And again, we're gonna tackle the whole chapter. There's an awful lot of names in here, so be gracious to me. And as I mentioned last week, this isn't the last list of names that we find in Nehemiah, but again, there's reasons that the Holy Spirit has preserved these names for us. And that is for our good, for our growth and maturity, and we can learn some things from that. So this is Nehemiah chapter 11. Now the leaders of the people lived in Jerusalem, and the rest of the people cast lots to bring out one of 10 to live in Jerusalem, the holy city, while nine out of the 10 remained in the towns. And the people blessed all of the men who willingly offered to live in Jerusalem. These are the chiefs of the province who lived in Jerusalem, but in the town... These are the chiefs of the province who lived in Jerusalem, But in the towns of Judah, everyone lived on his own property, in his towns. Israel, the priests, the Levites, the temple servants, and the descendants of Solomon's servants. And in Jerusalem lived certain sons of Judah, and the sons of Benjamin, of the sons of Judah, Athaliah, the son of Uzziah, the son of Zechariah, the son of Amariah, the son of Shef, Shethetiah of Mahalel, of the sons of Perez, and Massiah, the son of Baruch, the son of Kol Hosei, the son of Haziah, the son of Adaiah, the son of Joirib, the son of Zechariah, the son of the Shalonite, all of the sons of Perez, who lived in Jerusalem for 468 valiant men. And these are the sons of Benjamin, Selu, the son of Meshulam, the son of Joed, the son of Pedaiah, the son of Goliah, the son of Messiah, the son of Ithiel, the son of Jeshia, the brothers of the men of Valor, 928. Joel, the son of Zichri, was the overseer, and Judah, the son of Hassanuah, was the second over the city. of the priests, Jediah, the son of Joirib, Jachinim, Saraiah, the son of Hilkiah, the son of Meshulam, the son of Zadok, the son of Mereoth, the son of Akitu, the ruler of the house of God, and their brothers who did the work of the house 822. Adaiah, the son of Jerome, the son of Peliah, the son of Anzi, the son of Zechariah, the son of Peshchor, the son of Machilah, the brothers of the heads of the fathers' houses. 242. Emma Shishai, the son of Azrael, the son of Ahazi, the son of Meshillamoth, the son of Ymir, the brothers and the mighty men of Valor. 128, their overseers was Zabdiel, the son of Hagadolim. and of the Levites, Shemaiah, the son of Hashuv, the son of Azraqim, the son of Hashabiah, the son of Muni, and Shabeshai, Jehoshabad, and the chiefs of the Levites, who were over the outside work of the house of God. and Mattiah, the son of Micah, the son of Zaddi, the son of Asaph, who was the leader of praise, who gave thanks, and Bebukiah, the son amongst the brothers, and Abda, the son of Shemua, the son of Galil, the son of Juduthun, all of the Levites of the Holy City were 284. The gatekeepers, Akub, Talmon, and their brothers, who kept watch at the gates, were 172. And the rest of Israel, and all of the priests and the Levites who were in the towns of Judah, every one in his inheritance. But the temple servants lived on. Ophel, and Zihah, and Gishpah were over the temple servants. The overseer of the Levites in Jerusalem was Uzzi, the son of Bani, the son of Hashbaniah, the son of Mathaniah, the son of Micah, the son of Asaph, the singers, who were all of the work of the house of God. For there was a command from the king concerning them, and a fixed provision for the singers, as every day required. And Pethiah, the son of Meshezabel, the sons of Zariah, and the son of Judah, were on the king's side in all matters concerning the people. As for the villages with their fields, some of the people of Judah lived in Kiriath Arba, and its villages in Dibon, and its villages in Zechazbeel, and its villages in Jeshua, and in Moladah, and Beth-pelet, in Hazar Shual, in Beersheba, and its villages, in Ziklag, in Mekhumaya and its villages, in Anriman, in Zora, in Jarmuth, in Zenoa, Adulam and their villages, Lakish and its fields, and Azekah and its villages. So they encamped from Beersheba into the valley of Hinnom. the people of Benjamin, who lived from Geba onward, at Mikmash, Ajah, Bethel, and its villages, and Noth, Nov, Anah, Hazor, Ramah, Gittayim, Hadid, Tzivoyim, Nadolat, Lad, and Amnah, the valley of the craftsmen, and certain divisions of the Levites of Judah were assigned to Benjamin. and we again thank you for your word and we thank you for the gems that the word contains and the inferences that we can draw from the text. We're reminded by the Apostle Paul that you have given every bit of scripture as something that is breathed out by you and has been preserved by your Holy Spirit for our edification, for our building up, for our good, and to equip us for every good work that we do. So Father, I pray that your spirit would guide us both in the reading and the hearing and that we would understand and that we would be able to infer some things that we can apply to our understanding of you and your design and your plans and the way that we're to live our lives. So Father, I pray that you are glorified, that you are honored, that you are praised and proclaimed in all that is said and reflected upon and done, not just here, but in all of our lives. These things we pray in Jesus's name, amen. Let me begin by asking you about what comes to mind when you hear the word residue. Okay, the stuff at the bottom, the stuff that simples down. What else? Sticky substance. Yeah, sticky substance. So