I'm gonna read our portion of scripture tonight. We're gonna be reading Nehemiah chapter two. If you don't have a Bible, there's a Bible in front of you, and if you don't own a Bible, that is our gift to you, actually. It's always important to have God's word. You can put your name in it. This is Nehemiah chapter two. We will begin in verse one, and we're gonna do our best to read the whole chapter. It says, in the month of Nisan, In the 20th year of King Artaxerxes, when wine was before him, I took up the wine and gave it to the king. Now I had not been sad in his presence. And the king said to me, why is your face sad, seeing you are not sick? This is nothing but sadness of the heart. Then I was very much afraid. I said to the king, let the king live forever. Why should not my face be sad when the city, the place of my father's graves, lies in ruins, and its gates have been destroyed by fire? Then the king said to me, what are you requesting? So I prayed to the God of heaven, and I said to the king, if it pleases the king, and if your servant has found favor in your sight, that you send me to Judah, to the city of my father's graves, that I may rebuild it. And the king said to me, the queen sitting beside him, How long will you be gone, and when will you return? So it pleased the king to send me when I had given him a time, and I said to the king, If it pleases the king, let letters be given me to the governors of the province beyond the river, that they may let me pass through until I come to Judah, and a letter to Asaph, the keeper of the king's forest, that he may give me timber to make beams for the gates of the fortress of the temple, and for the wall of the city, and for the house that I will occupy. And the king granted me what I asked, for the good hand of my God was upon me. Then I came to the governors of the province beyond the river and gave them the king's letters. Now the king had sent with me officers of the army and horsemen, but when Sanballat the Horonite and Tobiah the Ammonite servant heard this, it displeased them greatly that someone had come to seek the welfare of the people of Israel. So I went to Jerusalem and was there three days. Then I arose in the night, I and a few men with me, and I told no one what my God had put into my heart to do for Jerusalem. There was no animal with me but the one on which I rode. I went out by night by the valley gate to the dragon spring and to the dung gate, and I inspected the walls of Jerusalem that were broken down and its gates that had been destroyed by fire. Then I went on to the fountain gate and to the king's pool, but there was no room for the animal that was under me to pass. Then I went up in the night by the valley and inspected the wall, and I turned back and entered by the valley gate, and so returned. And the officials did not know where I had gone or what I was doing, and I had not yet told the Jews, the priests, the nobles, the officials, and the rest who were to do the work. Then I said to them, you see the trouble we are in, how Jerusalem lies in ruins with its gates burned? Come, let us build the wall of Jerusalem that we may no longer suffer derision, And I told them of the hand of my God that had been upon me for good, and also the words that the king had spoken to me. And they said, let us rise up and build. So they strengthened their hands for the good work. But when Sanballat the Horonite and Tobiah the Ammonite, servant and Geshem the Arab heard of it, they jeered at us and despised us and said, what is this thing that you are doing? Are you rebelling against the king? Then I replied to him, the God of heaven will make us prosper. and we his servants will arise and build, but you have no portion or right or claim in Jerusalem. Let's pray. Father, we come to your word, and once again, we are excited to hear what you have to say to us. Sometimes it's really difficult to hear, and sometimes it's really exciting, and sometimes it's both. Whatever you have for us tonight, God, may your spirit open up our eyes to see who you are, to see what you've done, and may it point us to your son, Jesus. May you please speak your words through Mike. Fill him, control him, use him, and open up our eyes and ears to hear what you have to say to us. And it's only because of your son that we pray these things. Amen. Well, good evening. So if you guys need a Bible and you don't like the one you have here, the Lost and Found is actually located in the office. Just look for one that has the pencil in it and you just erase the name and it's yours. So I always found the good Bibles there. Speaking of that, I actually lost my Bible. So if it says Mike Tonks on it and you take it, God will judge you, OK? Do you understand me? So I'm using a different Bible, so I'm not able to really kind of navigate as well as I'd like. It just