recognize God's mercy and His goodness. Look at verse 17, and refused to obey, neither were mindful of thy wonders that thou didst among them, but hard in their necks and in their rebellion, talking about the children of Israel, how rebellious they were, they appointed a captain to return to their bondage. But thou, in the midst of their rebellion, look at who God is, but thou, still them praying are to God, ready to pardon.

We sang about that earlier. Gracious and merciful, slow to anger and of great kindness, and forsook them not. Listen, the good news about the gospel is that He pursued us not when we were searching for Him, not when you were looking to Him. No, the point of verse 17 is they're praising God for all these different things, and they're saying, man, all of our forefathers were so rebellious.

We are rebellious, right? And He said, but in the midst of our rebellion, you forsook us not, you had mercy and grace bestowed upon us. That's a reason to praise God.

They recognize God's mercy and His goodness in the midst of our sin. So what we see here is the people repent, they want, remember the goal is draw close to God. In order to do that, chapter number eight, we've got to commit to the word of God. You cannot grow in your relationship with Jesus if you don't have a daily time with God's word.

Can't do it. You've got to have a daily time with God's word in order to grow. But also, in order for you to grow closer to the Lord and draw near to Him, let me tell you this, you have to do what we see here in chapter number nine, we have to repent of our sin. We have to turn from pride and turn from immorality and turn from our rebellious hearts and we have to turn back to Him. And what you see here in verses 33 through 38 is the children of Israel turning back to God. There's three kind of contrasts that He gives in these verses that I want you to see here today about your life and my life. The first one is found in verse 33. He says, howbeit thou, still praying by the way, thou art just in all that is brought upon us, for thou has done right, but we have done wickedly. The first contrast I want you to see, and I'm just going to run through these and land the plane here in a second, is this, God is perfect and we are sinful. The first thing you see here is they're reminding God, you are perfect and yet we are sinful. But in verse 35, drop down there, they say, for they have not served thee in their kingdom and in thy great goodness that thou gave us them and in the large and fat land which thou gave us before them, neither turned they from their wicked works.

Here's the point, here's the second one that I want you to see is this, God is good, we are disobedient. So you see, God is perfect in verse 33, we are sinful. Verse 35, you see, God is good and yet we are still disobedient or rebellious. And then in verse 38, here is the result of all this. Because of those things, because God is perfect and we are sinful, because God is good and we are disobedient, verse 38, and because of all of this, we make a sure covenant and we write it and our princes, Levites, and priests seal unto it. In other words, because God is perfect and we are sinful, because God is good and we are disobedient, the only proper response is to turn to God.

The only proper response is to turn to God. Listen, I don't know where you're at here today, honestly, I know this is a different type of message. We don't talk about confession, we don't talk about repentance, a whole lot.

But I'm not sure where you are because we're probably in one or two spaces here today. If you've slipped in here today and you don't know Jesus as your Savior, perhaps you've slipped in and listen, let me just say this, perhaps you're a church member, been attending here for years, but yet you don't know Jesus as your Savior and you might do what I did as a kid before I got assurance of my salvation, I lay on my pillow every single night just pray, if the last one didn't work, save me now, if this didn't work, you know, that kind of thing. And you're doubting and you just are so confused and that kind of thing. It doesn't matter if you're a church member or what, listen, if that's where you are today, then here's what I want you to do, stop trusting in your works. Stop trusting in what you think you can do to inherit a relationship with God. The moment that you stop trusting in yourselves and start trusting in what he has already done, that is the moment where salvation can occur in your life.

That is the moment where healing can come. So if you're in here today and you say, Pastor, I'm not a Christian, I don't know Jesus as my Savior, I've never trusted him, listen, your only response today is to turn to him and give your life to Jesus Christ. Let me just tell you this, don't delay. Listen, don't delay, give your life to Christ, don't put it off another second, because we don't know how long we have.

We don't know how much time we have left, so don't put it off. But perhaps you're a Christian in here today and you say, what's this for me, like what am I supposed to do? I think the real response is for us who are Christians and we're considered the religious crowd, right, what are we supposed to do? I think we have to make it a daily practice to daily confess and daily repent of our sin. Remember what repentance is, it's turning from sin and turning towards God. So not only do you remove sin in your life, that's what repentance means, like you take it away, remember they kind of got rid of the idolatry, they got rid of the people that were bringing them down and leading them into idolatry, they separated themselves from that and they kind of saw what the Word had to say and said, man, this is not how we live, so we're going to go with what the Word says, we're going to remove anything that the Word kind of talks about.

Some of you, that's your problem, you might be reading the Word and you know that there's a gap between what God's Word says and how you live, but yet you love how you live more than you love the Word, so nothing changes. Here's what I'm going to tell you, if you're a believer in here today and you see what God's Word has to say about your life, the only proper response is to turn from sin and to turn towards Him, to turn towards Him. That might mean, hey, today you need to confess, you need to repent, you need to get your life right and it could be anything, it could be, listen, I know some of us think, oh man, I'm not in sexual immorality or I'm not a drug addict or I'm not addicted to alcohol or whatever and you kind of look at all these big things and you think, okay, I'm doing good. Let me tell you this, there's a lot of religious people that need to confess a lot of their personal sins that you might not think that you have, like pride and being judgmental and all these different things, right? We as religious crowd church folks, we have a ton of those things in our heart and let me tell you this, those things are just as bad as every other thing that I just mentioned.