far we're not talking about good word pictures here. A lot of times there's kind of a negative connotation with that. But what other kinds of things come to mind? Chemistry is what precipitates out. sure sure right right right what's left over you know after after the water is extracted okay so that's not necessarily a bad thing that's just it is separation okay sometimes it's a good thing right I mean there's a residue of oil that remains on like the pistons of your car because if that didn't happen when you kind of left your car parked sitting in a place for three or four days it would have been rusted and you about a residue that is kind of left behind and sitting somewhere for a while. So either way, what we can know in terms of definition of a term is just that, it's what remains, okay? After whatever has happened, it's what remains. Now, part of the reason that I wanted to kind of was kicking around this idea here is in verse 20 of our passage, It's talking about the people that weren't chosen. Okay, now chapter 11 deals with essentially the resettling, particularly of the Levites and the priests into the area of Jerusalem and Judea. And the solution was to say, okay, we're gonna take and we're gonna cast lots. And one out of 10 people, even though you kind of belong out here and you have family lands out there, we're gonna move you into the city of Jerusalem because a city can't function if it doesn't have that many people in it. So we need more people in the city so it's safe and it can function and all of those kinds of things. So we're gonna relocate you a little bit. And so there's a drawing of lots. But in verse 20, there's a reference there that says, the rest of the people, is how most of our English Bibles will translate that, went back to their family inheritances. But if you use the King James Version, or if you use the old Geneva Version that preceded the King James, we sometimes think of the King James as the first English Bible that ever existed, and it's not. There's a lot of English Bibles that went before the King James, and the Geneva Bible is actually the Bible that Shakespeare used. And so if you look at that, instead of saying those that remained, the word residue is used. So it speaks about the residue of Israel. Now, it's translating, and we've talked about this before. English language has changed over time. So in the 1600s when the King James was being done, the 1500s when the Geneva Bible was being done, residue simply meant the rest, okay? Sort of means it, but didn't have quite the connotations that we associate it with today. So I'm not going to stretch it. The temptation is there to say, we should be the residue of Israel in the world and we could spiritualize the thing and become, you know, wealth or whatever we wanna do. Just because the ones that weren't residue were taken up. Yeah, we could go there too. But, you know, so I'm not gonna go there. I mean, the Hebrew word that is there, shahar, simply means the remainder, or the word that I wanna use here, which is a legitimate translation of the term, the remnant, okay? And so I wanna talk to you a little bit about this idea of remnant this morning, because that is an important theological principle that we find being spoken of here in a very real sense. and is certainly something that carries through into the New Testament as well. And so that's kind of how I wanted to start out. And what really struck me was the principle that God never leaves an area of people without a witness to himself. No matter how bad that culture may kind of descend into sin, He never leaves that culture without a testimony to himself. So when God destroyed mankind with a flood, eight people were saved. However many people lived on the planet at that time, eight people God chose to save. They were a remnant of mankind to be a witness and a testimony to himself. Were all of them saved? No. We see what happens next. Okay, but the reality is they were called to be a remnant. When God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah and all of the surrounding area, the valley and the cities that were around those cities, there were still two Sodomite women that survived that onslaught, the daughters of Lot and his Sodomite wife. Obviously his wife did not survive. Things didn't work out well for them. But nevertheless, there was a witness that is left over. But probably the most profound of the Old Testament references or pictures of this idea of a remnant and a witness is found in terms of Israel, the northern kingdom of Israel during Elijah's day. Of course, we know the story about Elijah, but at that time in history, the northern kingdom of Israel had fallen into tremendous sin. But remember something, it had been founded on God's law. It had been founded, we would use the phrase, as a Christian nation. And you know the analogy that I'm about to make. But it had been founded that way, as a nation that was built upon principles that come out of scripture. But by the time you have Elijah living there, The people were worshipping Asherah and Baal, both of whom were, amongst other things, fertility gods. And they were worshipped in the presence of orgies or through the practice of orgies and various forms of fornication and things along those lines. Even phallic symbols were used as symbolic pictures of those quote-unquote pagan gods. They also worshiped Molech, and the way that Molech was practiced was that babies, the firstborn child in particular, would be taken and