has a different feel and texture. I just finally broke it in. I had to have tape all over it. And I'm like, yeah, I love this thing. But now this one's all stiff and weird. I don't know. It's kind of different for me. So we're going to be in Nehemiah tonight, Nehemiah 2. You guys might be asking, why a book like Nehemiah? They're building a wall. We don't need to build a wall around our church. We don't need to construct a wall around anything, really. I mean, the thing you might do the most is build a wood fence out of redwood or something like that around your house. I mean, that's about it. And we're not doing that today. We're not encouraging you to do that. But what we are doing is to point you to Jesus that you might go into your city and be used of God. So Nehemiah, I can only assume this guy had to be a crazy guy. Kind of a crazy, kooky kind of guy. And I love him. I love this guy. I'm going to back up just a little bit here into Nehemiah 1, just the last line. And it says, Now I was the cupbearer to the king. Okay? Nehemiah was a cupbearer to the king. And so many times I think there's this romantic atmosphere about being in ministry, and you really, it's like, oh man, I get to do God's work, and it's so awesome and so cool, and then reality sets in, and you're like, yeah, that wasn't, that wasn't as much fun as I thought. You know, there was some heartache, some trouble, it was difficult. You ever meet someone who's just burnt out on ministry? I have an aunt like that or a great aunt like that. She's been in church pretty much her whole life and she doesn't want to be in ministry because she's been burnt so many times, which is a sin. But also in this passage, we also get to see the sweetness of ministry too. We get to see God come in and move. We see God's hand come on Nehemiah and God is doing some unbelievable things in ministry. So I want to encourage you. Not to be like my great-aunt who is fed up with ministry, but look to Jesus, enjoy Him, get involved in ministry. And sometimes, too, I think that we don't see ourselves as maybe the guy that's standing in front of people talking. We're like, oh, I can't be used to God. You know, I can't be used in some great, magnificent way, because we all want to be used greatly, don't we? We all want to be used mightily of God. I remember growing up, I wanted to be Billy Graham, okay? I wanted to be the guy filling out the stadiums and, you know, people are pushing other people, get out of my way, I gotta get up to the front. Billy just made an altar call, you know? That's the guy I wanted to be. And then reality set in. You know, I'm not that guy. I'm not Billy Graham. But what I love about Nehemiah is he's a cupbearer to the king. That's his job. But God uses him and we start seeing God use him in work in his life to start doing something great and amazing. So you may think that you're just insignificant, that you're a nobody in the church. But you've been called by God. You've been called by God. You've been called son. And because of that, you've been called to ministry. You've been called to be a minister to your neighbors, to your coworkers, to your friends, to your family. Nehemiah was just a cut bear. The reason why I say I think the guy was kind of crazy is because you have to be in order to be a cut bear, right? I mean, you just have to be. Hey, take a sip of this wine. There might be poison in it. And if there is, you're dead. Okay, cool. Drink it. Oh, please don't be poisoned. Please don't be poisoned. You drink it. Hey, no poison. I still have a job. This is great. It says in verse two, we see that Chapter one and chapter two, there's about a three-month separation. In chapter one, we see Nehemiah praying again and again and again. He is pouring his heart out because he sees Jerusalem just in waste. And he is crying out to God again and again and again. And we see in chapter two that these prayers are answered. These prayers are answered by God. And so he is before King Artaxerxes, and in chapter two, verse two, we see, so the king said to me, why is your face sad, though you are not sick? There is nothing but sadness of heart. One of the rules about being in front of a king is he had to be happy. He had to be happy all the time, because if you weren't, you just got your head lopped off. OK, so it's kind of, I'll fake it, or I'll get my head lopped off. I'm going to fake it. You might have a boss like this. It's like, boy, I love working on Mondays and being here bright and early. This is great. Cubicles, awesome. Fluorescent lights are not that bad. This is just great. You're always happy in front of the guy, always really cheery. That's what Nehemiah, and everyone else is supposed to do, but here Nehemiah goes before the king and he's just so sad he can't even fake it. He can't even fake it. So he comes in just