It would be totally appropriate before we do a single thing, there was a glaring omission from the thanks list, and I think our directors for this year ought to get a standing O, don't you think so? Now that we're beginning, gentlemen, your caps. Now, I purposely made sure we did the thanks to them right off the bat so I could unload a little bit on them. It's like a sandwich approach. Do you ever notice who gets two topics when he comes to camp? Is it Dr. Meyer? Is it Pastor Vanderhoof? No. And when everybody's like exhausted, ready to go, like caloric overload, sleep deprivation, who do they drag up here, right? Not remembering that even though the campers keep recycling, you know, a new group comes in and the older ones move on to the retreat, which I highly recommend, they keep bringing in the same old people to do the topics, forgetting that like we get sleep like that, so I'm glad you're here. We'll do our best to keep you awake for the last little bit. And what's really interesting, I don't know if you have, beg your pardon? Presentation deprivation syndrome, it takes two years to recover. So, what's really interesting about the book of Nehemiah, and here's another little pet peeve, My co-pastor, who I love with all my heart, gets the joy celebration chapter. And you would think that would be the end of the book of Nehemiah. Chapter 13 is like, what happened? They go from this crescendo of praise and joy and unity into this abysmal list of problems. You could just about picture Nehemiah like, What is happening here? What happened to the celebrations? That is chapter 13. One more little complaint, and I got it out of my system. One of my jobs as wrap-up is to take all of the topics, summarize them, which is daunting enough. That's why you kind of saw me sitting off in a corner, not joining you for all activities. I'm tucked away. somewhere trying to piece things together. But then they give me a whole chapter to do, too, and not a small one, a big one, with lots of issues. So here it goes. It's going to be fast-paced. I'm taking notes. Sorry for you. because we're going to go way too fast. But if you listen, all of the topics get recorded. They're all online. You can access them anytime. So three thoughts, that's it. Where have we been? Where are we now? And where are we going? So as you imagine, the where have we been is, what were the topics about? Pastor Kelderman's topic. Now, Nehemiah had a pretty decent job back at the court, right? King's cup bearer. So he had it made, we would say, especially for, don't forget, he was a captive Jew, part of the captivity. So a pretty good job. He walked away. He walked away from comfort, from income, and all of that. And the reason why, I think we saw, was obvious. He loved God, and he loved God's people. And I want you to think about this personally. For him to go to Jerusalem wasn't going to help him at all. Because if you remember, when he asked the king if he could go and build the walls, the king said, when are you coming back? So he wasn't even going to get to stay there and enjoy the fruit of his labors. This was like a total no gain for him personally, but Nehemiah He loved the Lord. He loved the promised Messiah. And even though he wasn't a preacher, he wasn't a priest, he wasn't a prophet, he was going to use the skills God gave him to pave the way for Messiah's return. So that's pretty admirable. And I would just suggest we ought to do the same thing. We ought to use whatever skills we have or don't have because Messiah's coming back. Nehemiah looked forward to the first return of Messiah. We get to look forward to the second return, the glorious return of Messiah. So whatever skills you have or skills you maybe think you don't have, start praying, how can I use them to get this world ready for his return? And so we leave this camp with the question, am I living my life for me, or am I living my life for something bigger, something better? He did what he could. And he, as we notice throughout this book, he depended on God. It wasn't like this big, strong guy just going around doing stuff. He depended on the Lord. So that was pretty much Pastor Kay's topic in brief. Dr. Vilka's topic, exercise. You can imagine how that made me feel, right? We all need exercise, but some of us need a little bit more than others. But of course, he wasn't talking about that kind of exercise. He was talking about spiritual exercise. And what was really neat, he said, if you remember, the leaders had to show the way. So priests weren't exactly adept at using swords and trowels. They probably never picked up one in their life. But you can just picture this priest, right, taking off his priestly robe, clothes going over to the wall, and like, how do you use this? And where do I put the mud? And how do I lay these bricks? But there they were, even though they weren't so great at what they did. You feel like that sometimes. It's like, what do I know? How can I contribute? I'm not real good at that. Well, so what? There's other people who