How Firm A Foundation

Sermon Summary:

In this powerful message, we’re reminded of the vital importance of God’s Word in our journey of rebuilding and renewal. The story of Nehemiah and Ezra gathering the people to hear the law of Moses serves as a poignant reminder that true restoration begins with reconnecting to God’s truth. Just as the Israelites stood in reverence as the Scriptures were read, we too are called to give God the opportunity to speak into our lives through His Word. This isn’t just about knowledge, but about transformation. As we engage with Scripture, we open ourselves to wisdom, counsel, comfort, and guidance. In our busy lives, we’re challenged to make time for God’s Word, recognizing it as the foundation for flourishing in our faith. The message encourages us to see Bible study not as a chore, but as an encounter with the living God, capable of reorienting our lives and leading us to true worship.

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Sermon Points:

CONTEXT: The wall was finished! The great re-building project was complete! However, Nehemiah knew that the survival of God’s people was not guaranteed by a physical wall around the sacred city of Jerusalem. If God’s people are to fulfill His purposes, they must honor God with their lives. This could only be possible if they knew, understood, and obeyed the Word of God! So, a “revival” service was held in Jerusalem to commemorate the completion of the wall.

LESSON TO BE LEARNED

As Christians, we are to honor God as we seek to re-build our lives. This is only possible if we acknowledge the authority of2 God’s Word. God’s Word is to be read, studied, contemplated, memorized, and applied as we engage in the journey of re- building.

Give God the opportunity to speak into your life through His Word!

God will provide you wisdom, counsel, correction, and guidance through His Word.

God wants you to know Him and worship Him. Spending time in His Word will lead you to a proper acknowledgment of Him in your life.

Key Takeaways:

• Rebuilding often requires returning to the foundation of God’s Word
• The Bible is unique and authoritative for believers
• Regular engagement with Scripture is essential for spiritual growth and renewal
• The church takes Bible education seriously for all ages
• God’s Word leads to proper acknowledgment and worship of God
• Consistent Bible reading orients life, provides purpose, and addresses personal brokenness

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Scripture References:

• Nehemiah 8:1-6 (primary focus)
• Isaiah 40:8
• Psalm 19:7
• Psalm 119:89
• Hebrews 4:12
• 2 Timothy 3:14-16

Stories:

• The pastor’s grandmother giving him a Bible with a handwritten note upon his ordination
• Children’s misunderstandings of Bible stories (e.g., “Shadrach, Meshach, and a billy goat”)
• The pastor’s first Bible received as a baby in the church nursery
• The church’s tradition of giving Bibles to first-graders
• The pastor’s personal experience of finding comfort in Jesus’ words about worry

Transcript

Well, good morning, church. It’s good to see you here this morning. And we have worshiped the Lord together here today. Just remind you that our theme, if you’ve been here for a while, you know that our theme for 2024 is Together. And we have spent this entire year exploring different facets of what that means.

Just to give you a glimpse ahead, our theme for 25, 26 and 27, we are going to gather under the concept and we’re going to study together what it means to flourish together. So Flourishing Together will guide us for these next three years. And we’ll be exploring various aspects of that. And I would go ahead and encourage you to Mark your calendar. We’re going to begin that journey in January of 2025.

And on the weekend of January 24th, 25th and 26th, we’re going to have a churchwide retreat here of Flourishing Together Weekend. And we’re going to launch a three year journey as a church. And we’re really looking forward to sharing that with you and walking down that path with you. But this year the theme is Together. And for the fall, it is Together for the Future.

And we are reading Ezra and Nehemiah and we’re exploring the truths that are found in Ezra and Nehemiah. And as I’ve shared with you all before, there are various lenses through which you can read and study Ezra and Nehemiah. We’ve chosen the Rebuilding lens, which means we’ve been exploring what it means to rebuild your life. And we find ourselves sometimes in a season of rebuilding. A lot of times it’s beyond our control.