burned to death on an altar, destroyed by the parents in the hopes that Molech would bless them in some way. They sought out, instead of the prophets of God, they sought out the prophets of Beelzebub. for wisdom and for truth. Now, Beelzebub translated into English literally means the Lord of the dung flies. And so, talk about word pictures here. And so you've got, you know, the God of all Israel, the God who created the heavens and the earth. And instead of going to him and his prophets for wisdom, they're going to the God that controls the flies that hang out upon the dung and the feces. that is left behind the animals. That's how far the people had fallen. I mean, even the Jews understood him to be a demonic creature and not something that was good. They practiced the pagan act of bodily mutilation. The mindset behind that and the drive behind that was largely the fact that we are made in the image of God. So anything to distort and to warp and to attack that image, in your flesh even, was something that they would practice and they do. And you always have to add this one in, the youth were disrespectful to their parents and to their elders. Every culture and generation, that's one of the complaints that you see, the youth aren't listening to us. And so this is one, again, one of the things that we see that is characteristic of the time of the northern nature. And again, you probably worked already ahead in terms of where I'm thinking going. There's a lot of that that is very descriptive of America today, in terms of the sexual immorality that is not only practiced but celebrated, in terms of the abortion of the babies that is again something that we celebrate as a culture, and looking to false prophets for just about anything, whether that's the health wealth people or the people that were running around advising our president over the last four years or whatnot, looking at false prophets who simply are not speaking for God. As the psalmist said, their minds aren't on God, their minds are on worldly things and worldly gain for themselves. And with that in mind, what came to mind was what Elijah was seeing on the mountaintop. Because Elijah was up there with God, and Elijah was frustrated. He said, look, I'm the last one left. Your people have completely gone astray. You need to nuke them. Wipe them off the face of the earth. But I'm the only one left. And God corrects him. God corrects him in a wonderful statement in 1 Kings 19, 18. I'm gonna translate this literally for you because a lot of times our English Bibles don't always do all of this justice. A little translation of the Hebrew reads, God is speaking, and I have caused to remain. Okay, now the word remain there is shahar, it's the same word that we find remnant here in Nehemiah, exact same word, but it's, to get technical on there, it's in hyphal form in the Hebrew, and everybody goes, oh wow, I totally understand what that means. The Hebrew language has ways to say, I'm going to emphasize a repeated action, or I'm going to emphasize an action that is caused to take place or forced to happen. An action that is forced to happen is written in a hyphal form. And basically when you see a verb is written that way, basically we're saying the one who is acting, in this case God, is causing the event, causing the action to take place. In this particular case, God is saying, look, I have cause to remain. Not people made the right choice and thus they remained. Not that people were faithful and thus they remained. God is saying, I have cause to remain. The only reason that these people have remained faithful is because God's hand was upon them. God was causing them to remain. He goes on to say, I've caused to remain in Israel 7,000, all whose knees have not bowed down to Baal, and every mouth that has not kissed or blown a kiss towards him. Now, the bowing and the kissing is obviously, it's in, most of us I think are familiar with, is an expression of worship in ancient times. And the reality is still very much today in the way that it is used, which is one of the reasons why Christians should never end up bowing down and kissing the ring of the Pope. That is a form of idolatry and something that we should not engage in. But we kind of can, it's an easy connection to make. But I've also known a lot of Christians who have a cross necklace and who make a point of kissing it before they hang it up at night before they go to bed as a sign of affection. Folks, that's idolatry as well. Or kissing their Bible before they close it or something along those lines. I've seen that. Actually, in that case, for a very short period of time until I was corrected in my early days of faith, I did that. So I get it, you know. But again, it's idolatry. This is a book with paper in it and things like that. There's nothing special about this. My notes are special to me. But there's nothing special. It is a book. It is a physical object. We should not be adoring the book. What is said in the book contains the word of God. And we should be adoring the God who gives us this word and paying close attention to that word because it is and does come from the God of all heaven. But the point that I'm making is, we fall into the trap of worshiping inanimate things ourselves. There's a reason, I've said this before, but there's a reason American Idol is called American Idol. But more importantly, These are the people that God has preserved. He preserved them so they did not bow down. 7,000. Now, we don't know for sure how