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[0:00] Okay, well, thank you for that enthusiasm. I will try to be enthusiastic as well. Just so you know, full disclosure, I'm not operating at 100%, so I got a cocktail regimen of Dayquil and caffeine going on inside of me.

[0:14] Could get really interesting this morning, let me just say that, okay? If you have a Bible, go ahead and turn to Nehemiah 3. We're continuing on in our Nehemiah series and looking at how specifically Nehemiah is this amazing story that happened in the nation of Israel at a specific time, but how it speaks to us today, specifically around this idea of renewal and how renewal works in the church today.

[0:37] It is a renewal story. And we're going to read a part of the story, the chapter we're in. It's very interesting. It's actually, I would say, one of those that's like you're tempted to kind of speed read it, gloss over it. There are a ton of hard to pronounce names, and it also feels very repetitive.

[0:53] And let's just be honest, we're probably going to find this very, we'll probably find it boring. Hopefully not. This isn't like one of those things of, you know, going through a yearbook that, you know, your high school yearbook and being like, oh, I remember that person, I remember that person, and I remember that person, all the stuff that we did.

[1:10] We don't know any of these people. We don't know how to pronounce their names, most likely. And we're really never going to read about them again in the rest of the Bible. There is just, there's these names that are very obscure.

[1:22] So why should we care enough to risk torturing ourselves with such boredom today? That is the question for us. And it's because God cared enough to put their names in his book, to put their names in his story of redemption.

[1:35] I want us to think about that. He chose to memorialize them for what they did. And not only that, so we could learn from their example. So what can we learn from this list of names that are hard to pronounce?

[1:49] And it's this, the nature of God's renewal requires participation. It requires you to show up. It requires incarnation. You have to show up and participate in God's community, the church.

[2:01] And so as we read, this is what I want us to do. I want us to lean into these seemingly nobodies that are somebodies to God. God, let's listen and let's celebrate what they did and let's learn from them.

[2:14] And one of the things that we typically show the verses up on the screen, but what I want to do is there's a, I think there's a slide up there that we have of the walls. So you get an idea.

[2:26] And as we read, just a little before I get into it, we're going to start at the very top at the sheep gate. And what you'll notice as it gives the description, it's going to go counterclockwise. And so as I read, you're going to get an idea of the names and where they were working and what was going on.

[2:40] And that's about a mile and a half worth of wall, just so you know, all the way around, like a mile and a half, two miles of wall. And so the sheer amount of people doing the work, you kind of get an idea of this. All right.

[2:51] So Nehemiah chapter three, let's get into it. Then Eliashib, the high priest, rose up with his brothers, the priests, and they built the sheep gate. They consecrated it and set its doors.

[3:03] They consecrated it as far as the tower of the hundred, as far as the tower of Hananel. And next to him, the men of Jericho built. And next to them, Zachar, the son of Emri built.

[3:16] The sons of Hassaneah built the fish gate. They laid its beams and set its doors, its bolts and its bars. And next to them, Merimoth, the son of Uriah, the son of Hachaz, repaired.

[3:27] And next to them, Meshulim, the son of Berechiah, son of Meshezabel, repaired. And next to them, Zadok, the son of Baena, repaired. And next to them, the Tekoites repaired.

[3:40] But their nobles would not stoop to serve their lord. Joyadah, the son of Paseah, and Meshulim, the son of Bethsodeah, repaired the gate of Yashonah.

[3:51] They laid its beams and set its doors, its bolts and its bars. And next to them, repaired Melatiah, the Gibeonite, and Jaden, the Maranathite, the men of Gibeon and of Mizpah, the seat of the governor of the province beyond the river.

[4:05] And next to them, Uziel, the son of Harheah, goldsmiths, repaired. Next to him, Hananiah, one of the perfumers, repaired. And they restored Jerusalem as far as the Broadwall.