This morning I was driving to pick up my granddaughter to come to church and I was listening to the message and there was a guy on the message, the radio station, who said, I’m 50 years old and I have found myself, because of recent events, starting all over again. And I’m rebuilding my entire life. And I started to call in and say, you need to watch these sermons at First Baptist Arlington, because that’s what we’re talking about. And as we’ve said, rebuilding happens because of various things. Sometimes we experience a death in our family and then life on the other side of it means we’ve got to rebuild our lives.

Sometimes a marriage ends and then we find ourselves in a situation where we’ve got to rebuild. Maybe a job change, things can happen to us vocationally. And then next thing you know, we’ve got to just reevaluate and ree. Examine who we are and maybe even reinvent some things about ourselves. Sometimes you’re just.

You just in a season where you just think it’s time for that. You know, maybe it’s just a sense of God’s direction in your life and you feel like it’s time for me to just reorient myself. Businesses go through that. Some of you may be a part of that. It’s your workplace.

Some of you may be leaders in your workplace, and you’re rebuilding it. Churches go through it. If there’s ever been a time where churches have been rebuilding, reevaluating, recalibrating, this has been that era. After we’ve been through this pandemic, it’s something that’s had such a wide ranging effect across our culture. Churches are having to reevaluate what they do and how they engage in ministry.

I’m old enough to remember if you wanted to be a part of a Sunday school group and you wanted to study the Bible in that Sunday school group, you had to be physically present to do that. Well, now I live in an era where we have people all the time who join us in this hybrid kind of environment. And it has become a part of our reality. And we’re grateful for it. We’re grateful for, just like right now, there are people that are joining us online and they’re part of our church, some of them longtime church members who join us every week that way.

And so we’ve had to rethink, recalibrate, rebuild some things. It’s just what happens. Well, with that said, we’ve already learned some lessons about rebuilding. If you’re new to us this morning, we’ve already made some headway in this journey. Let me just remind you what we’ve learned already.

We began with neology. If you’re a Christian and you’re about to rebuild your life in any way, you always start with prayer. So we begin the journey on our knees. And remember, when you’re on your knees, it’s hard to strut. It’s hard to parade yourself around when you’re on your knees.

And so that’s where we always start, is with prayer. Second lesson we learned is you are here and you remember, we’ve talked about this. You can’t start from where you wish you were. You have to start from where you are. So you have to take an honest assessment of exactly what’s happening in your life and what you’re actually dealing with.

The third lesson, planning and zoning. You actually have to make a plan. And remember, a dream is not a plan. You have to make a plan and Begin a process of implementation. You know, Nehemiah, when he arrived in Jerusalem, we’ve read this story.

He took a survey of the situation and then he made a plan and said, now we’ve got to move forward. Fourth lesson has to do with obstacles. You know that if you do anything of note, you’re going to face some obstacles. Rebuilding is not a downhill, easy journey. That’s just not how it works.

You’re going to face some obstacles, and the good news is you can overcome them. Last Sunday morning, we talked about distractions. It’s easy to get detoured by distractions. And distractions oftentimes are the things we’ve got to ignore. We’ve got to learn the difference between an obstacle and a distraction.

Obstacles you have to deal with, you got to face them, you got to overcome them. Some distractions you just need to walk away from. And it’s a sign of maturity when you and I can determine and discern the difference between both of those. Let’s look at another lesson this morning, and it’s found in Nehemiah 8. If you have your copy of the Old Testament with you, and I’ve entitled the message How Firm a Foundation.

And we’re going to look at what took place in the life of the Jews once the wall was constructed around Jerusalem. And it was now time to at least pause and celebrate. Nehemiah and Ezra felt like it was also time to recalibrate spiritually, which is a part of the journey. And they chose to do that. And this story will describe exactly what happened.

So if you look with me, if you have your copy of the Old Testament, we’re actually going to begin in Nehemiah 7. The end of verse 73 is where we’ll pick up the story. So here’s what the text Sundays. When the seventh month came and the Israelites had settled in their towns, all the people came together as one in the square before the Watergate. They told Ezra, the teacher of the law, to bring out the book of the Law of Moses, which the Lord had commanded for Israel.