many people lived in ancient Israel, the northern kingdom, during the days of Elijah. A conservative estimate, and I'm saying conservative on this side, would be at least a million, if not millions, of people lived in that region. And out of that number, God preserved for himself a witness of 7,000 people. But whatever stretch, that's less than 1% if you want to do the math. God could have said more, could have saved more, could have preserved more. God had the power. He could have done that, but he chose not to. And what is more convicting than that even, is when we get to Romans 11, in particular verses two through six, Paul the Apostle is looking back at that event and saying, this is an example of God's election. And God's doing the same thing today that he did back then. But isn't that an awfully small number? It's a residue of Israel. As it were, it's a residue of the church. We are the remainder. We are the people that God has called. I spent a lot of the last nine years basically immersed in church history. First, because I wanted to understand where this German reform thing came out of. Because in a Presbyterian seminary, we spent a lot of time talking about Southern Presbyterians. And I knew that there was a German Reformation, but you know, we kind of stopped with Luther. We didn't really, until we got to Calvin, You know, Calvin was big, Knox was big, and then it was the Southern Presbyterians and, you know, Dabney and Thornwell and all those guys that we focused on. And I'm just trying to make sense of how all of these things came together in terms of the Continental Reformed Church. And so I spent a lot of time in that. And in the last couple years, I've been spending also a lot of time studying about the development of the church councils in the early times and those things. And so kind of putting those things together, one thing that studying history will kind of reinforce in your mind is that when it comes to reformation, it's never the majority of people that recognize that there is a need for reformation. It's always a small minority. Of course, if it were a majority, you wouldn't need a reformation because they'd be reforming themselves. So I get that reality, but it's always this very, very small minority that's being called out by God to seek reform in the church. There's a phrase that as reformed Christians kind of sometimes is referred to as our slogan or our motto, The Latin is ecclesia reformata, semper reformata. And literally kind of translates that is the church is reformed, but always or and always reforming. Okay, there's a process of always looking back. This does not mean the church is changing. That's the error of liberalism. The church basically said, liberalism basically says, look, the church needs to change with the culture. And so we're always reforming the church by changing what the gospel means. to make it suit the culture around us. It's not what the phrase was ever meant to communicate. What the phrase was meant to say is that the church is always examining itself. The church recognizes that it's gonna make mistakes, and it's gonna have probably a tendency to drift away from God's word, which is what historically always happens. Even the best of church starts. The church is started by the Apostle Paul. Oh, you foolish Galatians. Who has bewitched you? That's within Paul's lifetime. Maybe 15, 20 years. They've probably less than that. They've drifted. We recognize that tendency. And so just as individual Christians, part of our process of sanctification is to examine our lives daily and say, what am I doing? What am I not doing in a way that honors God and How can I reform those things, can change those things? And we do it especially prior to coming together for the Lord's table, right? What the phrase is communicating the idea is that it's something that while the individual does it individually for his own sanctification, the church does it corporately for the church's sanctification and for the church's health. So Ron had written on the board, The old phrase of Socrates, or Socrates if you really want to poke at somebody who knows a little bit of Greek, that the unexamined life is not worth living. I would add to that the words of, or at least the intent of every reformer in the pre-reformers and kind of those who came post-Reformation, who have kind of been part of God's work, is to say the unexamined church is not worth attending, okay? The church should never become complacent. We can add that to the board if you want. And the church should never become complacency because complacency is one of the ways by which the devil gets out his bleach and washes away the residue, The picture is clear, because complacency destroys the Church. And the Church in America, if anything, complacency is the description of the Church in America, and part of the reason, I think, behind why the Church has chosen to tolerate so much ungodliness in its midst. In terms of the text. Again, this is a lot of names that we're running through it, and I'm not going into definitions for all of the meanings of the names. It's an interesting personal Bible study, but not necessarily the best place for sermons to be built upon. But let me highlight a couple things about some of that. One of which is, notice the genealogies that are connected to some of these names here. In the last chapter, we had a list of names, in 27 verses, blah, you know, all the way through. This chapter, a lot of those names are connected to who their