Gregg Marutzky: I don't know about you, but I've been feeling
it a little bit this morning.
All right.
The spirit's starting to stir.
Let's really stir it.
All right, let's stir it as the word of God has spoken to us.
You know my approach.
It's to read the word and let it speak to us.
So open up your heart.
Now that's a decision.
I'm always longing for the Holy Spirit to touch me, to fill me,
to change me, to transform me.
The Bible says that at the end of my life, God wants me to be blameless.
He wants to, to create in me his nature so much, his character, his virtues, to
the point that when I get to heaven, I can stand before God and Jesus can present
me and you to God without any blemish.
Amen.
Well, that's a lot of work for Jesus.
Especially for me, as we heard even the, the Saint Mor Maurice, you know, I
mean, I, I, I, that was, I wish I'd have heard that when I was a teenaged father.
You know, that it's tough to be a, a.
Uh, a perfect, you know, there's a song, country song.
Most of you don't know it.
I won't refer to country songs that much, but this is from Lubbock,
Texas where Kathy grew up at.
Uh, it's hard to be humble and, uh, I think it's also hard to be Christian.
Amen.
'cause it's hard to be perfect and Jesus was perfect.
Good morning church.
I'm so glad you're here.
Turn your Bibles over to Nehemiah.
Not the shortest man in the Bible.
He was a kneehigh.
It's a shoe height.
That was the smallest.
And so, uh, uh, he had a little bit going for him there.
Amen.
You guys gotta lighten up.
All right.
See, sometimes I test you.
All right.
To see if you're, uh, in a, in a happy mood.
But, uh, we're going to start this series today on Nehemiah, because this
is really where we're at as a church.
Let's go.
The people had come back from exile.
A few of them, they had rebuilt the temple.
They had re rebuilt the opportunity to connect with God and to worship.
And so people thought the discipline of God was over.
That finally the burden of, of our, the generations before them
that had sinned was released.
And in some ways it was.
But God hadn't poured out his full blessing on the people.
He was still letting those exiles that were back in the Promised
Land ghost through some hard times.
And sometimes we only think God's with us when things are
great, but God is always with us.
He's with us when it's tough and when it's good, he's with us when we're
prosperous and we're just squeaking by.
Yeah.
And so the exiles feel like we're doing something wrong.
I mean, the marauders are coming in and they're taking all our hard work.
They're, they're, they're, they're pillaging us.
We're in danger.
We're always having to look over our shoulder and they thought
there's something wrong because if you read the Old Testament,
there's a very simplistic gospel.
They, they missed a lot of the true gospel.
The gospel was, if you're prosperous, then God's blessing you.
If you're not prosperous, God's not blessing you.
He's not with you.
That's not true.
That's not what David said in the Psalms.
That's not what the scriptures say, but they really believed that it
was just black and white like that.
All right.
That is just one or the other.
And we've gotta have a more sophisticated and nuanced faith
that God is always with us.
Can I get Amen?
Amen.
Yes.
God is always with us.
He's been with us when we've been in this place.
He's been with us when we've been in other places.
And I don't know about you, I think.
I think you're like me.
You liked that other place too, didn't you?
Yeah, there were advantages to the bigger and the smaller and to near
the beach and now more inland.
I mean, there's all different advantages, all different ways of doing church,
and we will do that and we'll be more sophisticated, but it's really good to
come back together and get your strength.
Yeah, it's good to come back together and get fully united, so God can bless you.
But as I thought about this first chapter, I gave an introduction of it at
a midweek, but not everyone got to hear it, and I want to go into it more fully.
I only did about five verses before because what's really struck
me is God wants us to repaint.
He wants us to rebuild.
He wants us to put new AstroTurf where the grass is all dead out there.
And we did all right.
He wants us to fill up the dumpster with all the stuff that's been accumulating
year after year after year, and all the closets and all the cubbies around here.
And boy did we throw a bunch of away, bunch of stuff away.
I feel lighter just looking.
I You gotta go up to the fellowship hall, look at that dumpster
and all the stuff that's in it.
