All right, let's open up to the book of Nehemiah, right after the book of Ezra in the Old Testament. We'll try to stay in Nehemiah. I've got a couple other places I'll take you to tonight. Nehemiah chapter number 13, and then we'll come over to chapter number one. Maybe we'll start in Nehemiah one first, and then look over here in chapter 13. If you know your Bible, you know that Nehemiah is a man God raised up to be a governor and a leader of the nation of Israel during a return back to the land. And he goes in to set up the walls and some type of semblance of social order for the nation. And of course Ezra's already got the foundation and everything laid for the temple. But here's Nehemiah and he comes and he has the authority from the Persian kings to be able to come and do this. And Nehemiah chapter number one, we'll just come down to verse number 11 for the sake of time. You'll see this is a prayer as he begins in verse number five. And then he quotes the Lord. verses nine, 10, and 11. Look in verse number 11. Oh Lord, I beseech thee, let thou thine ear be attentive to the prayer of thy servant and to the prayer of thy servants who desire to fear thy name and prosper, I pray thee, thy servant this day. So he's praying to God and asking for his help. Back up, if you will, to verse number nine, quoting God again. But if you turn unto me and keep my commandments and do them, though there were of you cast out into the uttermost part of the heaven, yet will I gather them from thence, and will bring them," look at this, "'unto the place.'" that I've chosen to set my name there. Now, if you know your Bible, you know that God had set up Jerusalem as the place for God to have the nation, have their capital, and also to have their religious worship where the temple was. Very important because the Jews could not worship God outside of that physical locality. Now in the intertestamental period with the destruction of things and the order was set up different to where they began to set up synagogues where they could worship and read the scriptures, but they still had a temple, they still had a local place where the worship was centered and focused on. And so the idea that I want to kind of get to you tonight is to preach a little bit along the lines of boundaries and blessings. And the idea of having everything in its place and a place for everything kind of a deal. Look over Nehemiah chapter number 13. I'll get it right in a second. Nehemiah chapter number 13. Notice what he says here. He gets upset with some of the foolishness that's going on with the men of the land. They wouldn't separate from the multitude. And come down, if you will, in verse number 11. Nehemiah 13, 11. Then contended I with the rulers and said, why is the house of God forsaken? And I gathered them together, look at this, and set them in their place. Let's pray. Lord, thank you for the book tonight. I pray, God, you'd help us to get a devotional application from some of these passages to help us, Lord, to realize the blessings of boundaries, the blessings of purpose, and the blessings of having a place. God, I pray that you might help us to be solid, steadfast, unmovable. And God, I pray you might encourage us tonight in Jesus' name, amen. I wanna try to stay in the book of Nehemiah for the most part, but I do wanna start off, if you can turn over to 1 Corinthians chapter seven. When you think about boundaries, when you think about perimeters, borders, limits, prohibitions, you think about that. You think about the idea of, okay, there's a state line. So there's a marker here. There's a property line. You better check your property lines, right? Make sure the fence is on your side of the property. There's a border. There are boundaries for a reason. Fences make good neighbors. Isn't that what they say? God has set life up that way with boundaries. When He created man, He made Adam first, then He made Eve. And He made Eve out of Adam's side. He didn't make her out of his head because she's not supposed to be the one telling him what to do. Amen. Neither did He make her out of His foot so He just walks all over her all the time. He made her out of His side, out of His heart. He's supposed to love her. However, the Bible says when it speaks of the order of things, the head of every man is Christ, the head of Christ is God. But He says the head of every woman is the man. There's an order. And when a woman gets out of bounds of that, she's out of order. She's out of place. When a child tries to act like an adult and assumes the authority and says, I know better than the cop, I know better than the teacher, I know better than mom, I know better than dad, I know better than whoever's in charge, they're out of place. When a Christian acts independently of the head, which is Jesus Christ, the head of the body, we're out of place. We are not to decide the will of God for our lives. He's to decide the will of God for our lives. So I think you see where I'm going with this, and hopefully we can learn some things, a little bit about boundaries, and it's good. The thou shalt nots in the Bible are good. We don't see those prohibitions as good. We don't see those boundaries a lot of times as good. We see it sometimes as the grass is greener on the other side of the fence. But God sets things up for a certain way because he's always right and because he loves us. He knows what's right. So you want to make sure you understand these boundaries. These boundaries are set up to keep us in that place that we should be in. This is going to help you tonight. Really, the message is kind of a backdoor to preach on being content. It's kind of a backdoor way of coming through and saying, OK, all of this, especially in our American ideals, we're going to paint our life out. And this is how it's going to be. And we're going to set things up just like this. Who are you to say what you're going to do? Are you a servant or are you a master? Are you the master of your fate? Like the old saying is from that crazy guy. You're not the master of your own fate. As a Christian, you are to be submissive to Him and the boundaries where He's put you. Look in 1 Corinthians chapter 7, it really hits home as Paul writes this because he's dealing in the Roman In the time of the Roman Empire, he's dealing with, you almost had more slaves than you did free people. And Paul doesn't try to get all the slaves to get together and overthrow the Romans. And even when he writes to the masters of slaves, he doesn't tell them to set them free. First Timothy chapter six, he tells the masters to treat their slaves the right way. He doesn't overthrow the social institution of the day. He tells the slaves to be obedient to their masters. You can even read when Peter talks about some of this. And so that's very contrary to our own idea of civil rights and this, that, and the other. But when you think about Paul writing this, when he does tell the masters to treat their slaves as basically equals, because he says if you have a believing master and you have a believing slave, you're both under the same master which is in heaven. And so that's a very radical idea for the time in which he wrote. However, look at 1 Corinthians chapter 7, notice how he addresses this whole issue which he actually deals with being single and being married and being divorced and being a servant or not being a servant. Come down if you will, verse number 20. 