father was, who their grandfather was, who their great-grandfather was. There's a reason for that. The Israelites understood that their gift from God was the land, that the land is something that they inherited. Even the priests, the Levites, who didn't have a place in the land, They were scattered about throughout the land and given cities in everybody else's lands. So they still had a kind of form of inheritance. And they recognize or believe that that inheritance was a permanent inheritance and eternal inheritance that God had given them. And so those who are not then being relocated into the city of Jerusalem to live in the city are going back to their inherited lands. But how does one determine those inherited lands without the genealogies? Because a genealogy was kind of like your deed, as it were, to this land belongs to me and my family, as well as to the others who are part of the family who received that inheritance. And so that's important to kind of see. In addition, and I want to use this term typology again, because we've talked about this before. It's something that foreshadows something that is to come. A lot of people have seen, historically, that the attachment to the land, or the view of the land that the Jews had, was a form of a type. It was a foreshadowing of the internal inheritance that we as Christians have in the new creation, and that is something that Christ has earned for us, has bought for us, has promised us, and that can't ever be taken away, can't ever be given away. It is kind of unalienable to us. And so the picture of that unalienable land is meant to be a picture of the unalienable promise that God has given us. I think that's important for us to remember as we kind of walk through and realize kind of how we look at this land. Because one of the problems that we oftentimes look at is, and it was in 1948, when Israel was reestablished. The Arabs were pushed out, and the Israelites went back in, and they took over houses and lands and properties that had belonged to somebody else for a season. They'd been out of the land for a thousand years, or more, actually more than a thousand years at that point. But the point being is, They didn't have any qualms about doing that. Sometimes we look at that and go, that's not fair. They did. But from a Jewish perspective, there was a perfectly natural step because God gave us this land. So it belongs to us. You just were kind of, you know, insurgents and things along those lines. And I think when we begin to kind of realize that and recognize that, I think it helps us to understand the different worldviews and mindsets that are involved in all of this mess that is we call the Middle East, and so I think it's important for us to recognize. The same thing is also, I think, important for us in terms of this idea of inheritance to recognize, because there are an awful lot of people who still walk around saying, well, you know, I know there's all these promises that are given and offered to those who profess Christ, but God can't forgive me because of this, whatever this happens to be, this thing in my life that I've done or I didn't do or whatnot. And it gets back to this idea that that inheritance hasn't been accomplished by us. Israel, when they went in, it wasn't accomplished by them. God gave it to Abraham, Then when Israel went into the land, God says, okay, I'm gonna clear the way for you guys, and I'm gonna make it yours. And same thing with Christ. Christ went in, cleared the way for us, made it ours. He's actually called in the book of Hebrews, a trailblazer, leading the pathway for those of us who are called to follow. And so there's nothing that we can earn. I highlight Heidelberg Catechism, question 30, and remind you of the statement there that if there's something that we bring to the table, then Jesus is not a complete Savior. Because if He is a complete Savior, there's nothing that we can do, and it's been completely earned by Jesus in Him, by Him, and given to us. We can't trust in other things. We need to trust in God and in Christ alone and his perfect satisfaction. And our works are simply living a life of a grateful heart as we live out before God. Jesus either satisfied the law or he didn't. If he did, we're saved. If he didn't, we're all in trouble. The second thing that I also want to bring to the table is as these people were casting lots and doing. Casting lots is basically taking some bones, we would call them dice, shaking them up, throwing them out, and however they landed would depend on how you read the lots. Okay, folks, this is Proverbs 16, 33. The lot is cast in the lap. But God determines its every decision. There are an awful lot of Christians who would condemn gambling. Now, hear me correctly. There is a difference between gambling and irresponsible gambling. And I would condemn irresponsible gambling as I would condemn irresponsible drinking. But the Bible doesn't condemn alcohol either. In fact, he considers alcohol a good blessing that is given to us and to God's people throughout the ages and will be something that we all participate and enjoy in heaven, or in the new creation at least. Gambling is something that is oftentimes practiced by God's people. Is that the best thing to do? Today, you're trying to make a decision, do I buy a car, do I not buy a car, do I whatever? No. Okay, don't start getting your dice out and going, if it's sevens, you know. But do understand that in certain cases, God has called and blessed his people