All right.
Yeah, but just as the book of Nehemiah doesn't start with rebuilding the wall,
brick by brick, family by family, location by location, gate by gate, it starts
with rebuilding the inside of the people.
Amen.
Rebuilding the heart and the spirit, because we can do all these things,
but if our spirits aren't right.
If we're not doing well on the inside spiritually, then
all the other is in vain.
And so I wanna refocus this.
I've been working hard.
All the staff's been working hard.
A lot of people have been working hard.
Mike's been working hard.
I mean, the, the, the, the, the sound guys have been working hard.
I mean, Stewart's been here, you know, I mean, Phil Bailey's been here
trying to get new lights in here.
I mean, so many people working so hard.
But we're doing it for the right reason.
The reason is to bring glory to God.
The reason is to get God's blessing, be in a position where
we get to watch God do his thing.
You know why I'm so glad I'm an older Christian?
I'm not old, I'm just older.
Somebody came up with a new term the other day instead of the elderly.
It's the classic.
Some of us are classic Christians.
All right.
And you know why I'm so glad I'm a classic Christian is because I've
been able for the last 45, almost 50 years to see God do so many things.
Yeah.
Right.
I have lived a charmed, blessed life that really few people have gotten to
live, and we want everybody, everybody we know to be able to live that life.
And so let's, uh, go for it here and get into this.
The theme is rise up and Build.
And that's from, uh, the next chapter.
And, uh, uh, I wanna recommend, always gonna, gonna use my, my education.
Okay?
I'm not gonna dumb it down for you.
This is Orange County.
This is America.
I mean, this is one of the most educated places in the whole world, all right?
And if it goes over your head, there's things that will, you'll, you will get.
All right?
And, and so I don't dumb down my sermons, all right?
I had one sister come up to me one, one Sunday after church sit.
You know, you just give us too much.
I just rather it be simple.
I say, well, we get simple in quiet time every day, right?
Right.
I mean, I want to, I wanna speak to every level when I speak.
All right?
So some of it is gonna be educational, some of it's inspirational.
It's all faith building and it's all God's word.
All right?
But if you wanna do some deeper reading, here's a, uh, some two books you can read.
Edwin uh, Friedman wrote a book, failure of Nerve and Generation Generation.
First it's about systems theory and then it's about, uh, systems
theory applied to the church.
And a guy named Stanky took his work and has really, uh, done a lot of
research, but I introduced this fellow to you because he, uh, thinks that our
world is deteriorating, and he applied it just to the Western civilization.
I think it's.
The whole civilization.
Alright.
I think it's the whole world.
But he said, especially characteristics of systems that fail, churches
that fail, families that fail.
Businesses that fail, it's reactivity.
And so a lot of times people say, you gotta do something.
We gotta fix this.
No, we don't.
I know as a parent of teenager, I was very reactive.
You know, oh no, the sky just fell.
Don't be reactive.
When I'm reactive, usually I've sinned and usually I have to
confess my sin and apologize.
I've been reactive a little bit this week 'cause we've been working hard
and we've, you know, when you get tired, you're not your best self.
I got tired long before I went home and Kathy wasn't here
to say, Greg, just go to bed.
She, she knows when I'm at that point and, and, and now I've told the brothers.
So they'll just say that, that's gonna become a joke around it.
Greg, just go to bed now.
I have an office.
I have a couch up there.
Just say it differently.
Go take a nap.
All right.
But reactivity anger, I've had people mad at me this week.
I won't mention your names.
I won't even look at you.
'cause when I look at you, you think I'm talking about you.
And I had to tell one of the brothers, I can't see past the second row.
Don't go where I'm not going.
All right,
come on.
And I've gotten mad at some people, you know, because we've
worked hard for a good reason.
Low emotional resistance.
Does that remind you of yourself?
I mean, of anybody.
Okay.
Blame shifting, instant gratification and the big one, anxiety.
Let's not let these things be a part of our culture.
Amen.
Let's, let's give a lot of grace and let's extend a lot of mercy,
and let's try to check ourselves.