So on the first day of the seventh month, Ezra the priest, brought the law before the assembly, which was made up of men and women and all who were able to understand. He read it aloud from daybreak till noon as he faced the square before the Watergate in the presence of the men and women and others who can understand. And all the people listened attentively to the Book of the Law. Ezra, the teacher of the law, stood on a high wooden platform built for the occasion. Beside him, on his right stood Matathiah, Sheamama, Aniah, Uriah, Hiliah, Messsia, and on his left were Padiah, Mishael, Malkaijah, Hashm, Haanada, Zechariah, and Mashulim.

Ezra opened the book. All the people could see him because he was standing above them. And as he opened it, the people all stood up. Era praised the Lord, the great God, and all the people lifted their hands and responded. Amen.

Amen. And then they bowed down and they worshiped the Lord with their faces to the ground. So Nehemiah 6 tells us the wall was complete. And once the wall was complete, Nehemiah felt like it was time to have a special commemorative service, if you will. Now, they won’t actually dedicate the wall until Nehemiah 12, but this is a service of celebration and commemoration.

And so here’s what’s taking place. Let me just remind us of the Context of Nehemiah 8. The wall was finished. The great rebuilding project was complete. However, Nehemiah knew the survival of God’s people was not guaranteed by a physical wall around the sacred city of Jerusalem.

If God’s people are to fulfill his purposes, they must honor God with their lives. And this could only be possible if they knew, understood and obeyed the word of God. So a revival service was held in Jerusalem to commemorate the completion of the wall. It’s recorded in MI8. Now, the service went on, and we’ll pick up the story next week for our next lesson in rebuilding.

But we’re going to stop here in verse 6. No one will connect it next week. So here’s where we are. The people who lived in Israel, while the bulk of the people were in exile, they didn’t all live in Jerusalem. In fact, there were very few people that lived in Jerusalem.

So Nehemiah builds a wall around the city. And then the text says after the wall was finished, it was completed in about two months, a little bit less. The people went back to their towns and villages to settle and to live. Now Nehemiah wants to repopulate the city of Jerusalem. But the people who were in Jerusalem didn’t feel safe.

That’s why they were living in the outer areas. They. The temple had been rebuilt. But if they lived in a large group, if you will, unprotected, that was not a safe thing to do in the ancient world. And so there weren’t that many people living in Jerusalem.

So Nehemiah is going to try to invite them back, but in order to do that, he needs to get them reoriented to who they are. So he calls this assembly he and Ezra. And so the people come and they gather just inside the Watergate. Now, I’m old enough to remember Watergate. Some of y’all have no idea what that is.

You can only imagine how many theologians have written about this story, though, trying to connect it to something. It’s just weird how we do that. All that is is it’s a gate as you head out of Jerusalem down to the Gihon Springs. In other words, it’where you could actually go get water. It’s a matter of convenience.

In other words, you going have all these people gathered into Jerusalem for this time. Time. They’re going to be there all day, at least, maybe several days. They want to have access to water. And so they call the gathering.

It’s the seventh month, the text says. Well, that’s a special month in the Jewish calendar. They had been doing this for centuries already. You begin the month with the Feast of the Trumpets. Then on the 10th of the month, you have the Day of Atonement.

And then later you’ll have the feast of the Tabernacles. All that’s going to take place in this very holy month for the Jews. So Nehemiah gathers them all there, asks everyone to come in for this particular celebration. They’ve built some type of a big platform. And the priests and the scribes, the teachers of the law, led by Ezra, are going to give the message and they’re going to challenge the people.

And it’s interesting, when you look at this text, if you start in verse one of chapter eight and go through verse 12, you’ll find this phrase, the people. As a matter of fact, it appears 13 times in 12 verses. The people, nine times. All the people. So the writer is communicating to us that everybody was there.

This message was for everybody. And it was a call to remember. It was a call to renew, if you will. And actually, what occurs is a revival that breaks out. They’re commemorating, celebrating the completion of the wall, but they have the reading of the Scripture.