are, and they'll gladly help you get better at whatever it is God is leading you to do. And of course, you might say to yourself, I'm not really cut out for kingdom. Well, good, because nobody is. And so join the crowd, roll up your sleeves, and do what you can, because God set up this whole kingdom thing so that we depend on him from top to bottom, from one person, one office, one position. You fit right in the program. And then, of course, you remember that little part in Dr. Vilka's presentation about chaos. But I'll tell you, one person's never going to be invited into my study. That's Dr. Vilka's people. He would say, how can you get anything done in a room that looks like this? But anyway, chaos is important to avoid chaos. He was saying that order is important in our lives because God is orderly. He has structures, and he has authority figures, and he has all these connections. And that should be our way of doing things, too. So a couple of questions came up at the campfire. Let me just dovetail right into them. How do we talk about changes? How do we ask questions about whether something's real or inscriptural or traditional and all that? Here, Dr. Bilkus would say, work with authority, don't work against authority. And the fact of the matter is, whether that's parents, whether that's civil authorities, whether that's church authorities, whether you're joining an organization or whatever, do something. Remember how that topic started? The people cried out to Nehemiah. They were oppressed. They had no money. There was a famine. They had taxes, bondage. They were in a simply impossible situation. Ascending. Ascending. Big boys cry, too. Big boys cry, too. And when God's love moves us, we big boys get faces full of tears, too. I'll tell you what, you're not ashamed of it. If you love somebody and you never shed a tear over them, I feel sorry. I feel sorry for the person you say you love. Joy and gladness spills out of our eyes too. And so, these people cry to God, and here comes Nehemiah, as it were, to the rescue. And God doesn't turn away crying people, needy people. He loves to see people in need. to fill those needs. And we also saw in that topic that Nehemiah was a very generous man, right? I mean, remember how many people he fed at his table, all the stuff he prepared every day, in addition to everything else he was doing. So he wasn't stingy at all. Very generous. God wants you and me to be generous too. Generous to our church, generous to your siblings, generous to your folks. What can I do to help things out at home here? Generous to the hurting, to the needing. I was so thankful to see questions. that God's calling us to do. And just remember, if you feel like you're being too generous, giving too much, we don't even come close to God's generosity. He gave his only begotten son to suffer and to die for us. That's generous. I also talked about courageous resistance. Now, you can ask any believer, and the older the ones you ask, the better, because they've got a longer track record most of the time. The Christian life, young friends, is not for the faint of heart. It is not a walk in the park. And I want to talk to you men just for a quick second. If you want to be a man's man, I mean a man's man, not just some old, a man's man, live the Christian life. And I'm just going to say it flat out. Anything less than that, you are a wimp. You are a wimp. Because you're dodging the big stuff. And you're living your life under the radar screen. And I'm just going to say it like it is. And if you want to be a real woman, live the Christian life. And what I'm going to say to you is even tougher than what I said to the guys. If you ladies aren't living the Christian life, you're a harlot. But you're giving your life and your strength and your heart to something or someone other than God. He should be your first love. And guys, it's the same with us. If our heart's given to something other than God, we're prostituting ourselves. We're selling ourselves cheap. So he pays all that for us, and we sell ourselves for a nickel and a dime. So there's going to be enemies. It's going to be tough. And don't be surprised when the enemies come from inside. I find the older I get, the enemies outside aren't nearly as tough as the enemies inside, inside our heart and soul. And then finally, please do not let distractions take you out of the fight. Don't let distractions take it. You know what distractions are? In the Christian race, it's hard enough to run a race, like an endurance thing. Distractions are like throwing obstacles, turning your race course into an obstacle course, and you do it yourself. So don't get buried. If we're stuffing our lives with Netflix, computer games, sporting events, porn, illicit sex, you're going to have zero appetite for anything close to that. I mean, it would be like going down to the lunch hole down there, stuffing yourself full of cake, cookies, ice cream, you know, whatever. You're going to have like no appetite for the stuff that's wholesome. Well, if