So these six things are not a part of our system.
Now, getting to Nehemiah.
I wanna give you a little bit of preview of all the, the chapters
that are coming in the weeks ahead.
But it talks about the remnant of God, the, the, the, the people
of God that are in the land.
The few that have come back from, from exile, from Babylon, the few
that stayed there, and it says the remnant rebuilds the wall.
And how did they do it?
Side by side.
Through family.
Yeah.
Nehemiah knew if you're fighting for your family, you'll fight harder.
That if you're trying to build that section, you're gonna build
it the very best way that you can.
And so you know what portion of the wall God gave to each person?
Their house was right next to the wall or even built into the wall, and so
they didn't do shabby, shabby work.
Shabby or shabby.
Alright.
They did great working excellent work because that was protecting
them and their family.
This church, we need to build it in a way that protects us and our family.
Can it get amen there?
All right, something else.
We're gonna see the remnant rebuilds of the wall while they were being persecuted.
The hardship came one curve after another, one challenge after another.
And we faced that this week in a physical way, trying to get this building ready.
But we're always gonna face it in a spiritual way.
Nothing ever goes perfectly right.
Never does.
You know, my hair's never exactly the way I want it, you know?
And you and I, you learned years ago.
The older you get, there's about three things that keep growing.
Your nose, your ears, and especially your eyebrows.
Now you're gonna stare at my nose and ear and eyebrows.
Alright?
But I look in the mirror and I'm like, is that what I look like?
I haven't always looked this way.
I looked better.
I need a nose job now.
I'm not getting one.
You know?
But you know how that goes.
Nothing ever is perfect.
I remember when I bought my first new car, they were all used, but when I
went to the dealership, you know, they didn't have that exact one I wanted.
With all the right options and the right color, the right interior, right exterior,
the right chrome, the right wheels.
Why didn't they make one just for me?
They don't.
I've never lived in a perfect house.
I think we've owned 10 houses.
There was something wrong with every one of 'em, and there was a
lot right with every one of 'em.
And you can focus on what's right or you can focus on that little defect.
You know, this is the thing about marriage.
You're not gonna find the perfect spouse.
Now.
I have, but you are not going to All right.
Right.
She's taken all right.
She's off the market.
Right.
Let's keep going.
The remnant rebuilds the wall while rebuilding their faith.
The remnant rebuilds the wall and the nation of Jews, they'd been scattered.
This, this, this book calls the people back together.
I want this to be a church where every one of our friends or family or or neighbors
that have visited come back and, and guys, there's been so many more people come
through this church than you realize.
I worked for a guy who is my supervisor.
When I was getting trained as a counselor, he'd been to the, the church I was
leading in Antelope Valley before, not before I was there, but he'd been to it.
He said, what church do you lead?
Greg?
The Ammo Valley Church.
Oh, I think I've been there.
Tell me where it's at.
And I gave him the address.
He goes, oh, that's the one out in the desert, isn't it?
I go, yeah, that's not very flattering, right?
That's the one that when you go inside, looks like an airplane hangar, right?
Go.
No.
Oh yeah.
It's got really high ceilings and it's dark and Yeah, it looked like, to me
it looked like an airplane hanger.
Well, it doesn't look like an airplane hanger to me, Stan,
but we make multipurpose rooms, right?
We, we, we make a multifunctional.
He was, wait, he wanted to see, see a stapel, a a steeple
and, and stained glass.
He, he didn't like this big open thing.
I do.
I think you do too.
Amen.
The remnant rebuilds the wall in record time.
Why?
Because they were unified.
There was so much work done yesterday.
When I got here in the morning, I just thought, we're never gonna get there.
It's not gonna happen.
I walked around and I tried to put on a happy face,
but I thought, we're not gonna get there.
And then every once in a while, I came outside and I.
Where did all this stuff come from?
And then I go in the back and I guess we'd emptied the storage container.
And I thought, we don't have anybody to do anything with all this.
And last night when I drove away about six o'clock, I drove down there and I
thought somebody did a lot of something.