As a matter of fact, it says for six hours or so, from dawn until noon, they just gather around hearing the scripture read, and the people respond. Have this incredible experience. Now, with that said, what’s the lesson for us to learn today? Well, let me just sum it up for you, and then I’ll make two or three applications, if I may. Here’s the lesson to be learned as we’re rebuilding.

I would say this as Christians, if you’re rebuilding your life, we are to honor God as we seek to rebuild our lives. And this is possible only if we acknowledge the authority of God’s word. God’s word is to be read, studied, contemplated, memorized, and applied as we engage in the journey of rebuilding. In other words, for Christians, at the heart of any renewal, restoration and rebuilding, s reason is the Word of God. Now, you know, one of my spiritual gifts is to state the obvious.

So isn’t it already obvious that if you’re going to rebuild your life as a Christian, you’ve got to be obedient to the Word of God, Isn’t it? I mean, you cannot rebuild your life in a way that is out of sync with God’s revealed truth and expect God to bless it. If you want the blessing of God, you got to pay attention to the Word of God already revealed truth. And so I would tell you that the Bible is at the heart of it all. You know, I’ve been doing this a long time.

And when I was ordained to the ministry, my grandmother, she little Mary Agatha McGahi, she couldn’t see over this pulpit. Probably she’s a real small lady, but don’t let that fool you. If you want to know who was large and in charge of our family, it was little Mama, as we called her. Tiny little lady, but fiery on the inside. So she called me to see her when I was ordained.

So I went to see, I called her memma, and she had a Bible for me. And I still have it in my office. And she wrote me a handwritten note in the fly leaf, and it said, dennis, my grandson. And she told me, study this. What she wrote, study to show thyself approved unto God a workman that needeth not be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.

Love memo. And it was when she handed me that Bible, her admonition was, whatever you do, you preach the Bible. Well, the church needs to be led by men and women who preach and teach the Bible because the word of God is at the heart of who we are. Now, what I’ve loved about preaching and teaching the Bible is sharing it with children. You know, children are awesome.

You know, one of the things that is important to us is teaching children. So, for example, one of the things I’m doing right now is my office. Jen leaves me a little stack of new testamen. She didn’t put all of them there at one time for the baby dedication because it’s too overwhelming to me to sign them all. So she puts them out just a little bit at a time so I can kind of get Them done and.

But when someone, a family comes before us in the church and the home is dedicated and they dedicate their babies, we give them a new Testament. First Sunday that I showed up at whileil I’m Baptist CH in Birmingham, Alabama. After I was born, my church gave me this Bible and I still haven’t had it all my life. And I keeping in my office because the church I grew up in took the Bible seriously. Well, we do that here.

As a matter of fact, when you get to first grade, we have a special time for all our first graders. Had it last Sunday in the children’s building. We give all of our first graders their own Bible and we let them know this, this is yours. This is for you to read so that you will understand the Bible. And I love that about children.

Now children have a way of interpreting the Bible.

So through the years I’ve collected things, I’ve found them on the Internet, I found them in my own notes, things that children say about the Bible. For example, one child, Roote, Shadrach, Meshach and a billy goat were thrown into a fire.

Joshua led the Hebrews in the battle of Jtal Y all don’t even know what getal is, but it’s okay.

Noah’s wife was called Joan of Arc.

One little boy wrote, a Christian should have only one wife. This is called monotony.

Oh Lord, help me.

Jesus went up to heaven, but he will be back at the end of the aluminum.

Moses was the most wicked man in the Bible. He broke all ten commandments at the same time.

Speaking of Moses, Moses went up on Mount Sinaide to get the 10amendments.

But some kids wrote the Lord’s prayer in their own language. And one kid wrote, and forgive us our trash baskets as we forgive those who put trash in our baskets.

That’s actually not bad right there if you think about it. So. But you got to love kids, you know. Well, one of the things hopefully at our church is these children are learning the scripture because it’s important to us as a church. If you were to look at our Constitution, I’m sure you’re probably reading that this morning.