[4:19] And next to them, Rephiah, the son of Hur, ruler of half the district of Jerusalem, repaired. And next to them, Jediah, the son of Haramath, repaired. Opposite his house. And next to him, Hattush, the son of Hashab-Niah, repaired.

[4:33] Malchijah, the son of Haram. And Hashab, the son of Pahath-Moab, repaired another section and the tower of the ovens. And next to him, Shalem, the son of Halohash, ruler of the half district of Jerusalem, repaired he and his daughters.

[4:49] Hanun and the inhabitants of Zenoa repaired the valley gate. They rebuilt it and set its doors, its bolts, and its bars, and repaired a thousand cubits of the wall as far as the dung gate.

[5:01] Malchijah, the son of Rechab, ruler of the district of Beth-Hakarim, repaired the dung gate. He rebuilt it and set its doors, its bolts, and its bars. And Shalem, the son of Kolhose, ruler of the district of Mizpah, repaired the fountain gate.

[5:17] He rebuilt it and covered it and set its doors, its bolts, and its bars. And he built the wall of the pool of Shelah of the king's garden as far as the stairs that go down from the city of David.

[5:28] After him, Nehemiah, the son of Asbuk, the ruler of half the district of Beth-Zur, repaired to a point opposite the tombs of David as far as the artificial pool and as far as the house of the mighty men.

[5:40] After him, the Levites repaired Rahum, the son of Bani. Next to him, Hashabiah, ruler of half the district of Kela, repaired for his district.

[5:52] After him, their brothers repaired Bavi, the son of Hanadad, ruler of half the district of Kela. Next to him, Ezer, the son of Jeshua, ruler of Mizpah, repaired another section opposite the ascent to the armory at the buttress.

[6:08] After him, Baruch, the son of Zabbi, repaired another section from the buttress to the door of the house of Eliashib, the high priest. After him, Merimoth, the son of Uriah, son of Hachaz, repaired another section from the door of the house of Eliashib to the end of the house of Eliashib.

[6:25] After him, the priests, the men of the surrounding area, repaired. After them, Benjamin and Hashub repaired opposite their house. After them, Azariah, the son of Maaseah, son of Ananiah, repaired beside his own house.

[6:40] And after him, Benui, the son of Hennadad, repaired another section from the house of Azariah to the buttress and to the corner. Palal, the son of Uzziah, repaired opposite the buttress and the tower projecting from the upper house of the king at the court of the guard.

[6:57] We're almost there, guys. This is like roll call, but the most difficult version of it. After him, Padaiah, the son of Parosh, and the temple servants living in Ophel, repaired to a point opposite the water gate on the east and the projecting tower.

[7:13] And after him, the Tekoites repaired another section opposite the great projecting tower as far as the wall of Ophel. Above the horse gate, the priests repaired and each one opposite his own house.

[7:27] And after them, Zadok, the son of Emer, repaired opposite his own house. After him, Shemaiah, the son of Shekaniah, the keeper of the east gate, repaired. And after him, Hananiah, the son of Shalamiah.

[7:38] And Hanan, the sixth son of Zalaph, repaired another section. After him, Meshulam, the son of Berechiah, repaired opposite his chamber. And after him, Al-Kaijah, one of the goldsmiths, repaired as far as the house of the temple.

[7:52] Servants and of the merchants opposite the muster gate and to the upper chamber of the corner. And between the upper chamber of the corner and the sheep gate, the goldsmiths and the merchants repaired.

[8:05] This is the word of the Lord. Yeah! We did it, guys. Good job. Good job. That was tough, right? A lot of hectic names.

[8:17] A lot of interesting pronunciations. But, hey, one of the things as you go through that, and why I wanted to go through, one, to honor the names that were in there. Because God chose to honor every single name that was put in his book.

[8:29] But one of the things you notice is the repetition of the phrase, and next to them or after them. So and so repaired. Or this clan repaired. This family repaired. And here's the thing. In many of those cases, they refer to a person.