'cause all that's gone.
I mean, you can do so much when you're unified.
Amen.
Yeah, the remnant rebuilds the wall, and this is the, a good
one with the funds of others,
their captors paid for all this.
All right.
Now, why should we do an OC cleanup so that others would help?
Fun things.
I'm not as dumb as I look, right.
The remnant rebuilds the wall to renew their dream.
I don't know about you, but a lot of dreams I've had and spiritually
have come true, and a lot of dreams I've had have been shattered.
And I'm, I'm in the business of reaming.
I don't know about you, but it's good to ream and, and just
like Ron said at the beginning.
God always takes us on a different course.
We, we, we plan a straight line.
If you look at a map, there's no straight lines.
They go around hills and they go through valleys.
There's no straight lines.
We'd like straight lines.
All right, but we've gotta go on the course that God wants us to go.
Let's keep going.
The remnant.
Amen.
Let's get into the verses, Nehemiah one, one, and two.
The words of Nehemiah's.
Son of Hala.
In the month of Keli in the 20th year, when I was in the Citadel of
Susan Hananiah, one of my brothers came from Judah with some other
man, and I questioned them about the Jewish remnant, that it survived
the exile, and also about Jerusalem.
Every Jew throughout the dispersion all around the world always wanted
to do, have news about Jerusalem.
How's Jerusalem doing?
How's the church doing?
How's the place that God meets his people doing?
He wanted the news.
Sometimes I like watching the news.
Most of the time I don't want the news, you know?
Especially before I go to sleep.
'cause I don't want to have nightmares.
Right?
But he wanted the news.
He asks about the remnant and I've, we've said some things
already about the remnant.
Let me just hit these things again.
God builds through the faithful remnant.
The remnant are the, continue those that continue to remain obedient, faithful.
Keep on keeping on the remnants is righteous.
Even in hardship, they confess their sin.
We're gonna see that in this chapter.
Claim the power of promises.
God, we're gonna see that in this chapter.
The remnant rise up and build in every generation the remnant will experience.
Here it is the supernatural acts of God.
That's what I'm talking about.
The remnant survives.
The challenges?
Yes, indeed.
We who persevere are part of the remnant of God.
When you read about the remnant, you always ask yourself, is it me?
Am I a part of it?
Let me just answer that for you.
If you're obedient and you're faithful and you're just trying
not, you don't have to be perfect.
You don't even have to be necessarily going forward.
You're just hanging in there.
You can be crawling, you can even be stepping back, but you're
headed the right direction.
You're part of the remnant.
Amen.
I, I'm just anointing all of you, a part of the remnant.
So all this that we read about in Nehemiah applies to all of us.
Can I get amen?
Amen.
All right, let's keep going.
Verse three.
They said to me, those who survived the XL and are back in the province
are in great trouble and disgrace.
The wall of Jerusalem is broken down, the gates are burned with fire.
And when I heard these things, I got mad.
You know, according to Kubler Ross, that's the first response to change
and to loss and to disappointment.
We get mad.
But you know what Nehemiah did?
He got sad.
He got broken hearted.
It says he sat down and he wept.
For some days I mourned and fasted and prayed before the God of heaven.
You know, he just jumped all the steps and he was at the fourth step.
Sadness, depression.
Most of us start with denial, and then anger's the second step.
And then we start bargaining with God and then it sinks in.
This is the way it is, and we get depressed and then we accept
it and we gotta deal with it.
So when he heard this bad news, he got sad.
Some of us are at different stages in our spiritual life with some
of our disappointment with God.
Some of us are mad.
I hope you get glad, but I know that takes time and that's just one
stage and you gotta go through it.
So we'll try to be patient with each other when we're mad and when we're in denial.
I mean, others can usually see our problems before we see 'em.
Right?
You know, we talk about blind spots.
Some of us have a little bit bigger blind spots.
But that's okay.
We'll work with you.
And then some of us, we're in our, that this part of our
prayer life we're bargaining.
God, if you'll do this, I'll do that.