you're going to stuff your life and just kind of go along having a good old time and stuffing yourself with what's exciting and what's current and what's this and what's that, you're going to pick up your bottom like, hmm. It's not going to seem terribly interesting. Nothing that. City of Law and Order. What better man than Dr. Barrett to do that? Remember Barrett's Law? I'll tell you what, have you ever been in Dr. Barrett's cellar and saw his gun collection? And all those stuffed heads on the wall? You can bet his children obeyed him. So seriously though, my takeaway from his talk, there were a few, but one I don't think I'll ever forget. I will never read a list of names in the Bible the same again. Do you remember what he said about the list of names? Every time you see that list, Jesus is coming, Jesus is coming, Jesus is coming. And you may say, well, he's been here already. No, remember, he's still coming. So when you dust off those chapters, and you're like, oh, I can't even pronounce half these things, read them, and just repeat after me. Jesus is coming, Jesus is coming. And he came right through that line, and he's coming right through our line, and he's gonna show up again, sure as he did the first time. So that was really neat. We know he's coming, so practice your lines. Next time you come across a genealogy. Then, Dr. Barrett held up for us their response. That's so key. I mean, anybody can sit here and pitch, right? You could sit here. Anybody can do that. You didn't have to be like semi-conscious. But to engage the word, like Nico's presentation, to respond to the word, that's a whole other ballgame, right? He talked about the power in the word, which led to interest in the meaning of the word, which led to a response to the word. I'm going to say something a little goofy here. I wish that somebody would actually get angry with me. rather than be indifferent. I'd rather see some response rather than no response. The no response people, they're in the deepest trouble. If you get angry with something, at least you're recognizing there's something to be angry with. You're actually engaging with something. Indifference is deadly. But then, don't settle for a momentary response. I mean, camp is great, right? But a momentary response isn't what Nod's looking for. He ended his topic by saying, live the word. So if you go home from this camp and you're doing the same old, same old as before you came to this camp, you blew it. You blew a golden opportunity that God put right in your lap to be different, to go home renewed and to go home changed. I mean, how many more opportunities does God owe you? He doesn't owe you any. So don't just throw them away as if they're recyclable. They aren't. Dr. Myers' topic on the Prodigals Renewed Through the Covenant. Now, I like Dr. Myers a lot. I hope you do too. Wasn't it a fantastic topic? But I'm going to make a comparison to Dr. Myers that you probably never heard before. Actually, he did. I told it to him outside. Do you remember Joab? How many of you remember Joab? Joab was David's general. Oh, come on, you don't remember Joab? The guy was a scoundrel. David says this, he does that. David says, don't kill him, he kills them. It's like, he was just rotten. Well, in a nice way, I said, Dr. Meyer, you remind me a little bit of Joab. Really? I said, yeah. Do you remember those times when Joab took somebody and pretended to be friendly and got him under the fifth rib, right, and killed him? I said, you're that way, only you kill people with kindness. You say your topic so nice, he just slips under with the gospel and he gets you. And I love that about him. And the highlight to me of his topic, God's relentless faithfulness. I heard somebody outside this room after his topic say, I love the word relentless. And I felt like saying amen. God pursues and he pursues and we run and he runs after and we run and he runs after. It's amazing. So if you think you come to God and you are reluctant to confess the same sin you've confessed a thousand times, because you think he's gonna say, I've heard all that already, don't say it again. He's not. He's gonna say a thousand and one works for me, you can bring that to me again, we'll wash you clean, we'll stain you up, and we'll set you going again. That's the God we serve. Fact is, God never says no unless you're faking it. If you're gonna go to God in prayer and confess sins, purposing full well to stay put in those sins, don't expect much to happen. But if you really want out, God's an expert at delivering us from stuff like that. The other thing is, Dr. Myers talked about repentance, how that was something God moves us to. For those of us who are in Canada, our national anthem probably should include the word sorry. Because a lot of people say sorry in Canada about things that shouldn't even be sorry. But they just want to make sure they don't offend you, so they say it anyway, just to make sure. Am I right or not, eh? Sorry. So, sorry. Sorry doesn't cut it with God, okay? Repentance