[8:42] But often those people were actually represented of a clan or a family. So behind them were a bunch of other people that weren't named. But nevertheless, were a part of this. And what we get is this picture of a very large community standing shoulder to shoulder, building together.

[8:57] And that is an important takeaway. Renewal requires a unified people that are working together. They're working together. They're standing shoulder to shoulder.

[9:08] And, you know, kind of what we need for unity is a common vision. And we see one here in the rebuilding of Jerusalem walls. Now, I would say this. It's one thing to unite around a vision or a goal.

[9:19] It's another to agree on how to accomplish it. Right? May you think of the Great Commission. It's a great vision, a great call for us, the church of God. Jesus says, go make disciples of all nations.

[9:31] Baptizing them. Teaching them to obey everything I've commanded. That's pretty straightforward. Right? Marching orders for every Christian, every time, every church. Right? The big C church.

[9:42] We all agree on that. Everyone's like, yes and amen in that. But the how. Right? We don't agree on that so much. Hence all the denominations. Now, with that in mind, stop and think about the sheer number of people that are involved here.

[9:57] We're talking about hundreds, if not thousands. And that is a lot of opportunity for disagreement on the how to pull this off. So were they just better at getting along, better at agreement than we are today?

[10:10] Well, not really. I'm sure they were opinionated like we are. But here's the thing. Renewal requires that we lay aside our non-moral preferences on so many things for the sake of unity.

[10:23] Because the work just needs to get done. In this chapter, we see unity on the vision and the how. Well, and so we can ask ourselves, what was the Kool-Aid that they drank that made that happen?

[10:36] So first, I would say this. They submitted to a common leadership. Most scholars believe every place on the wall was assigned by Nehemiah. Right? It wasn't, everyone wasn't just like, hey, just go wherever you want to.

[10:48] No, no. No, Nehemiah placed them exactly where he wanted them to be according to the work that was done. Does that mean Nehemiah is some totalitarian dictator all of a sudden?

[10:59] Like, how dare he? Gosh, what a harsh ruler. No, no. Imagine if the approach was just like, ah, do whatever you guys, whatever you guys want to do, wherever you want to do, just go for it.

[11:11] Well, we can imagine what kind of chaos and distraction and delay that would devolve into, right? And there would be endless bickering with that kind of approach.

[11:22] And that's what happens when we approach church in an individualistic way, when we think, hey, I want to do what I want to do in the kingdom of God. Or we approach church of how is it meeting my needs?

[11:35] How can it provide the opportunities to serve where I really want to serve at? Well, we have to reject that instinct. We really do. Rather, we should focus on where the gaps are. Where are the needs?

[11:47] If renewal is what God is doing all the time, I want to ask you, are you sitting the bench waiting for the spot on the wall that you really want? Or are you jumping in to serve with a gaps are?

[11:59] See, renewal isn't like going to a hometown buffet, all right? You just don't get to show up and be just like, oh, man, there's a whole selection of great dishes and I'm just going to pick the ones I really want. No, renewal is standing next to one another, shoulder to shoulder.

[12:13] It's taking your place on the wall and it is working together. And in this story, everyone's assigned a place, a place on the wall. And they rose up and they participated together.

[12:23] But you can take that too far, right? You can take this idea of unity and you can turn it into like a rigid conformity. But unity does not mean conformity. Renewal requires a diversified people.

[12:36] And we see this all over this chapter. We see diversity everywhere. Not just in the places they worked on the wall. We see different types of people, different groups of people, right?

[12:47] A variety of skill sets. And they still keep their distinction, right? The lords don't stop being lords. The goldsmiths don't stop being goldsmiths. The perfumers don't stop being perfumers.

[13:01] And, you know, just an aside on that, I would have really been concerned about how a perfumer would have built their section of the wall. It just doesn't sound like the kind of person that would be doing that very well. Anyways, but beyond the gifting diversity, you also see some people clearly doing more than others.