heartbroken, upset. And the king says, why are you sad? You're not sick. This is nothing but sadness of the heart, kind of a deep, welling, heartbreaking sadness. And he says, then I was very much afraid. I was very much afraid. You know, I think we have this idea of, of leaders and leadership. They have to be fearless. You know, Hey, I'm the guy going in there on the white horse, raising the sword coming in full bore. Hey, I'm afraid of nothing. And he and I was like, uh, I was a little freaked out right now. I was trembling. The king saw that he was sad, he saw that he was upset, and so he was freaking out. In verse three, he said, I said to the king, let the king live forever. That's a good way to start, isn't it? It's like, hey, me and you, king, we're good, man. I don't have a problem with you. We're all right. Nothing's wrong here. Let the king live forever. But then he goes in, why should my face not be sad? When the city, the place of my father's tombs, lies desolate, and its gates have been consumed by fire. Verse four says this, then the king said to me, what would you request? So I prayed to the God of heaven. What's he doing in chapter one? He's praying. What's he doing in chapter 2? He's praying again. Chapter 1, we see this big, long, drawn-out prayer. I'm sorry, chapter 1 we see that. Chapter 2, we see this short little prayer. We see a short, tiny little prayer. King Ahasuerus, what's your request? So I prayed to the God of heaven. I call my dad quite a bit, probably every day. And you know how you look at your cell phone, you could hold it and be like, oh, hey, I talked for like three minutes and 22 seconds. And sometimes it's one of those things where I talk to him for over an hour, and I spend a long, drawn out time with him. And sometimes I talk for him like 20 seconds. Hey, I'm broken down on 101, come pick me up. Hang up. Both are just as good, aren't they? You know, sometimes we get this idea that we have to just be in deep meditating prayer, you know, draw it out. It has to be long or else God's not going to hear us. It's okay to pray those short prayers, right? You're going into a business meeting. You're scared. Hey God, I just need wisdom right now, right? You college guys. She's cute. I'm stupid. Dear Lord, help me. You know, Those are quick, good, one-line prayers. It's fine to be short and sweet. It's okay. My girls, I didn't really understand prayer as much as I do when I had kids. It kind of cleared a lot of things up for me. My daughter, Emma, who is six, she is kind of like the short kind of one. She has about 50 wardrobe changes every day. It's like, hey, I have a new wardrobe for the new movie I'm going to be watching. Oh, I got a change. I'm going out to the sandbox. Hey, I'm going to get on my bike. So she has all these things, and she'll come up to me. Daddy, how do I look? Oh my goodness, you look so good. You look beautiful. It makes you look so much older. You look like you're seven. I mean, it's amazing, right? And so it's just kind of those quick one-liners and she's off and running. Where Kara, she could talk to me forever about nothing. And you know what? Both of them are so sweet. Kara could just come up into my lap and just start talking about absolutely nothing. Like, what are you talking about? I don't even understand you. You're cute, but I don't understand you. And she's just long-winded. We played this game. We call it the shut-your-lips game. Or was it shut-your-mouth? The quiet game? I don't know what we call it. Leslie made it up, and it was to try and get a moment of peace in her car when you're driving, you guys ever go driving in a car with kids, and they're like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, and you're like, I just want like 10 seconds of quiet right now. And so Leslie goes, one, two, three, hush your lips. And everyone's quiet, and then Carrie goes, I can't stop it, la, la, la, la, la, la, la. And that's just her, she has to constantly be talking. And so we could talk for hours about nothing. And they're so sweet, they're so precious. And I love and value those times. You know, we don't have to be spending long time with God in prayer, even though we should at times. It doesn't have to be every time that we do that. It could be those moments of, I have no idea what to do right now. I'm just gonna shoot a quick prayer up to God. Just be real quick, concise, boom. A lot of times we feel like we have to be in the lotus position, stay there for hours. I'm not that flexible or patient. So what I do is I personally like to go to the beach, and I walk down to the other end of beaches. I go to goat rock, and I walk all the way down to the other end. and I bring my Bible, and I could pray out loud so people don't think I'm crazy, because people do think I'm crazy. Especially my children, like when I'm in the car and