means I go back to God in repentance. I thought it was a Canadian covenant. It means going to God for repentance, but it also means making another trip to God in prayer because of needing the resolve and the strength to be different, to actually be different than what we came to him as. And then I'm going to quote him verbatim. For those not married, don't even entertain the possibility of marrying someone not united to Christ by faith. That person isn't a candidate of premarital counseling up in our neck of the woods. If I see on our premarital questionnaire that people aren't believers, I say to them, I'm not gonna tell you that I can't marry you. What I am gonna tell you is you're not fit for marriage. You're not ready. If you don't have your relationship with God straight, why on earth are you dragging somebody else into your life and double in their trouble? Now, if that other person's a believer, they can't marry you, according to Scripture, And if both of you are not believers, well, that's a setup for success, isn't it? So if you're not getting serious about your relationship with God and you hope to marry somebody, you better change your way of thinking. You got your relationships mixed up a little. Seek God first, get that straight. And then talk about bringing somebody on board so the two of you can serve the Lord together. That's the way forward. Everything else other than that, well, the world's full of marriages. They don't have God in them. and the world is in a heap of trouble because of it. So, and just a little encouragement, if you came to camp hoping to meet that special someone, and you didn't, I've got rock solid advice for you. One of three things is true, you ready? This is it, one of three. Either that person isn't here, Or, the person is here, but they're not ready for you. There's lots of feedback here. Or, finally, that person is here, and you're not ready for them. Or, God has something better in store for you, if you're trusting in Him. And I've talked to people, one after another, I'll never get married, I'm too ugly, I'm too this, I'm too that. Look, if I can get married, you can get married. God does wonders. Pastor Vanderhoek, my beloved brother in the Lord and in the service of the Lord, and I have a great co-pastor, I really do, and I never, ever like disagreeing with another pastor's take on a passage, especially a dearly beloved, wonderfully kind co-pastor, but I did have to take issue with one thing he said. and has to do with the Hebrew wording of a certain sentence. Remember when people were casting lots to come into Jerusalem? The Hebrew verb there meant to bring them in. So it wasn't like there was 10,000 people lined up and he's like, okay, we gotta cast lots to let only one out of 10 come in. It was exactly the opposite. It's like live there Yeah, and if you get the lucky number, sorry, there's no luck, providential, if you pick the straw, you're in. And if you just look a few verses later, it actually proves that understanding. They were reluctant. to come in. In fact, verse 3, it says that there were priests and Levites, even after that ordeal, still living in the countryside. They belonged at Jerusalem serving, and they were still out there on their farms and whatever, out of no necessity. Now, why did I go to the trouble to mention that? Because those who went there voluntarily, verse 2 says, were blessed by the people. People who just stepped up and said, I don't need a lot. I'm going in there because this is God's city and we want to build it. And I want to populate it. And the people said, praise God for people like you. I think there probably are some people sitting here right now who felt like they were dragged to this camp. Your mom and dad maybe wanted a week off from you, quite frankly. It's like, you take them for a week, right, or her. But that's OK. And those of you who are like that, it's kind of obvious. It looks like you ate a bag of prunes every morning. You're welcome here. So it's not like anybody's fooling anybody. But the point is, I'm glad you're here anyway. Maybe you thought to yourself, this is the last time I'm coming to this camp. Maybe you didn't like Uncle Roger's kind way of expressing love. Maybe it just didn't fit your personality. He's a sweet guy. Don't be fooled. He's sweet. But he's tough, tough love. Anyway, I hope you don't get your wish. I hope if you're thinking, I'm never gonna step foot in this place again, I hope you don't get your wish. And the reason I hope that is because God does not take it kindly when we fight against Him giving what's good for us. The thing I like best about Pastor Vanderhoek's topic, and I'm going to embarrass him right now, it's him. No, you're laughing. He embodies what he was talking about. He is a joyful Christian, and that is a huge help to me. and to our church. So that man of God is a joyful Christian, and I praise God for it. So he got a good topic to talk about. And even though some of the Jews did come into the city against their will, oh man, got