Somebody that's gonna remain nameless, wanted to bargain doing
some of the work around here.
You know, I don't wanna be too specific 'cause they worked.
So I don't, I, I don't wanna discourage 'em.
They talked about maybe getting paid, and I wanted to say something,
but I just kept my mouth shut.
They're just in the bargaining phase.
All right.
I did say this.
I wouldn't say that to God.
God doesn't usually bargain with us.
It's his way, and then we get sad, but here's how God's
people respond to bad news.
We weep.
What, Greg?
I'm not a crybaby.
I'm a man.
I mean, look at me big man.
I day.
Children are so straightforward.
My little, my little granddaughter, four years old.
Just this last week, she said, Papa, you're big.
And then her dad jumped in, decided he wanted to change the subject, you
know, well, well, well, daddy's big too.
No, you're not big like papa's big.
Okay.
And he goes, well, I'm taller than Papa.
I'm not talking about tall dad.
And I don't know what else she said.
I left the room right.
We need to have broken hearts.
We need to have soft hearts.
We need to have good hearts and hearts that are touched and empathetic.
The walls were broken down.
There was no safety.
The enemies could attack anytime the gates were burned.
There was no security pe.
The marauders could come in at night and do their thing.
The remnant was in trouble.
There was no protection.
The exiles were in disgrace.
That's probably the worst thing that was going on in the land.
And then what does it mean for us?
We need to have a weeping soul.
Get over your madness, get over your sadness.
Just have a soft heart and weep over the loved ones whose faith are shaken.
Boy, when our kids went on their spiritual journey and didn't just follow us in step.
Have, has any children ever followed their parents in step?
I mean, I think we had a little bit of unrealistic expectations.
Come on, kids be just like us.
Follow us, follow the things we believed.
You know, everyone's gotta go on their own journey.
And when our kids started going on our journey, oh, it hurt and we wept.
And we wept for years.
You know, there's things to weep about.
When friends that you love so much, take a different path, it hurts.
You know?
I told one brother, I want you to be a best friend.
That scared him to death.
He never started initiating anymore.
He became best friends with other people who wants to be
best friends with a minister.
You know, I try not to be one of those guys that's self-righteous and people
feel like they're judged around me.
But boy, that was the worst thing I could have said to him,
you wanna be your best friend.
He'd have been a friend, but he won a little distance from the preacher.
Right.
Thank you friends that will get close to me.
There's a few of you I've told you.
But I haven't said best friend 'cause I don't wanna scare you off.
Right.
The gates were burned with fire.
We need to weep over the discipline that God dispenses.
I mean, there's a lot of psalms that are, they're all about lament
and weeping because the people are in exile and they're crying, says
they will go down to the river.
And that's where they would write these laments and these songs and sing these
songs because they were being oppressed.
You know, it hurts when God's disciplined, but he only does
because you're a son or daughter.
Just push through, we'll help you weep over the danger
we face in a hostile world.
You know, I'm glad we have World War III hasn't started.
But think about our brothers and sisters during World War I and World War II
and a lot's going on in the world right now, and it's always a little bit scary.
There's a lot to just let go of, weep over the reputation
of Christianity in the world.
This is one that breaks my heart, just broken my heart that when I was
a college student, it was all right.
It was cool to be a CA Christian.
Now it's really not as cool.
There's things to whip about.
Why do we need to weep the, because tears purge the soul and
keep the hardness from happening.
You've heard about cresty old men, haven't you?
They let themselves get hard.
Your body gets stiffer.
Please do me a favor.
This is a commercial.
I can't bend over very well.
If you see any trash, pick it up.
I'll want to, but if I go down, I'm afraid I won't get back up.
So do me a favor.
All right.
And even this morning, I went up and snuck up to see the Korean
service and the Spanish service, and I saw a few things on the ground
and oh, I wanted to pick 'em up.
Do it for me.
Will you, Moses Is, is gone.
His mother's ill.
So he wasn't able to do all that.
He keeps this place spotless.
He works so hard.
He's here at all hours.
He's awesome.