Weren’t you on any way to church? You were probably having a conversation in the car. What do you think Article VI7 means in the Constitution at First Baptist? Well, you actually can’t access it, but in the Constitution, here’s what we say as a church. We say that our theological understanding, and I’m paraphrasing it, is based upon the confession of faith known as the Baptist faith and message.

The one that was adopted in 1963. And there’s an article on the Scripture in that confession of faith. Now we’ve taken those basic core commitments from the Baptist faith and message and we’ve put them in language that’s a little more accessible and summarize them in what we call our core beliefs as a church. You can access that online if you would like. And here’s what our core belief statement says about the Bible.

We believe the Bible is the word of God. The human authors of the Bible were uniquely inspired by the Spirit of God. His guidance led them to record his truth. The Bible is authoritative for every believer and it provides the counsel of God for everyday life. And so that summarizes our take on the Scripture because we believe the Bible is important.

And this text, the mia, records a beautiful experience of what happened in the life of the people of God at a particular time when they experienced the renewing work of God as they came in direct contact with the Word of God. That’s the story that Nehemiah records. As a matter of fact, when you study the history of the people of God, every renewal movement in the history of the people of God is somehow connected to the Word of God where God has spoken powerfully and pointedly to his people and it’s brought about a time of renewal in their lives. Why is that? Well, because the Bible is God’s Revelation of himself.

What does the Bible say about itself? What does the word of God proclaim about itself? Well, let me just read you some texts. Isaiah 40 ver. 8.

The grass withers, the flowers fall, but the word of our God endures forever. Psalm 19rse 7. The law of the Lord is perfect, refreshing the soul. The statutes of the Lord are trustworthy, making wise the simple. Psalm 119, verse 89.

Your word Lord is eternal. It stands firm in the heavens. Hebrews 4, verse 12. For the word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any double edged sword.

It penetrates even to the dividing of the soul and spirit, to the joint and marrow it Judges. It says the thoughts and the attitudes of the heart. If you’ve been using our devotional guide, each week you have a togethering word passage. This week our together in word passage is 2 Timothy 3, verses 14:16 where the scripture says that the Scripture makes us wise unto salvation. It’s God breathed.

It’s useful for instruction and for training in righteousness. The Bible, it is the most translated. It is linguistically, it’s the most studied. It is the most distributed, it is the most Historically verifiable religious document in the history of the world. The Bible was written across the span of 1500 years.

40 different authors. The Old Testament was written in Hebrew, a few passages in Aramaic, actually here in Ezra, the New Testament written in Greek. But the Bible is a Jewish document. It was written by Jews. It’s an Eastern document.

And you and I, we are Western Gentiles. And so hopefully that creates a spirit of humility among us because we are foreigners who have been grafted into the family of God. That’s what’s happened. Unfortunately, most Western Christians believe that we are the center of Christianity and everybody else, our foreigners grafted in when that’s just not the case. We’re the foreigners, the Jewish people who embraced Christ as the Messiah once the Messiah came.

They are at the heart of this movement. And the Gentiles are grafted in. That should keep us humble. But there is one thing that Western Christians are not very good at. Humility is hard for us.

But if we could keep that in mind, perhaps it might enable us to be gracious in many other things that we do. That’s another sermon. The beautiful thing about the Bible is it’s available to you. In fact, scholars have worked very hard to ensure that we have it. There’s a whole group of scholars known as textual critics.

They are some of our finest Christians across the world. I had the privilege of taking New Testamen Greek and the study of New Testament from one of those textual critics, Dr. James Brooks at Southwestern Seminary. Dr. Brooks had a PhD in New Testament Greek from Princeton.

He also had a PhD or D fil, if you will, in New Testament Greek from Oxford University in England. He’s one of the leading textual critics in the world. The job of the textual critic is to make sure he had the best readings of the text texts. They’re a group of mostly nameless people that you’ve never met. And you’re entirely indebted to them because if you were to read the preface to Almost Meeting Modern translation of the Scriptures, there’s a shout out to them because they’re the ones that have helped formulate the best texts from which we then can translate into various languages.