the short straw, I guess I'm living in this heap of rubble, did you notice how God turned it around? How by the end of that chapter they were rejoicing, maybe they were in the choir, on the wall or whatever, everybody was on board. That's what we're praying for. Maybe you're leaving this place rumbling, complaining, and everybody's razzing on me, whatever, whatever. Well, all right. Somewhere between here and home or next camp, I hope God just sort of taps you on the shoulder and says, look, you took a visit to Jerusalem. You belong there. Okay, that's where we were. Where are we now? Well, believe it or not, we're gonna do chapter 13 in about 10 seconds. No, not quite. After the celebration that we just heard about this morning, it was one thing after another. I think chapter 13 contains more problems than any other of the chapters we've seen, and even though we've seen some pretty sizable problems. Number one, verses one to three, The law of Moses said Ammonites and Moabites are not coming into the camp of Israel. And so as soon as they heard that in the law, they were like, oh man. Because what they had done, they'd been intermarrying for years. And now they got a pile of people just populating this city of God against the law of God. That was the first problem. Then, and this was a killer, a priest of all people takes a room in the temple itself that's supposed to house all of the sacrifices that the Levites live on. He clears all that stuff out, and guess who he makes a hotel for? Tobiah. He gives him a room in the temple. This is the guy who's sending letters saying we're going to come in and kill Nehemiah. And here the priest, what a nice fellow, standing next to Nehemiah probably, has a room in the temple set aside for this guy and is depriving the Levites of their due. I love the way Nehemiah dealt with this one. This is very sanctified. He threw the guy's stuff on the street. That's literally what he did. Verse 18, he cast the household stuff out of the temple. It was like, you are out of here. And then in verse 9, because the temple had been defiled, he has the priests and Levites cleansing. Remember how they cleansed the wall? Cleanse this, cleanse that. Well, now they had to cleanse this again. And then, of course, Nehemiah finds out what the result of that mess is. The Levites and priests had run away back to their homes because that's the only food they had. So he calls them back to Jerusalem. tells, he really takes the rulers of Jerusalem to task for allowing this to happen. Nehemiah, in the book of Nehemiah, he makes it very clear that that whole business about that room for Tobiah happened before he got there. When he caught wind of it, out went Tobiah's stuff, cleansed the rooms, took the leaders to task for even allowing such a horrendous thing to happen. And then he sets up that room again so that they would have income, something to eat, and all of that. And to make sure none of that happened again, he sets faithful men over that whole business to make sure it stayed that way. If you were Nehemiah right about now, you'd be about as exhausted as you feel. I see some of you are kind of dozing off, and I get that. No personal offense. I'll talk to you later. So you could imagine how, like, exhausted this man is. No sooner do they get the wall set up, mission accomplished, the temple's humming along, and now this, and then that, and then another thing, all happening within the gates of the city. Verse 14 is so precious. Remember me, O God, concerning this. Wipe not out my good deeds that I have done for the house of God and for the offices thereof. Now he's not, this isn't salvation by works or anything close. He's saying, Lord, do you not see What's going on here? Please just think of us. Think of me, right? And I would ask you to lift up your office spares. Lift up your parents. Lift up civil authorities in prayer regularly. Because you're not in their shoes. And you don't know what they carry. I feel most for elders and deacons. They have families to take care of. They have full-time jobs, most of them. And they have church stuff. Church heartaches are big heartaches, I'll tell you. So pray for them, just like Nehemiah is praying here. Next, you think he's done? Of all things, right under his nose is Sabbath-breaking. And I'm talking about not a little thing here, a little thing there. We're talking about massive Sabbath-breaking. Like what? Some of the Jews were treading their wine presses, so they were going to work. to the job on the Sabbath day. Loading up donkeys to transport food and goods on the Sabbath day. Bringing in crops from the fields on the Sabbath day. Finally, bringing in stuff from foreign vendors to buy and sell on the Sabbath day and right in front of Nehemiah. The contemporary equivalent, Walmart just begins opening on Sunday. So where does Nehemiah go? First, he goes to the nobles again, because they were supposed to make sure stuff like this didn't happen. And I want to say to you, if something's going haywire in your church, very