[13:18] Some people carried a little bit more weight than others. Some got bigger sections. Some got smaller sections. Some finished their section so fast that they started on another one. So the people working themselves are different.

[13:32] Their capacity is different. Their skill set is different. And it's recognized. And like the people in this story, when you find yourself in God's kingdom, you're surrounded by a bunch of people who are different than you.

[13:45] And they're going to have different capacities. They're going to have different gift sets. And it's tempting to start thinking and looking around and being like, well, how come they get to do what they do and I don't get to do what they do? How come Phil gets to lead worship?

[13:56] I want to lead worship. And trust me, you don't want me to do that. Or, you know, they could have looked around and said like, how come they got that section next to the temple?

[14:06] I want the section next to the temple. That would have been a cool spot. Or the east gate. I was like, man, that east gate, it's got a really nice view of the valley down below, man. That would have been cool to work in that area.

[14:19] Like we can be so tempted. We can get so envious and jealous of what other people are called to and their place on the wall. But then there's the other side of that. We can be so arrogant in who we are and think we are better than everyone else.

[14:33] We can look at everyone and say, how come they're not doing as much as I am? And when you don't appreciate diversity in people's giftings and capacity, you will end up either in envy or in arrogance.

[14:46] That's what happens. And that doesn't promote unity at all. It actually kills unity. So we are called to the work of rebuilding and renewal, but we can't expect each other to do it to the same degree.

[15:00] And there is real danger in comparison. It is not good for any of us. Now, I would say this. There is a difference in somebody doing nothing and somebody doing less than you. If you find yourself getting upset about people next to you that aren't carrying the same weight, that's a you problem, not a they problem.

[15:16] Remember, there are different callings and different roles in the kingdom of God. And the Bible even tells us the Holy Spirit gives different kinds of gifts in different kinds of measure. Think about it this way. If I was to work out with Otis over here and the requirement for me to work out with him, he's like, you got to do everything I do with the same amount of weight.

[15:36] You know what? My knees would blow out and my arms would rip out of their sockets, right? See, as much as unity demands us to die to our selfishness, so does diversity.

[15:49] Unity attacks my selfishness that demands its own way. I have to surrender to something greater than myself. And diversity attacks my selfish, but in a different kind of way. I have to appreciate and celebrate the different giftings and capacities all around me.

[16:05] And unity and diversity, they're good things and they have to be held in tension, which is, it's not easy to do because here's the thing, both of those things require you and me to have some humility.

[16:15] Which is, that's an important lesson that we need to take away from this chapter. Renewal requires a humble people. Let's be honest, not every assignment was at the wall in this chapter was that great.

[16:29] You may have noticed the mention of the dungate being a part of the work, right? There's so many potential puns here. You can save that for community gear when you're together this week, all right? Talking about that. But the dungate, you're like, Jesse, is that, yeah, that's as bad as it sounds, right?

[16:45] Who drew the short straw on that one? Verse 14, Malchijah, the son of Rechab, ruler of the district of Beth-Hakarim, repaired the dungate. To give you an idea, it's like the mayor of Newbern choosing to work near Open Septic.

[17:01] That's what's going on here. Malchijah is a ruler. He is like a well-known guy. He had more prestige than many people on the wall and yet he's willing to work on the dungate.

[17:14] He's raising his hands and saying, I'll do that part. That's humility. One of my heroes of the faith is a man named Greg Larkin. You will never know him. He was a father of a childhood friend.

[17:25] He went to my dad's church growing up. He owned a $50 million construction business and you know what? Every single morning, he was there two hours early at the church vacuuming. Years on end, he did that.

[17:39] And then no one noticed that, no one knew that except me and my dad, maybe a few other people that got there early and God, God saw that. He was a humble, faithful servant. And I would say, man, there are so many of those same kind of heroes, unspoken, unnamed heroes in our church today.