I'm trying to pray, they're now at that age, like, Daddy, who are you talking to? I'm like, oh, nothing, never mind, I can't do this anymore with you guys in the car. But we could find those times of prayer. We gotta go and find that time. But Nehemiah just shoots up this quick prayer. What's your request? The king of kings in this area is asking him, what is your request? So I prayed to the king of kings in heaven, and I said to the king this, if it pleases the king, and if your servant has found favor before you, send me to Judah, the city of my father's tombs, that I may rebuild it. This is a big, big request. This is a huge request. But notice, he says, if it pleases the king, and if your servant has found favor before you. Nehemiah has been a good employee. Let me encourage you guys to be good employees. You know, not the guy that's sitting there just slacking off, reading his Bible on the job. When you go to work, you work. That's what you do. You work. Are there times for that? Yeah, there are times for that. But when you go to work, you're faithful in what you're supposed to do. How do we know that Nehemiah was faithful? The king is still alive, right? He's not dead. He did a good job. He was faithful. He was doing a good job because the king is breathing at this moment. He said, if it pleases the king and if your servant has found favor before you, send me to Judah, the city of my father's tombs, that I may rebuild it. This is a big, big request. And let me tell you why, because in Ezra, around Ezra 4, verse 11 through 17, 18, 19, 20, somewhere in there, we see that this same king has made an edict saying that no one's gonna go back and build up Jerusalem. You're not going back there to do that. It's not happening. It's not gonna work. So what Nehemiah is saying is, hey man, your foreign policy is messed up. You need to rethink that. You need to send me back to my father's grave so that I could build up a wall so it could be protected so that God could receive glory. It's like the janitor going to our president and saying, hey man, you gotta rethink this thing. You're all messed up. And so it says in verse six, then the king said to me, the queen sitting beside him, How long will your journey be, and when will you return? So it pleased the king to send me, and I gave him a definite time." It's one thing to say that I have a bad idea. It's another thing to say I have a bad idea in front of my wife, right? Because it makes me look little and like, oh, hey, you know, my wife's right here. I got to look good and impressive. But that's exactly what Nehemiah did here with this king, right? He comes in right in front of the king's wife and says, hey, you blew it, buddy. You're off. You need to rethink this. But the king asked him, how long will your journey be and when will you return? We notice later on in Nehemiah what timeline that was. You know how long? 12 years. 12 years. How many of you guys are gonna go to your boss on Monday and be like, hey, so God told me I should go and build up the church right now. It's gonna take me 12 years. Can you give me some time off? You think that's gonna work out for you? I know you might die in that timeframe, but that'd be awesome if you could let me off. How long will your journey be, and when will you return? So it pleased the king to send me, and I gave him a definite time, verse seven, and I said to the king, if it pleases the king, let letters be given to the governors of the province beyond the river that they may allow me to pass through until I come to Judah. And a letter to Asaph, the keeper of the king's forest, that he may give me timber to make beams for the gates of the fortress, which are by the temple, for the wall of the city and for the house to which I will go. And the king granted them to me because the good hand of God was on me. This is an amazing thing. This is like the janitor coming up to the president saying, hey, reverse your foreign policy, pay for the whole project, build me a house, give me 12 years off. This is what I'm asking. And he did it. He did it. The king granted that. Could you imagine the president coming on and be like, yeah, I know I'm on CNN here. My foreign policy was all messed up, but don't worry, the janitor, he put me straight in line. That's not gonna happen. But notice why it happened. At the very end of verse eight, because the good hand of my God was on me. God's hand was upon this. God's hand was working. God was moving in all of this situation. It's amazing to see that we need to see that this is a God thing. That this is God's work that he is doing. To take someone lowly, a cut bear, and move him to a foreign land, make him the governor, and build up a wall. And we see this time and time again. I mean, I think of Josh and I, we were high school students pretending that we were Christians