And you’re the beneficiary of all that work. There’s a whole chain of Christian scholars who’ve made it available for you to pick up this book and read it in your language. Isn’t that amazing? Praise God for those people. And we have.

Not only has the Bible been translated to English, my goodness, y’all, we got numerous translations In English. And, you know, right now there’s a huge movement in missiology among a group of folks who are engaged in Bible translation. They’re actually utilizing artificial intelligence right now because it’s the desire of many, many folks in that world to make sure that we have at least a portion of the Scripture translated into every human language by the year 2033. Now, what’s special about the year 2033? Cindy and I had dinner the other night with one of those men who’s financing this incredible multinational global effort.

Well, the significance of 2033 is if you look at our calendar, the way we date things today, that will be the 2000th anniversary of Pentecost, when the people who are there in Jerusalem heard the Bible proclaimed in their own languages. And so the heart of that movement is connected to the desire to get the Word of God into the hands of people. Because we believe that the Word of God is powerful. And if people will accept the Word of God, it will change their lives. So if you’re wanting to rebuild your life, and you’re a Christian, what I would tell you is you have to engage with the Scripture because you cannot rebuild your life effectively without being connected to what God has said.

You cannot ignore what God has said. You cannot disobey God and expect him to bless your life. It doesn’t work that way. Nehemiah and Ezra knew that it’s one thing to build the temple, it’s one thing to build a wall, It’s a whole not other thing to build the people of God. And these men knew that if that was going to happen, everybody needed instruction.

So I want you to notice what happened. Men, women and children, everybody could understand. That’s who came and they came to hear the Word of God. Now, let me just real quickly give you three quick applications, okay? If that’s the lesson that we’ve got to honor God and honor His Word, let me just give you three quick applications or suggestions.

First one is this. Give God the opportunity to speak into your life through His Word. I would tell you, you and I must make room for the Word of God in our everyday lives. And you and I today are without excuse. If you can’t read the Bible in 2024, I don’t know how to help you.

If you’re in our culture, there are so many reading plans, right? And you can just. You can access them with just a touch of your finger. It’s amazing. Everything, as a matter of fact.

Not only that, you can actually just have the Bible read to you. You can even pick the accent if you just for some reason respond better. If the Bible is being read by Britisher, boom, you can do it. If it’s an Irish person, boom, you can do it. And I don’t know, I haven’t seen if there’s one that will read it to you with an Alabama accent.

So if you’ll call me, I’ll read it to you if you need me to, in an Alabama accent if that’ll help you understand God’s Word better. The point is that all these plans we have together in Word, you can listen to it driving in your car, you can read the scripture in the morning, in the evening, on lunch break, you can listen to it. It’s just amazing’s what is all available. I would just encourage you and me make room for the word of God in your life every day. I have done it for years and there’s all different ways to do it.

Sometimes I’m reading through the Psalms, sometimes I’m reading through the Proverbs. I’m always reading the Gospels. Sometimes I’m looking for specific instruction. I I’ll read the Epistle. Sometimes I want to hear the voice of a prophet.

The good news is the scripture. It’s a library and it contains all kinds of genres of material and you can access it readily. I encourage you to give God an opportunity to speak. Second, God will provide you wisdom, counsel, correction and guidance through His Word. Do you need any of that?

I can tell you right now, I need wisdom. I do. I need counsel, I need correction, I need comfort, I need guidance. And the Lord provides that do His Word. Just this past week I was engaged in a couple of situations and I sought the Lord’s wisdom.

And I began reading our focal passage and just stayed in it last week where Jesus said to seek first the kingdom of God, his righteousness. Three times in that text, Jesus said, don’t worry, don’t worry, don’t worry. Some of us have PhDs in worrying. Well, the Scripture offers a corrective voice to us. Listen to what God has to say.

God will provide you wisdom and counsel and correction and guidance. He’s good at it and he speaks to you through his Word. Nehemiah and Ezra, you got the temple, you got the wall. But the people of God, now they’ve got to live in a relationship with God. I would tell you at this church, we take the Bible seriously.