[17:57] There are so many. I mean, I kind of want to say names, but I don't want to leave people out and I don't want to do another long roll call. Well, Malchijah set aside his VIP status to stoop to work on the dung gate.

[18:12] But here's the thing. Not everybody in this story did that. Not every ruler did that. Verse 5 says about the Tekoite rulers. Next to them, the Tekoites repaired.

[18:23] So their people repaired, but their nobles, they would not stoop to serve their Lord. Whether or not we serve is rarely a question of can I, but will I?

[18:36] Will I stoop to serve? Will I stoop to get involved? Will I stoop to stand shoulder to shoulder in what God is doing in his church and participating in that?

[18:48] And here's the thing. Jesus kind of robs us of any excuse we can come up with. I mean, he stooped the lowest. He left heaven to come into earth.

[19:01] The king of heaven, he put on the weakness of our flesh. He stepped into the messiness, the sinfulness, the sickness, the uncleanness of our world, like shades of the dung gate we're talking about here.

[19:14] And you know why he did that? He did it out of love for us. He did it because he had his eyes and his hearts fixed and captivated by his vision of renewal. Here's the thing.

[19:25] You and I, we're never going to stoop as low as Jesus went. But as disciples, we are called to be just like him. We are called to stoop, to serve our Lord because renewal is bigger than us.

[19:37] Now, unfortunately, if you're like me, my heart has a tendency towards being individualistic, just like these Tekoite nobles.

[19:49] I can come up with a lot of legitimate excuses not to stoop. Maybe you have some as well. You know what? They had a lot of legitimate excuses. It's not implicit here, but something instructive about the Tekoite nobles is that, one, they lived about 10 miles from Jerusalem.

[20:07] So, of all the people named, they were kind of on the periphery, far away from Jerusalem. And where they were located was close to hostile territory. It was close to the enemies that were standing in the way of Jerusalem and its walls being built.

[20:23] And so, I'm sure that came with it a whole stack of problems, a whole stack of issues that were in their mind and taking up a lot of their mind space. And not only that, they were really far removed from Jerusalem.

[20:34] They could have easily thought, hey, that's just not our problem. It's easy to become a Tekoite noble. Just keeping your distance, keeping the church at arm's length. And we can come up with this attitude towards the church.

[20:51] And it happens when maybe stuff's happening in your life. Maybe you're in a crisis that's carrying on unresolved. Or you're going through a difficult season financially. Or you're going through times and you're feeling overlooked and ignored, rejected by family or friends.

[21:07] I mean, there's a whole host of reasons that we could be. Maybe you just started a business and things are going really well and you're building this thing. And it's just taking up a lot of time and attention. There is no end to the list of reasons where we could step back and say like, eh, just not my problem.

[21:25] I got too many other things going on. And that's the thing. Any of those things can become the thing in our lives, right? The most important thing in our lives that we worry about.

[21:35] They drain and they distract. And what often happens is that we stop stooping to serve the Lord. We stop stooping and enter into the work of renewal and building with what's going in the church and what's going on in the church.

[21:50] And we can give a hundred reasons why. And the Bible doesn't give us the Tekoite nobles reasons. I'm sure they had some. The one thing we do know, it records for everybody to read for all time, they didn't stoop to serve the Lord.

[22:03] Ouch. Look, God loves you enough to see and care about whatever you're going through, whatever you're facing, any suffering you're facing. But he never stops calling you and me into his bigger story and participating in that.

[22:18] Now, this may help you. You're never the only one suffering, right? And sometimes our suffering does that to us. We can start to feel like we're the only ones going through what we're going through.

[22:28] And no one else will understand. But when you are in community, when you're connected into the church, you start to realize that there are many suffering around you too in a lot of different ways.

[22:39] They're carrying a lot of different burdens. But we're meant to walk that out together. And in that way, despite our suffering, we can continue to be a part of something bigger than that suffering.