running around. Now what are we? We're pastors proclaiming the great name of Jesus Christ, right? I mean, you see this all over the place. God's hand is upon him. He is moving and doing things that are absolutely crazy. It's unbelievable. And notice what a servant does. He's leaving a life of good food, the comforts of a kingdom, and where is he going? To Jerusalem. A torn down wall, hard work, he's gonna be persecuted, and he's gotta do this great, incredible thing. I mean, who wants that job, right? Eh, I'm not gonna hang out with the king anymore. I'm gonna travel far away, and I'm gonna do this impossible thing. This is a difficult thing. Wouldn't you want to be with the king, lapping it up in luxury, eating good food, not having to do manual labor? But now he's going to Jerusalem, having to pick up rocks, move stuff around and build a wall. It shows you how great God is, right? When God's called you to do something, you're going to go and do it. You're going to go and accomplish that because God has called you. Verse nine, then I came to the governor of the providence beyond the river and gave them the king's letter. Now the king had sent with me officers and army and horsemen. So he's on his journey here. Verse 10 we see that there are two guys that come and they start opposing him. He gets to Jerusalem and what happens? It's not like welcome banners. There's not like a fruitcake sitting there waiting for him. It's like pure persecution. Hey, we're going to sit here and heckle you. We're going to cause trouble for you. There are people out there like that. We're going to see these guys again in this chapter, and we're going to see them throughout Nehemiah. Again and again and again, these guys are just going to come and make Nehemiah's life difficult. Verse 11, so I came to Jerusalem and was there three days, and I rose in the night and a few men with me. When I first heard this, I was like, you lazy bum. You sat around for three days and did nothing? I mean, come on, three days you're sitting there doing nothing? What's going on? I'm like, oh wait a minute, it's in the Bible. Man, I gotta rethink that one. Nehemiah Sabbath, he took time to rest. I don't know if you guys are like me, I'm not a guy that rests. I don't like to rest. I will work and work and work and work and work. When I first took the job as a pastor, I would wake up at one o'clock in the morning to go work at Old Navy, and then when my shift got over at like seven o'clock, I would go work construction until four, and then I would try and get some church work done, all the while coaching basketball. Okay. That's how I like to work. But unfortunately, I also like to breathe and my wife likes to see me. So I had to get rid of some of those things. And my wife told me to, I can't talk about her arthritis anymore, but, uh, I'm pretty sure she keeps not going to come down here and stop me. So I'm going to just say it anyways. Um, my wife has arthritis, has a difficult time moving. And this past week, it kind of started gripping me. You know what? Maybe she has this arthritis so that I would slow down. Because it's the only thing that would slow me down. It really is. Like if my kids had some ailment or whatever, I'm sure Leslie would be able to physically handle that if she wasn't sick. Like I literally have to slow down constantly to let Leslie catch up with me. If you see us walking, I'm like 20 feet ahead, and I go, oh, I gotta slow down. Oh, I gotta slow down, I gotta slow down. And it's frustrating to me, it's maddening at times, but you know what? I've got a Sabbath. I've just gotta stop and slow down. So I don't have it figured out perfectly, it came to me on Wednesday, so please give me a little time to work this out before you ask me how it's going. But we need to take time to rest, to stop. If you're like me and just would like to work and work and work and work, I struggle with this. My time off is like basically right after church on Sunday till right before this service, unless I'm preaching, then I sit there and do some sermon prep. That's pretty much my time off, and I'll take a nap with my kids. I love to work. I love it so much. But God has called us to rest. We'll be so much more productive, so much more fruitful. In verse 21, he rose up at nighttime. I and a few men with me. I did not tell anyone what my God was putting into my heart to do for Jerusalem. And there was no animal with me except the animal on which I was riding. So at nighttime, he gets on this horse and he starts riding around Jerusalem, taking a look. We need to know that he was coming up with a plan here. That there's planners and prayers, right? There's planners and prayers. And this is a good thing to see that Nehemiah does a good job of both. Usually you kind of tend towards one side or the other. I'm more of the planner side. put