respectfully and with a heart full of love and prayer, go to your office bearers. It's really kind of crummy when people are all kibitzing and complaining behind the officer's backs and never really have the courage to just say, hey, we've got a problem here. Can we talk about it? You think office bearers know everything that's going on? We're sometimes the last to know. So if somebody has an issue, you know, Matthew 18, go see them, that sort of thing. But if it's a church thing, would you please come? We need to hear it. Then let's talk about it. So there was a Sabbath thing. Well, he put a stop to that big time. After he let the nobles hear about it, he had his servants close and lock the gates as soon as the sun went down on Friday, because their Sabbath was Saturday, right? And they stayed closed. And it's amazing. This guy must have been some character. The foreign vendors keep coming even after the gates are closed. He goes out there and says, if you come here one more time, I'm going to lay hands on you. For those Hebrew scholars here, that's like I'm gonna beat the tire out of you. It's something like that, right? So I'm going to take care of you. And they didn't show up again. We find him praying again. Remember me, oh my God, concerning this also, and spare me according to the greatness of thy mercy. He didn't feel like he had earned any points with God. He said, look, this is getting tougher and tougher. Show me mercy. Then, as if the parade of ills was not quite over, the Jews were marrying the very women scripture said they couldn't. It wasn't even just the heathen. They married into the very nations that God said could never become part of Israel. And it was so bad that the children of those marriages couldn't even speak Hebrew. Now, imagine you're living in exile for 70 years, having to hear this Babylonian gibberish. You grew up learning Hebrew. You teach your kids to learn Hebrew because you want them to retain their identity as the people of God. And here, you're in the capital city, you're finally back home, the temple is up, and you got these kids running the streets who can't even talk Hebrew. Their identity is already half shot. Nehemiah finds out this. He warned them on the basis of the Old Testament, look what happened to Solomon. Are you going to do that? Are you going to bring God's judgments on us? He made them swear by the Lord that they would not be engaged in these marriages, that their children wouldn't do it, and all of that. He says, is anybody going to take your side in this discussion? Verse 27. and then probably the last straw. And with that, the book kind of ends. He finds out that the priest's son was son-in-law to Sanballat. See, the arch enemies are Tobiah and Sanballat. The priest makes a room in the temple for one, and he has his son, his daughter, marry the priest's son. Nehemiah, it says, chased him away. At the end of the book, one more prayer. Remember them, oh my God, because they have defiled the priesthood and the covenant of the priesthood and of the Levite. Remember that the importance of Jerusalem was because Messiah was gonna show up there? And here the very priests, whose work epitomizes and is emblematic of the Messiah's whole work, are now defiled. So he cleaned house. That's what he did in this chapter. And at the end of the chapter, the priesthood and Levites were finally restored to their regular order and place. One more prayer he ends the book with, remember me, oh God, oh my God, for good. Not exactly a happy ending, but the Christian life isn't always a happy ending. Well, the ending is okay. The trip there can be pretty tough. Okay, couple minutes, we'll wrap it up. Where are we going? Number one, if I had to add up all the things I hear about from people after camp, probably the most common one, I wish camp could last for a long time. I wish I could stay here, things like that. Now, probably some of you can't wait to go. If that's so, it's your own fault. It wasn't because the camp director was too strict. It wasn't because your chaperone nagged you. It's because you weren't with the program. Tried to have what you wanted. Maybe you got away with some stuff that we don't know about. Well, I would say to you, have a nice rest of your life, because if you keep living that way, joy ends for you when life ends. But for those of you who really do wish you could stay here, you've really enjoyed this week, and it's like, oh, I gotta go back to this, I gotta go back to that, I wanna just say, don't feel that way. Because camp wasn't meant to be a place to stay. Why not? He gave you the camp to help you out with the rest of your life. He gives you the Lord's Day to help you out with the rest of the week. This isn't supposed to be a place to stop, it should be a place to go through. And in fact, our very life is the same thing. Our very life is a passing through. It isn't a place to stop. And you know this as well as I do. If we get too comfortable in this life, why would we want to go anywhere? If we've got