And so don't think like, oh man, I'm doing great today because I'm not doing all these big things, right? No, listen, some of us, we need to repent of the things that we are a part of, the problems inside of our heart, the idols that are inside of us. And so if you're in here today and you don't know Jesus as your savior, your next step is to trust Him as your savior, give your life to Him. But if you're a believer in here, your next step is this, repent. Turn from sin, turn from your idolatry and give your life to Him. You might call it this way because I did this as a teenager, I rededicated my life to Christ.

Like that's probably a more term that you've heard before. I remember I got saved at five and so I was a kid and so I was little, so at five years old I wasn't a drug addict, I know that might surprise you, but I wasn't. And so I gave my life to Christ at five and so when I was growing up, I was a church kid so I was around church my whole life and one thing that I struggled with was doubt.

And here's why, it's because my life, just to be honest with you, it wasn't much different at five than the day before I got saved because I was so little I hadn't really screwed up my life or anything like that. And so as I was growing up I'd go to these church services, especially when I was a youth pastor and all these people would just yell at us about the change that needs to look in your life. And so I started looking at my life and I was like, I don't know, I'm still just as mean to my sister after I was saved as I was before, like I don't really know if I'm a Christian or not.

And so I started doubting and struggling and things like that and so my parents, I went to them and I was like, look, I can't defeat this thing, I don't know what to do. And so they took me, I went to my pastor and I went to him and he gave me some really good advice, he told me to go through the book of 1 John and so he said, on day number one I want you to read 1 John 1 and 5 and then on day number two he said, I want you to read 1 John 2 and 5, day three I want you to read 1 John 3 and 5 and so on because the book's all about assurance of salvation and things like that. And so I did that and then we met a week later and talked about it and I mean, God just broke me down, I was about 14 years old at that point, he just showed me that what he told me and what he stamped upon me at age 5 is still true today but what I did was, because I was just struggling with all this stuff, I rededicated my life to Christ.

I didn't get saved again, you don't have to get saved, saved is one time, right, but some of us, that might be where you're at today, maybe you're just complacent in your faith or you're just full blown just sinning like crazy and all this kind of stuff and you just need to come to God and rededicate your life to him. You're going to repent of your sin and turn to him and give your life to him. I don't know where you're at today but listen, when the word of God is preached, our response is to respond. Wherever you're at, respond. Take a step in whatever God is leading you to do. Can you bow your heads with me? Nobody looking around, I just want to find out kind of where you're at, just between us and the Lord.

Nobody's looking around and please be sensitive to this because this is always a response time so don't be looking around and that kind of thing. I know we're all nosy people, aren't we, but just kind of, just you and God. Just you and God. But if you're in here today and you say, Pastor, I don't know Jesus as my Savior, not a Christian, maybe perhaps you're a church person, that's fine, just be honest before God because don't die and go to hell because you were afraid of what people are going to think about you. But if you're in here today and you say, Pastor, I don't think I genuinely know Jesus as my Savior. I've never been saved. If that's where you are today, would you be honest before God and before myself and just slip your hand up high enough for me to see it, long enough for me to recognize it?

Anybody anywhere in here high enough for me to see it, long enough for me to recognize it? It looks like a lot of church folks in here and so church folks, listen, I'm right there with you. I'm a church guy. I've grown up in church my whole life. If you're in here today and you say, Pastor, there's some things in my life, maybe it's not anything big, maybe it's just pride, being judgmental, or perhaps it is big, maybe you're involved in sexual immorality or there's some private sins that nobody knows about and you're kind of, you know, all this kind of junk that's in our life and you're like, Pastor, God's convicted me of some things and I can see in His word that the way I'm living is different than the word, just like what they found, the Jewish people, and you say, I need to repent. I need to confess and I need to repent of some things in my heart here today. Would you be honest before God and slip up your hand?

Nobody looking around. I see hands going up everywhere. Thank you. My hands with you.

I'm right there with you. First service, we had a ton of people making decisions for Christ in that. Listen, I just want to stand everybody.

Nobody's looking around. Let's all stand together at this time and if your hand went up, you want to pray at the altar, you can. If you want to pray right there where you're at, I'm going to pray for you and I'm going to include you in my closing prayer. Father, for those that raised their hand, you know their hearts today that they are saying, hey, they're acknowledging their sin, some gaps between what the word says and how we live and they want to get those things right. God, I pray, Lord, that you give them the courage to respond right now here in this moment. God, we give you the praise and honor for it all, for it's in your name. We pray.

Nobody looking around. If your hands went up or you want to do business with God, this altar is wide open. If you want to pray with a pastor, you want to talk to a pastor or to a leader, we would be happy to help you. You can come down front or you can sit right where you are and just kneel. But listen, here's the thing. Don't leave here the same. None of us have to leave these doors the same way. None of us do. We can make this right, confessing it before God and asking him to lead us back so that we can draw close to him. Remember, that's the goal. We all want to draw close to God. But in order to do that, we have to remove sin in our life.