me into Office Depot. Man, I could sync everything together. This is awesome. I could organize and come up with a big plan, and it all works together. And then all of a sudden, I'm like, oh, wait, I didn't pray about that. Bummer. But you know what I find really interesting is a lot of times God puts planners and prayers together, and he gets them married, and it makes everyone's life a complete disaster, right? It's like everything's horrible. I come up with these plans, and Leslie goes, hey, did you pray for that? I'm the pastor. Yeah, I should, huh? I should probably work on that. But Nehemiah does this great job of praying and planning and praying and planning. Because we see back in the king, the king asked him, hey, what's your plan? What does he do? He doesn't sit there and go, um, don't really have one. I don't know what I'm going to be doing. I don't know what's happening. But he has a plan. He has an idea of what he's going to do. He's going to go to the city. He's going to get the wall rebuilt. He's going to motivate people to do this. He's going to have the king pay for it all. In verse 13, so I went out by the valley gate in the direction of the dragon's well on the way to the refuge gate. inspecting the wall of Jerusalem, which was broken down, and the gates were consumed by fire. Then I passed by the fountain gate and the king's pool, but there was no place for my mount to pass. So I went up at night by the ravine and inspected the wall. Then I entered the valley gate again and returned. He was coming up with a plan. You know, so many times we could pray and have no idea what we're going to do, or sometimes we plan and we haven't prayed it through. And I've been so convicted of this, especially as of late. You know, a lot of times I sit there, I pray, and I almost like give God the plan. I'm like, hey, here you go. Make sure it works out all right, okay? Are you guys like that? Am I just the only sinner in here? Okay, great. That's fabulous. I'll repent of that. I'll work on that. But you know what? We have to have both. They go hand in hand. They work together. Verse 16, the officials did not know where I had gone or what I had done, nor had I as yet told the Jews, the priests, the nobles, the officers, and the rest who did the work. You didn't tell anyone. It's good to know what your plan is. It's good not to tell everyone your plan too quickly. It's good to have a good idea, to pray it through, so that when questions do come up, you have an answer for them. Verse 17, then I said to them, you see the bad situation we are in. I love that this guy's a realist. I love that he's really taking a look at this. He's not, you know, color-coding it. I mean, he's candy-coding it. He's just telling it how it is. Hey guys, this is a bad situation. This is difficult. You know, we live in the second most unchurched county in the United States of America. Do you guys know that? I mean, we don't live in like this really church welcoming area. It's difficult. It's a difficult situation. You know, in the churches that are here, you know what they do? They just put their own little spin on church. You can even call it a church. They take God out. They take God's Word out. They put sin in. What we're doing is difficult. It's a hard thing. It's not easy. The church I pastor, they're surprised that we're not a megachurch by now. I've been there about a year or so. So they have some realistic expectations of me, which is great. And I try and tell them again and again and again, this isn't easy work. I mean, this is where church pastors come and die pretty much at times. This is where church planters struggle. It's not like we're in the Bible Belt where it's like you say, hey, new church, and hey, there's a thousand people right here. This is difficult work that we're in. This is excruciating work. The number one unchurched county in the United States, Marin County, by the way, so our neighbor. We're like right in the primary here. It's difficult, difficult work. You see the bad situation we're in. That Jerusalem is desolate and the gates burnt by fire. Come, let us rebuild the wall of Jerusalem so that we will no longer be a reproach. He unveils his vision. Tells him how hard it's gonna be. He tells him, let's go do this. Let's accomplish this work. In verse 18, I told them how the hand of my God had been favorable to me. and also about the king's word which he had spoken to me." He encouraged these people. He encouraged them. Hey, God has done so many great things, so many amazing things, and then he tells them, the king, he just gave us all this timber, and he built me a house. He's giving us a rite of passage. He reversed his policies. God is moving, and he is encouraging these people. God is moving, so let's push forward. Then they said, let us arise and build. So they put their hands