Guys.
Let's treat this like the house of God.
Amen.
Going a little quicker.
Now we, the reason we need to just weep sometimes is because you can
get moving too fast and miss it.
You gotta stay in touch, you gotta stop.
You gotta have a Sabbath, you gotta listen to God.
You gotta sit in Shiva with people that, that are hurting.
Don't avoid those people that are hurting.
They'll help soften your heart.
You also need to stop and weep at times so you'll be more spiritual.
'cause that's sometimes when God speaks to us.
I've learned the best lessons spiritually I've ever learned, when I've been
hurting, when everything's going well.
Sometimes, what do you get?
Prideful.
I get prideful when things are going well.
It's when I need to change.
That's when I really learned a lot prayer.
This whole chapter's about prayer, Nehemiah's prayer.
And why did he start off with prayer?
Because it renews our faith.
It enlightens our minds, it soothes our hearts, and I could have just kept
going, and it helps you dream again.
It just.
Takes the weight off.
On and on.
Prayer is the thing to be doing.
Verse five, then I said, Lord, the God of heaven, the great and
awesome God who keeps his covenant of love and to those who love him
and keep his command, do we love him?
Yes.
And guess what?
If you love him, God loves you back.
And I don't say that very often because God loves you first.
Yeah, he's loved us first, and so we need to be the ones that love him back.
But when we love him back, then he loves us back, and then we love him back and he
loves us back, and it just keeps spiraling up and there's just love all at work.
And it's just going and going and going and going.
And then nothing seems as bad when you're in love.
Right?
Yeah.
And when you're in love, whatever, you know.
Greg, you got cancer.
Whatever.
I got Kathy.
You know.
Hey Greg, you got a bad heart.
Not spiritually, but physically.
Yes, but I also have Kathy.
It's all the way you look at things.
Amen.
It is so good to be in love with God and you know the Ocean's Church.
Showed us the potential of this building than me.
They had three services on Sunday morning at eight o'clock, nine 30, and 11.
That's one of my goals.
Now, don't run away from me like my friends do when I say these crazy things.
But I look forward to three services here, maybe five in a weekend on
Saturday night and Sunday night too.
Greg, slow down.
Slow down.
Why do I think this way though?
Because we have a great and awesome and faithful God.
A great God that's powerful with unlimited resources.
An awesome, phenomenal God that deserves all the worship and recognition.
That the whole world should be giving him in a faithful God that his covenant
and his promises always come true.
In verse six, let your be attentive and your eyes open to hear the prayer.
Your servant is praying before you this day and night for all the other
servants, for the people of God.
I confess the sins of the Israelites, including myself and my family
that I have committed against you.
Oh no, Greg.
Are we going back to the old days where all the preacher would say is prevent?
Are we going back to the old, old days when there was those gospel meetings
and it was just hell, fire and brimstone coming from the pulpit, you know, and an
altar called the end and everybody had to be weeping and crying and repenting
and just throwing themselves down.
Every once in a while, we'll need that.
Yeah.
I don't do it every Sunday because I don't want us to be guilt ridden, and I
don't want us to be motivated by guilt.
But every once in a while, I want us to purge our souls of
anything that needs to be purged.
So I'll surprise you.
It won't be on the calendar.
I won't tell you when we're gonna have an altar call.
You know, I'll just let the spirit move and sometimes I just make it
up at the end of the sermon and the singers have to improvise.
Start singing a song, you know, because every once in a while it's good.
And it's amazing when you do that spontaneously, how all a sudden people
get to change spiritually, a broken heart.
The people of God were endangered.
The people of God were in disgrace and in dread and distress.
So it's good.
Everyone's swell to purge Verse seven and eight.
We have acted very wickedly towards you.
We have not obeyed the commands, decrees and laws that you gave your servant Moses.
Remember the instruction you gave your servant Moses saying,
if you are unfaithful, I will scatter you among the nations.
Now has our movement or our church committed sins to the degree
where God needs to just exiles.
No, but God is always teaching and disciplining and transforming his people.
