SPEAKER_00: Good morning, First Baptist Wimberly.
SPEAKER_00: This is Mike Gibbons.
SPEAKER_00: Welcome to Friday.
SPEAKER_00: After a magnificent two-year walk through the book of Luke, we are beginning the book of Nehemiah this Sunday, which I am really looking forward to.
SPEAKER_00: I mentally keep a picture, a thematic image of each book of the Bible in my head.
SPEAKER_00: For example, for Obadiah, I picture two mountains, Mount Esau and Mount Zion, with Mount Zion towering over Mount Esau.
SPEAKER_00: For Jude, I picture an anchor, which reminds me that Jesus has hold of me and won't let go.
SPEAKER_00: I am kept for Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: For Nehemiah, I picture a charred heap of giant stones and rubble.
SPEAKER_00: These stones lay half buried, black and embedded in the earth.
SPEAKER_00: Now Nehemiah himself was an Israelite in exile, serving as the king's cupbearer in Persia.
SPEAKER_00: He received news from his brother while he was there on the current conditions in Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_00: And here was the report from Nehemiah 1.3.
SPEAKER_00: And they said to me, The remnant there in the province who had survived the exile is in great trouble and shame.
SPEAKER_00: The wall of Jerusalem is broken down and its gates are destroyed by fire.
SPEAKER_00: Can you see the rubble in your mind?
SPEAKER_00: Earlier, Ezra had rebuilt the temple, but without the surrounding wall, the city was almost defenseless.
SPEAKER_00: God allowed Nehemiah to return to Jerusalem with the blessing of the king.
SPEAKER_00: And Nehemiah led his people to rebuild the wall.
SPEAKER_00: He was ridiculed.
SPEAKER_00: They said, Will they revive the stones out of the heaps of rubbish and burned ones at that?
SPEAKER_00: Now, church family, this is exactly what God did for Nehemiah and for us.
SPEAKER_00: Christ has rescued us from the rubbish heap.
SPEAKER_00: We are now living stones built together to form the church.
SPEAKER_00: Previously, our lives were dismantled, destroyed, and broken down by sin.
SPEAKER_00: We were in ruins.
SPEAKER_00: But God sent a builder greater than Nehemiah.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus came to earth to do the work necessary to restore.
SPEAKER_00: He is building his church with living stones.
SPEAKER_00: You yourselves, like living stones, are being built up as a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: He is building his church with charred and ruined stones into a spiritual temple in which he is delighted to dwell.
SPEAKER_00: This is Mike Gibbons, and I love being your pastor.