to the good work. It's encouraging when people come and start working with you, isn't it? It's encouraging not to do work alone. After church, I was talking to a guy in our church, and I've been casting vision like crazy. Hey, this is where I believe God's calling us to go. This is what we should do. And it's this big, crazy, lofty goal. And to tell you the truth, people laugh at me when I tell it a lot of times. Hey, this is my goal. You're joking. Great, whatever. But you know what? I had a guy come up to me. In our church, he said, you know, Mike, I've been thinking, I really believe that God is calling us in this direction and that we should be going here. He said, I just realized, though, that my house is too small to have people in it, so I need to move in order to have people come into my house so that I can win them to Jesus Christ. I'm like, oh, praise God. This guy's getting it. This guy's understanding. He's moving in the right direction. He's willing to up and move his family over to a new area so that he could jump on board with the vision. How encouraging that is for me. It's so encouraging. Verse 19, we get those bad guys again, right? They come on in, and they brought a new guy. So Sanballat, Tobiah, and Geshem. I think literally in the Hebrew, it's Larry, Moe, and Curly, is what it says there, but I'm a little rusty on my Hebrew. So these guys, they come on in, and they mock us and despise us and say, what is this thing you are doing? Are you rebelling against the king? Serving Christ, there's gonna be opposition. There's always gonna be opposition. It's amazing. In the first month that I was at the church I'm at, I was like, oh, this is just not fun, man. There was so much opposition. I had a guy stand up in the middle of my sermon and just start yelling at me. I'm like, boy, welcome, Pastor Mike. This is great. This is amazing. And it wasn't like even the content of what I was preaching. It was just, he was angry because of the property that we owned. And I was like, okay. So I tried to hear him out. We kindly asked him to stop and we continued on with our service. You know, Leslie's sitting there like, I don't know what's going on. I don't know what's happening. That was like week three of my ministry. I'm like, great. Later on, I had another guy say he was the CEO of the church. I'm like, isn't that Jesus? I could be wrong. I thought that was Jesus Christ, but I could be off. So we actually go into this big argument at this meeting, and he's sitting there, and we're going back and forth going at it. I'm thinking he's going to stand up and just deck me. I'm like, oh, this is awesome. There are grown men crying in the meeting. My wife is crying. She's upset. Everyone is frustrated and annoyed. And this guy's sitting there saying he's the CEO. I had to put my foot down. No, Jesus Christ is the head of this church. You're going to come against opposition again and again and again. I've been told time and time again, people come up to me, point their finger at me. I don't ever want to hear you preach again. Some of you might say that too, that love Jesus, but it's okay. But he was, he was angry, right? He was angry at God's word. He just came up and just told me, I don't ever want to hear you preach God's word again. I had some lady like three weeks ago, come up. You don't love the glory of God, do you? I'm a pastor. I love God's glory. I mean, I love God's glory. You know how I handle it now? Just let him go. and live life according to how God has called me to live life. Let them worry about that stuff. I don't need to worry about that. They want to say, I don't love God's glory. Fine. Go ahead and do that. Talk all you want. I'm going to live my life according to God's glory. I'm going to praise him in everything I do. That's what I'm going to do. I'm not going to talk bad about you. I'm not going to do anything like that. I'm going to worship God. Verse 20, so I answered them and said to them, the God of heaven will give us success, therefore his servants will arise and build, but you have no portion, right, or memorial in Jerusalem. Man. Nehemiah comes with these guys and says, We're gonna rise and build because God's hand is upon us. Because God's hand is pushing us forward, that God's hand is moving us in this direction. God is so good. Let's pray. God, we thank you and love you, God. I pray as we continue on in worship, Lord, that you would Just bless us. I pray that we would honor your name. In Jesus name, amen. This message has been brought to you by the Santa Rosa Bible Church. Our purpose is to lift up the Lord by living out the word, loving one another, and leading others to Christ. Be sure to visit us on the web at www.santarosa.org. or come visit us in person at 4575 Badger Road, Santa Rosa, California 95409. You can also give us a call at 707-538-2385.