I had a brother say, Greg, stop apologizing.
Stop looking backwards.
Let's just look forward.
We'll do both.
We can do both the same time, can't we?
We can always be repenting 'cause and we can always be saying we're
sorry 'cause we did do things.
Imperfectly.
You know, every church has done things imperfectly.
There's people making a living on the internet criticizing
churches in our church.
Oh, good for them.
Oh my goodness.
The great insight they have that this isn't a perfect church.
I'm just amazed at their insight.
I mean, you people can do that the rest of their lives.
We're all sinners, right?
Yes, we're right.
This isn't heaven.
This is California.
Some of you got that.
Praise God.
That's what prayer is.
Repent and confess your sin to God.
Ask God and yield to God.
That's what prayer is all about.
We're almost done.
F Nehemiah one verse nine.
But if you return to me, here's the good stuff and obey my commands.
We've returned to our building.
We want to obey God's commands.
Then even in your, even if your exiled people are at the farthest horizon.
The people that have been hurt, the people that have been scattered,
I will gather them from there and bring them to the place that I have
chosen as a dwelling from my name.
They are your servants and your people whom you redeemed by your
great strength in your mighty hand.
People have been scattered, and this is a promise that people will gather
again if we'll claim God's power because God blesses the righteous prodigal.
You know, I don't know when we'll do it, but sometimes
we'll have a homecoming Sunday
and we'll just invite everybody back that have ever been here.
Wouldn't that be great?
You know, I've never, uh, Kathy and I went to one reunion.
There's a 50th this summer, uh, for my high school.
I'm not going, but there's a, there's one for my, uh.
Campus ministry this summer that we'll probably go to
'cause that's my real family.
You know the Boulder Forever, brothers and sisters.
Amen.
Claim God's power.
Claim God's righteousness and claim God's purity.
Keep yourself righteous.
And then verse 11, Lord, let your ear be attentive to the prayer of your servant
and to the prayer of your servants who delight in revered your name.
That's the church.
Give your servant success today by granting him favor in the present.
Of this man.
He's talking about the king.
He's about to ask for all the money to rebuild.
I was cup bearer to the king.
So what do we learn from this first chapter?
What are the morals of the story?
God gathers a faithful remnant to be rebuild his church.
That's what we are.
The remnant can be the Orange County Church.
I'm not saying we are.
We have to choose that and we have to become that, and I think
we're becoming that more and more, but we have to choose it.
The remnant are the righteous disciples.
Who are a righteous above all else, the remnant, confesses and repents
and takes responsibility, doesn't just half repent, takes it all.
The remnant claims, the power and the promises of God.
They're always looking forward and dreaming.
The remnant rises up and builds.
The remnant will experience the supernatural of God, and the remnant
gathers the dispersed disciples back home.
Amen.
That's what one of our goals is, right?
Brothers and sisters.
So what lessons do we learn from this chapter?
Christians don't complain.
They cry.
I want to change that about our church.
Orange County is a lot of complaining people.
I walk around, I listen.
A lot of entitled people, a lot of rich people, a lot of
people that have it their way.
A lot of people that cut you off when you're driving,
they want it there.
You can get outta my way going too slow.
But we as Christians, we're gonna be different.
We're gonna keep soft hearted.
God allows the walls of the church to be broken down.
Some of us act surprised.
The church goes through hard times.
Some of us are just shocked that our church isn't perfect.
Did we have a history?
Did we have a past?
Yeah.
And so do you.
I love these people that throw rocks outta glass houses.
Wow.
God allows the walls of the church to be broken down.
But you know what my job is, and the elder's job and the other staff
members' job and the bible talk leader's job, I'm putting it on you too.
It's not all up to me.
I'm spreading this leadership out.
Leadership rallies the people to rise up and rebuild.
God provides miracles to provide the resources we need.
I don't know how we're gonna do it all, but it'll work out.
It always has worked out.
Persecutor kick you when you're down,
but you're not out.
We've had some people really jump on the ship.
Yeah.
That OCC church.