[22:52] And bigger than our own lives. And even in our suffering, we are called to lay down living for ourselves to live for something bigger. That is hard.

[23:05] And humility is hard. But it's even harder if you're an individualist and your life is about me rather than the we. Humility means reckoning with the fact that the affairs of the church dwarf the affairs of your individual life.

[23:20] It doesn't diminish them. It doesn't discount them. It's just a matter of priority. And also think about this. The body, the body of Christ. Also, it dwarfs the individual members.

[23:34] Carl Truman, he's a kind of a Christian thinker, professor, theologian. He puts it this way. Put bluntly, when I read the Bible, it seems to me that the church is the meaning of human history.

[23:45] But it is the church as a corporate body, not the distinct individuals who make up her membership. Of course, all of us individuals have our gifts and our roles to play.

[23:57] The Lord calls us each by name and numbers the very hairs of our heads. But to borrow Paul's analogy of the body, we have no special destiny in ourselves taken as isolated units.

[24:09] Any more than bits of our own bodies do in isolation from each other. When I act, I act as a whole person. My hand has no special role of its own. It acts only in the context of being part of my overall body.

[24:23] And with the church, the destiny of the whole is greater than the sum of the destinies of individual Christians. This is an important insight that should profoundly shape our thinking and indeed our praying.

[24:39] My special destiny as a believer is to be part of the church. And it is the church that is the big player in God's wider plan, not me. That puts me, my uniqueness, my importance, my role in definite perspective.

[24:57] Man, what I love about the Bible, what I love about God's plan of redemption, even what we see in here, God cared about the individual names.

[25:09] But they were caught up into something bigger. They were caught up into the bigger hole, right? And you can hear something like that and you can push back against it.

[25:21] And you say like, no, God cares about the me more than the we. And I would admit, I mean, what Carl Truman was saying here, and I think what the Bible shouts out to us is counterintuitive to our natural instincts.

[25:35] It may even sound uncaring. But actually, it is how God designed us to flourish. And that's why it is worth giving your life to renewal.

[25:46] And the work of renewal that God is doing. And being a part of the church and building the church. It brings, and here's the thing, it brings its own benefits. One thing it does, renewal creates a confident people.

[25:57] Think about this. Just in the Nehemiah context, with the walls of Jerusalem, in a wall, every part of that wall is just as important as the next part.

[26:09] Because if you build a wall partially, then your enemies can just go around and get in, right? You got problems. Every part is important.

[26:19] You know, Francis Schaeffer, he preached this sermon. It's amazing. You can find it online and read it. He preached a sermon called, No Little People, No Little Places. It's this whole idea.

[26:30] The whole wall matters. Even the dung gate, right? A single gap anywhere exposes us everywhere. And that means every part of the wall matters and every person matters.

[26:42] There's no little people, no little places in the kingdom of God. So here it is. Whatever part you have been given, whatever part you are playing, or you're standing shoulder to shoulder next to somebody else on the wall, whatever that part is, it makes you essential.

[26:58] Because that part is essential. There's no little people on the wall. And here's the thing. Walls don't get built by single heroes. They get built by an army of people.

[27:09] Well, in this chapter, Nehemiah isn't named at all. You know who is? Shalom, the son of Halahesh and his daughters.

[27:19] They're mentioned. They get named. And who are they? Just normal, unremarkable people who took their spot on the wall. Their names are written here, and your name will be written there in heaven forever.

[27:33] And even if your part on the wall feels small to you, you can know that we're all depending on you doing it well. Because there is a reason we're doing this.

[27:44] It's for the sake of holiness. Renewal is for the sake of holiness, and that holiness brings true happiness. So we live our lives, and everything we're wanting to pursue is like, this sounds tough.

[27:56] This sounds difficult. This sounds humbling. It doesn't sound enough like, focus on me, and how do I get benefit out of this? But actually, this is for our flourishing. God cares about our holiness before our happiness, but he knows that as we grow in holiness, we will become more happy.