At First Baptist Arlington, you know, years ago, I’ve told you all this before. I think I was in a small group of pastors of Larger churches. We were meeting in Colorado, and they asked us to show a photo of our campus. So we were just looking at all of our churches. There were just a handful of us in my small group, and every pastor that I was meeting with pastored churches that had large sanctuaries, a little place on their campus for instructing children, and that was it.

When I showed them my campus, they were like, wow, what are all these buildings? What is all this? And I said, well, there’s our education buildings. Well, why would you have an education building? I said, well, because every Sunday morning, we’re teaching the Bible.

What do you mean? I said, well, we have classes of adults. One of them said, y’all teach adults? Don’t you teach the Bible from the pulpit? Yes.

I said, but at our church, we break up into small groups on our campus, and every age group studies the Bible. And one of the guys said, your campus looks like a college campus. I said, well, I’ve never thought about it that way because I’ve just taken for granted that’s what everybody does. But it’s not. It’s what we do, though.

We take it seriously. Here’s the deal. If you bring your child to this church, I don’t care what age they are. It doesn’t matter. Our preschool ministry doesn’t babysit.

We speak truth in the lives of our children. We sing songs into their life. We want them to know that God created them, that God loves them, God is their friend, and we pour that into those kids. Our children study the scripture here. Our youth study the scripture.

We provide scripture training for adults. We take the Bible serious. As a matter of fact, we are going to teach you the Bible all the way to your grave. We’re not going to give up because we know that we all need it. It.

So we take the Bible seriously here. Because God provides so much through it. I would encourage you. Let him shape you through His Word. And then the last thing I’d say is this.

Here’s the point of it all. Y’all, Y’all still with me? So here’s the point. God wants you to know him end of the day and worship Him. We don’t worship the Bible.

That’s idolatry. We worship the God who stands behind the Bible. And spending time in His Word will lead you to a proper acknowledgement of him in your life. What did these people do? Ezra starts reading the Bible.

Did you read what they did? They just stood up. I mean, it’s like they didn’t know. They didn’t know what to do. But they weren’t being introduced to it.

They already knew the word of God. It wasn’t new to them. This was the law of Moses. They were familiar with it. But something happened at this particular season.

It was a renewal and they just stood up. And then the Bible says they started praising God. They started saying amen, Amen. Next thing you know, they’re bowed to the ground. The text says, worshiping God.

You see, when you encounter truth and you come to know God for who he is, then you come to know you for who you are. And the next thing you know, you’re worshipping him because you can’t help it. You start acknowledging him, you start having the right posture toward him. Do you know the American Bible Society has done all this research about what happens to people who engage the text? People discover meaning and purpose.

People experience more vitality in their spiritual life. People experience more spiritual growth. People tend to volunteer more and serve more faithfully. People become more generous. You know how at the heart of every one of those is just engag in the Bible.

In other words, the Bible can consistent intake. Engagement will change your life. It will shape you. It will bring you face to face with who you are. It will help you find the right posture.

It will lead you to a deeper relationship with God, which is what God’s after in the first place. And so when you’re reading the scripture, you’re encountering God himself. You don’t have to wait on an encounter. That is the encounter, because God’s revealing himself to you. So are you rebuilding your life right now?

Well, let me encourage you. If you’re a Christian, take the time to weave into this journey faithful interactions with God’s word give him the opportunity to shape your life through his truth. Because Jesus himself said, if you know the truth, the truth will set you free. Amen and amen. Let’s pray together.

Father, we want to thank you, Lord, today for just even revealing yourself through your word. You didn’t have to do that, but we’re glad you did. I think about how little we would know about you had you not chosen to reveal yourself to us. So thank you. And Lord, there are those within the sound of my voice right now that are in the process of rebuilding.

They’re in that journey and, and perhaps today, just a good reminder that in order to do that, we need to be faithful to truth. So I ask you, Lord, to encourage them to make room for your word in their life, and may they build their lives upon it. It may encounters with the scripture so shape us that we’ll become more like Jesus and we will have a deeper knowledge of who you are and a more vital relationship with you. We pray that in Jesus name, amen.