That ICC church, you know, persecutor like to kick you when
you're down, but guess what?
We can take a beating and keep on ticking.
Some of you get that one too.
Christians will multitask to protect their family.
God disciplines his people and also prospers his people.
Leadership finds a way to motivate the people.
We're gonna find the part of the wall that you want to build to protect your family.
Amen.
That's what we're gonna do.
The people of God rise up and build the kingdom of God.
You've been rising up church.
You've been so impressive the last few months especially.
I mean, there's a spirit.
It's brewing, it's happening.
Things are starting to move the right direction.
We're coming together, we're unifying, and we need to just
rebuild side by side in this church.
We need to rebuild by being and making disciples.
We need about $33,000 a a week.
That's my guess, you know?
I mean, our contribution goes up and down one month.
It's this one month is another, you know, I've tried to do the math.
I'm, I got a calculator, I can use it, you know, but this
is about where we need to be.
If it's over 33, we're gonna really be good.
Alright?
But let's get there.
And that's what we've been doing most of the time.
So it's not a stretch.
We need to rebuild our campus.
Cus guys, we couldn't have unloaded all these chairs with all the out,
all these young people, you know?
I mean, the trash of those chairs took forever.
I mean, thank you, thank you, thank you.
And I mean that, I didn't mean to spit at you.
All right guys, you worked so hard.
You worked so hard.
I went to bed last night just praising God for so many people.
I tried to remember everybody's name.
I just described, God, you de to God last night.
Some of you, 'cause I don't know your name, but you just touched my heart.
You worked so hard and tirelessly.
I mean, it's been amazing.
Thank you.
We need to keep pumping our campus ministry.
I'm so glad this church wants to do bingo.
We got our tables right there.
We got our chairs here in March.
Hopefully we can start, we gotta be really wise about how we start.
'cause you can lose a lot of money with bingo too.
'cause you gotta pay whether we have a lot of people or we
don't have a lot of people, but I want to pay off this building.
I want to give it as a gift to the next generation.
I don't want them to have to pay for it.
I want us, and I want to use the resources of the world like the Bible describes.
Okay?
Keep that secret.
Alright?
Rise up and build every ministry, rise up and our special will
be about what it was last year.
I'm going to end with a very personal song.
I asked Brian Craig to write this song years ago.
The campus ministry in Boulder that I was a part of was a amazing, we
had a hundred baptisms one month.
You know, Brian Ell and others, you know, were baptized that month.
Andy, Andy, winge, Corina, others.
But there was a time when the campus ministry wasn't doing well.
We were gonna have a retreat and the Coach McCartney wrote us, wrote
a book entitled Ashes to Glory.
And it was about how the Colorado football, uh, program had just been
terrible for decades after decades.
And then it eventually won national championship.
And so I asked Brian, I said, write us a song for our retreat, ashes to Glory.
And he wrote this song and this is one of my favorite songs, and it means even
more to me now 'cause Brian's gone.
And it's amazing what he wrote in this song.
Maybe even knowing he wouldn't always be with us, he says, oh, my eyes are
turning from the past behind the wall.
And oh, my world's been burning.
So I run to the waterfall.
I can see my life for what it is.
A fragile paper doll.
Oh, my heart's been yearning.
So I answer heaven's call.
I die and in made clean, I fly unbound and free.
I cry.
And you move me from ashes to glory.
Oh, my heart was crying.
My life was spinning round and round and oh, my soul was dying.
Ashes, ashes all fall down.
But then like the phoenix from the flame.
I leave the ashes on the ground.
Oh, for glory flying.
I want to wear a golden crown.
I die and am made clean.
I fly unbounded, free.
I cry.
And you move me
from ashes to glory.
Oh, I see forever.
Here's Brian saying this from heaven now.
I see forever and whatever comes my way, oh, we'll be together and forever.
Yours, I'll stay A thousand years from now, perhaps.
I'll think of what was yesterday and I won't remember if I ever felt afraid.
I die and am made clean.
I fly unbound and free.
I cry and you move me from ashes the glory.
Amen.
God bless.