[28:15] We'll find true happiness and live in true happiness. And this idea of holiness, what it's coming from is we see this at the beginning of the chapter when the Eliashib and the priests, and they built that wall.

[28:27] And it says they went on to consecrate that portion of the wall. And that consecration, when you look at the Bible, it is a setting apart of something to make it holy unto the Lord. And that's what we're called to do.

[28:38] That part of the wall was connected to the temple. It's connected to the place where heaven met earth, the most sacred point of where God dwelt among his people. And so holiness has everything to do with these walls being built.

[28:53] Holiness has to do with us being set apart. And so the walls, what they're doing is they're clarifying who is in and who is out for the sake of being a holy people set apart for God.

[29:04] And if you want to be a part of that, come on. Come on in. But we've got gates. You can come in. And so it is for us. Why give your life to the church? Why would we do that?

[29:15] Well, it's not for the sake of happiness. It's for the sake of our collective holiness. And holiness is the best way to be happy. Francis Schaeffer said it this way. Only one thing is important.

[29:27] To be consecrated persons in God's place for us at each moment. We're going to wind it up this way. The walls to the church are actually not physical. They're reflected.

[29:38] They're reflected in partnership and membership. That's what our partnership covenant is all about here at One Harbor. For who's coming just for a Sunday experience and who wants to build it?

[29:49] Who wants to be a part of this? Who wants to stand shoulder to shoulder building the church in a committed way? And as the band comes up and we seek to respond, I want to say to those of us in the room, if you're here, you're not yet a follower of Jesus.

[30:02] We're going to get about to come to take communion. But I want to say to you, don't come to the communion table. You've got to first come to the one that this table points to.

[30:14] And it's Jesus Christ himself. Your first step of renewal is putting your faith in Jesus. But join us. And your gate into the city walls.

[30:26] Your gate into this church. Into being a part of the church. It's through faith in Jesus Christ. Trusting him as Lord and Savior. And come. We're inviting you. Come and join us.

[30:37] Give up your life so you can find it. Humble yourself so Jesus can exalt you. Give up the pursuit of happiness and pursue the road of holiness instead. And what you'll find is happiness in everything else gets thrown in.

[30:50] And if that's you today, there's going to be a prayer up on the screen in a few moments. And you can pray that during a time of communion. Now for the rest of us in the room, you're already a follower of Jesus.

[31:01] We're about to take communion. And first I want to ask you, how is God calling you to respond? You read a chapter like this, how is he calling us to respond? Perhaps it's a renewed pursuit of holiness.

[31:13] Perhaps it's, hey, you know what? I haven't been stooping to serve. Maybe it's just repenting for a mindset of envy or arrogance toward others and their work on the wall.

[31:26] Before we take communion, I want to give us a chance to examine our hearts in light of what communion is. Think about this. Communion is many parts, many members coming together, gathered as one body around one body.

[31:44] We're unified. We're diverse. But yet we're all humbled by the same thing. We're all humbled by Jesus' grace toward us. And we become hopeful, we become thankful, and we become rejoicing that he has counted our names and has called us to be a part of his renewal work.

[32:03] And so I'm going to pray. And then when I'm done, you can take some time of prayerful examination. And when you're ready, you can go to the tables. So pray with me.

[32:14] King Jesus, I ask you to come and ask you to bless this time. As we examine ourselves, as we go to take communion, Holy Spirit, work renewal in our hearts. Jesus, you gave this bread to your disciples saying, take and eat.

[32:27] This is my body broken for you. And you gave them the cup as well saying, this is my blood of the covenant which is poured out for many. It's his blood shed for you.

[32:40] Lord, do something amazing today. Work renewal in our hearts. Amen. So go ahead and take time to reflect. Respond to God privately. And when you're ready, go to the table nearest you.

[32:51]  And you can take your communion when you're back in your seat. Appreciate it.