everything we ever wanted, why would we want to go to heaven? And so He doesn't want us to feel like this is home, ever. I remember a time I was walking home from church, and Burgessville. And when you've been a minister and you've been in different places and your kids are scattered all over, I just remember kind of feeling a little bit down. And I remember praying on the way home, I was just walking, Lord, where is home? Where is home? But then I knew the answer. It's not here. Home is not meant to be here. Now if we get too comfortable, we're in danger of this. Remember the parable of the rich man and Lazarus? Abraham says to the rich man who was in hell by this time, son, remember that thou in thy lifetime receivest thy good things. Likewise, Lazarus evil things. Now he's comforted. You're tormented. In other words, you had your day. You set up your tent, you filled it full of stuff, you had no interest in God, well, You got what you wanted, didn't you? But that's all you get. So Nehemiah 13, I believe, was put there as all of God's word is arranged on purpose. The celebration doesn't go on and on in this world. It was never meant to. Even spiritual joys, as much as we'd like them to last, they're not meant to last. Because if we could enjoy the fullness of spiritual blessing here, Well, then, here is heaven. But here isn't heaven. It's not our home. So, finally, don't settle for the buzz. I don't know about you, but about this time of day, all of the topics are just kind of a big, floating mass of words in my mind. I can't keep them apart. If I hadn't been taking notes, I couldn't even have done this. Because it's like one thing is like, okay, yeah, wow, that's good. And then the next topic pushes that one, and then the next one pushes that one. After a while, it's like, whoa. The good news is all the topics will be online, I hope, if the electronics all worked out. Go back, check them out, review, not for nostalgia's sake, but to pick up what you missed, because I'm sure I missed a ton of things. Big boys cry, big girls cry, but that's not going to last. I say this with reverence. When God takes out His big handkerchief and He dries those tears, it's going to be the last time you ever see it. It's going to be the last tear you ever shed. because there's no more of that where he's prepared for us. And let me end with this. When we were in New Jersey, there was a fella and a lady who had a niece who was a beautiful singer. She could sing really, really well. So we got a little CD of some of her songs. She wasn't professional or anything like that, but she really could sing well. Some of the songs I like better than others, but one of them, which is really hard to find, like you Google it, you can't even find it, it's called He Is. And what this song does, and I hope I don't get emotional here, I guess big boys do cry, the whole song is about Christ in every book of the Bible, all 66. And as I was listening to the topics, that song came back to me, and the line about Nehemiah, Here's where it's gonna be hard. In the Nehemiah, he's the rebuilder of broken walls and lives. And it's talking about Jesus. So if you feel like a mess, welcome. He specializes in fixing broken lives. He specializes in building broken walls. Nehemiah was a great guy. We saw that all week. Jesus is even greater. If you're carrying around a bit of a mess inside, don't run away and hide, because he is the rebuilder of broken walls and lives. And the good news is, okay, so this is not our home, but there were people already in the Old Testament looking for a city whose builder and maker wasn't Nehemiah. His builder and maker was God. They desired a better country, that is, a heavenly country. And because they desired it, God said this, I'm not ashamed to be called your God, and I'm preparing for you a city. And I want to leave you with this question. Am I going to see you there? Am I going to see you there, in that place, in that city? I sure hope so. The Christian life may not be easy. I can tell you with 100% confidence, it's well worth it. Let's pray together. Our Heavenly Father, we don't have words to close this camp with. Thou has spoken the last word. And we're so grateful for skilled people who can bring out of these chapters that can seem so remote historically and culturally, that we just breeze through them. And Lord, we're thankful that we had to stop along the way here and then there and this and then that, and be able to see some of the treasures that are hiding just underneath the surface. We pray that we might take up Thy Word in the future and keep looking. Keep searching, keep accessing help to understand and to see where all of this is pointing us. We pray for everyone here. As we leave one another, we pray for safety. We pray for grace. We pray to be kept from going back to what we always have been. And if we're a believer of sliding back to some level of holiness that we're just coasting along in, But Lord, bring us along the way and lead us home. We pray this in Jesus name, amen.