making choices like this through there. So don't condemn the gambling if it is done responsibly. Irresponsibly, yes. Irresponsibly, no. The other thing I wanna point out about that is it also speaks about the people who are willfully staying in the land, that they were blessed in many of our translations. They were honored, they were given honor, is what the Hebrew is communicating there. Most cases in the ancient times, I mean, relocation was a very common thing. You got taken over by an enemy country, guess what? You had no more ties to the land. We need you over here, comrade. And that's what the socialists did, and communists have historically done. And so this is not a new idea. It's something that is a very old idea. Here's the difference. And I think this is really, really important. In my point, it was done willingly. These people said, even though it would be probably more comfortable to live out there, and I am going to do that good thing, and I'm gonna be available for this 110, and I'm gonna celebrate. I'm not gonna, oh, my lock came up and dragged my feet. I'm gonna celebrate this. And they were celebrated for doing so because they were willing to relocate. Interestingly, if you read Josephus, who was a Jewish historian around the time of Jesus's life, one thing that Josephus points out in Antiquities 11, chapter 181, was that it was Nehemiah who actually paid for, out of his own pocket, the houses that these people lived in. Now, how much of that is tradition is not necessarily sacred writ, but Nehemiah is certainly much closer to that day than we are to that day. So I think that's really, really worth noting there. Next thing, verse six, speaks about the sons of Perez and refers to them as Literally, the Hebrew reads men of valor. That is a phrase that is applied about 11 times in the Old Testament, and it is always applied to those who are great soldiers and warriors. Most of the time for good, but sometimes not for good, but these were the guys that had distinguished themselves. Okay, and so these are the mighty soldiers of Benjamin that are mentioned in Judges 20, 44, and of David's soldiers that were with him in 2 Samuel 11, 16. It's also of those who were set apart as judges by Moses over the people in Exodus 18, 25, which kind of adds an interesting connotation to who Moses is looking to in saying, well, you know, if you're a distinguished soldier, I'm gonna put you as a leader of men and do that. And again, it's used again in verse 16 in this chapter. I think for verse 15, we're also introduced to a man named Ashuv. And you go, whoa, that's exciting. The only reason I want to say this is for an apologetic aspect of it. We're oftentimes bombarded with people on the liberal side saying, well, these stories, kind of made up by somebody, they're just myth and folklore and things along those lines. In 1957, an archaeologist by the name of Jacob Kaplan, who was a well-respected archaeologist of his day, located a pot shard, you know, a chunk of a pot. That's how we find a lot of things of our archaeology, is in pots, because pot shards were decorated, there were styles that were popular at certain times, and oftentimes they had writing on it. What was interesting is he found a fifth century Pashar, which is contemporaneous with the life of Nehemiah, that has the name of HaShuv on it. Now, does this mean that this was the HaShuv of Nehemiah? No, we don't know that for sure. What we know though, from that, is that it is a perfectly common and a normal name, and at least a guy by that name did exist and live at that time. And I think it's important for us to be reminded of things like that periodically because of all of those attacks on the historicity of our faith. I think it's important to recognize that archeological evidence does support the things that the Bible teaches and holds to, and that we should be quick to point those things out and not to be intimidated when somebody comes along and has got a bunch of letters behind their name and says X, Y, or Z. Fifthly, verse 17, we're talking about the sons of Asaph. Of course, Asaph himself was David, the leader of worship for David, and he's the leader of the musicians. And these sons of Asaph were referred to the leaders of praise, but it doesn't stop there. It says, these are the ones who gave thanks. It's a reminder to us that giving praise to God, a big part of that, as we sing praise, because these were singers, is giving thanks. One of the things that has been a burden on my heart for many, many years has been the singing of God's people, and that's from day one. I've said, we need to sing, and we need to sing boldly and confidently, you know, and I'll be the first to admit, I am not a soloist, you know, and you have figured that out by now. If you haven't figured it out by now, we may need to get hearing aids or something for you, or maybe just stay in your bliss. But the reality is, That's not my gift, but I want to sing joyfully and boldly and loudly, because that's what God's people are to do. That's a way we express our thanks to God. But too often times, the characteristic of the singing of God's people is that of, this is just one more thing I gotta do, because I really wanna get back to whatever else I wanna do. You know, one of the things that Mark, pastor down the hill there, has oftentimes observed about his church as he talks to people who are new to the faith. Isn't it interesting how we are oftentimes very willing and bold in our singing when it comes to singing in the car, or singing in the shower, or going to the bar and singing karaoke. But when it comes to singing in church, we are much more timid. It shouldn't be that way. The church should be the place where we are most exuberant in our singing, and I pray that that continues as we continue singing together. Six, we see some geography here in verses 25 through 36. Now, there is a map that I put in the back of your bulletins. A number of these places are shown on the map, just to give you, if you're curious about that, some orientation. Every single one of these place names is not on the map, but that's simply because we're not exactly sure where every single one of these place names is. But again, to support the faith that you have, to encourage the faith that you have, isn't it interesting how many of these places we know exactly where they are, because archeological digs have been done there, and the things that they have found there have been consistent with the scripture. But I wanna highlight a few places here that are mentioned that I think are of interest. I'm not gonna go into a lot of detail. I'm just gonna kind of send them as it were in bullet points towards you. The first one is Kiriath Arba, which is better known to us as Hebron. Now Hebron is the place where Abraham and Sarah were buried, okay? And thus it became an important place for the Israelite patriarchs and things like that in terms of their burial practices. And we read about that in Genesis not that many weeks ago. So that is, again, that's an area that is mentioned in Nehemiah's days that people were settling in that region. Adulam is the area where there was a cave. And in that cave, King David and his mighty men hid out as they were being pursued by Saul. And so again, this is again one of those other kind of very important place names from Israelite history that is being highlighted here. The Valley of the Sons of Hanan is one that you're probably familiar with. You've heard me talk about that. because the Greek translation of that is Gehenna. And Gehenna is a place that Jesus used as an illustration for hell. It was a place during ancient times where babies were burned on the altars of Molech. It was a place by Isaiah's time where Isaiah was prophesying that the judgment of God would take place and the judgment seat and the people would be judged and separated there. And by Jesus' day, it was a trash heap. and where everything from the city was burned. And you had constant fires going up, constant stench going up. The fires did not die, and the worms, i.e. the maggots from the flies that would land there, also kept on consuming and they did not die. Bethel, of course, is the house and literally translates to the house of God. That's where Jacob laid his head and was given blessings. You have Ananias there. That is most likely the site of what we know better as Bethany. And of course, Jesus spent time there. That's where Lazarus and his sisters lived. And that is where Lazarus would be raised from the dead at that particular site. La is mentioned there. And if you've ever been to Israel, you most likely have gone to Israel by flying into their international airport. I haven't, but my dad has. And The International Airport of Israel is located on the site of Lod. So if you ever have the opportunity to go there, you'll be able to say, I've been to Lod. And Nehemiah mentions it in his book, and you go, woo-hoo! Next to Lod, there's actually several hills there, there's a valley in between. This is most likely the Valley of the Craftsman that is being spoken of. Today it's called the Wadi Esh Shabal, It was known for very old and mature oak trees and had been historically a place where iron workers gathered to ply their trade because, again, of the plenteous wood, oak, for making iron and smelting it and things along those lines. And that, again, is mentioned here in Nehemiah. We're closing the text. And there's a lot of little bits and pieces that I've kind of put out at you in terms of our worship, in terms of our lives, in terms of our sanctification, not only as individuals but as a church. But I simply want to end where I began in this idea that we are, in some senses, a remnant in this world. This remnant, in this case, is going and relocating the city to prepare for, to practice, and to preserve the worship of God. But isn't that what this remnant is meant to be as well? To prepare for the worship of God, to preserve the worship of God, and to declare to a world that is quick to compromise that God will not be satisfied with that compromise. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you for your grace and your mercy to us. And we thank you for your patience because we are oftentimes slow to learn and slower to act upon those things that we have learned. Father, I pray that as we continue and we work through Nehemiah and the lessons that we can draw from there and the wisdom that your Holy Spirit saw in preserving things like this for us today, help us to apply them and put them to work in our lives. Help us to live out our faith as Christians, as this remnant in this world that is seeming to go even more and more chaotic every day that we live. May you be glorified and honored. May you be praised and proclaimed. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. May God bless you and may He keep you. May His face shine as light upon you. And may He be gracious to you. May turn His countenance in your direction. May He grant you shalom. Peace.