1 Corinthians chapter 7, verse number 20. Let every man abide in the same calling wherein he was called. Art thou called being a servant? Care not for it. But if thou mayest be free, use it rather. For he that is called in the Lord being a servant is the Lord free man. Likewise also he that is called being free is Christ's servant. You're bought with a price. Be not ye the servants of men. Brethren, let every man wherein he is called therein abide with God. Here's somebody like Onesimus, and he gets saved in jail, and Paul sends him back to Philemon, his master. Of course, when he writes that letter and sends Onesimus back, he tells him, look, Philemon, I know you're going to take care of him, and you're going to treat him like a brother now, because he got saved. And if he owes anything, you know, he's one of these slaves that steals from his master and runs away. If he owes you anything, just put it on my account. I'll pay you back. He says, how be it I won't let you know that you owe me your own life. That's what he says in the letter. It's in those small 25 verses or whatever it is of Philemon. You can read that tonight when you get home. That's a book in the Bible. You're just blinking at me like you don't know what I'm talking about. Anyway, he sends him back, and can you imagine Philemon getting that and realize it? But more importantly, can you imagine the fact that the letter even made it back? Onesimus takes this letter back. He goes back to his master. Now under the laws and stuff of the land, he probably could have been executed or put back into jail for deserting. Surely he had a warrant out for his arrest and so forth. You have to really think about this because as a believer in Christ, Paul writes these letters. He says, look, if you're a slave and there's an opportunity for you to get your freedom, take advantage of it. If there's a loophole where you don't have to pay as much taxes, take it. You say, why? Because taxes are really highway robbery anyway. If you've got a little bit of sense, you understand that. If there are some ways that you can use things in our system of government, whatever country you live in, use it! As long as it's not breaking God's law. But the idea behind this I think you want to get tonight is the fact that God has called us to do certain things. He's called us and placed us in certain areas for a reason and we need to stay where we are placed and we need to serve and do what we're supposed to do where He's put us. This idea of discontentment spreads all, it's like a disease and it spreads all throughout the church. It spreads all throughout Christians a lot of times because they get their eyes on other people and they're looking at what they're doing and looking at how they're living and they're, oh I wanna be like this and be like this and everybody has to put their life out there. They air all of their dirty laundry, you know. You did such and such and your phone keeps up with everywhere you go so all your friends can find out where you went the past five days like they really care. Well I know they're your closest friends You have all this stuff out there, and everybody's picture-perfect life is out there for everybody to see. And all that sows and breeds is discontentment. God has got some boundaries set up for a blessing, and He wants you in your place. Come back to Nehemiah, and we're going to look at these things. We read Nehemiah chapter number 1 about the place where the temple is. And he made the statement in Nehemiah chapter number 1, the place that he chose. Did you see that? Nehemiah 1 verse number 9, the place that I have chosen. God has chosen a place for you in your life. And some of you just can't accept that. Some of you, your intellect is at a certain level and you wish it was at a different level. Some of you, maybe your physical abilities or maybe your health is not at a level that you would rather it be at. And you're finally going to have to take a deep swallow and a deep breath and accept some of these things. Before COVID came, you still could have got sick and died. Can I say that? Or am I going to get locked up for it? You can die going down the road. They wouldn't dare put up the numbers of alcohol related deaths every five days. Don't forget, in a King James Bible, the love of money is the root of all evil. God has chosen some things and you have to accept that. There's a place God has chosen for you. It might not be comfortable. See, we always want the easy way out. The quick and easy way out so we don't have to have the pressure. You think you can get a reward when it was easy? Who gets the prize? The one who pays the price. Let's look at Nehemiah chapter number three. I just want to go through just a few of these real simple. I'm trying not to get heavy tonight. It's kind of getting heavy, but let's lighten it up a little bit here. Nehemiah chapter number three. This is Wednesday night Bible study. Nehemiah chapter number three. Now this is a very interesting chapter, as the Bible is, and I say that a little bit sarcastically because some of the Bible is very systematic and very detailed about things that really don't interest us. I mean, you read about all the details of all the material that they gathered for the tabernacle, and then you read about all these begats, so-and-so had this son, and he begot him, and he begot him, and he begot him, and he begot him, and you can't even pronounce these names. Then you get here to Nehemiah chapter number three, and they're building the wall, so he proceeds to go through and tell you the name of every household that's building on each part of the wall, all the way down, over and over and over. And you look at the whole chapter, you get through all the way to verse number 32. Here's what I want you to see, just a few verses here so you can get the point. Verse number 16. After him repaired Nehemiah, the son of Azebuk, the ruler of half part of Beth-zur, unto the place over against the sepulchers of David, and to the pool that was made, and unto the house of the mighty. I chose that because it has the word the place. Look in verse number 26. Moreover, the Nethanims dwelt in Ophel unto the place over against the water gate toward the east. Look at verse 31. After him repaired Malkiah the goldsmith's son unto the place of the Nethanims and of the merchants over against the gate Miphkad and to the going up of the corner. God has a place where you're supposed to be working. Amen. There's a place that you're supposed to be working. There's a little piece of that wall. And this wall is all the way around the city. It encompasses everything. And there's gates. There's bars that are set up. There's different gates for different functions and different things. There's different people that are assigned to different places on the wall. And they're there to work. You as a believer in Jesus Christ have a place to work. In this day and age, for such a time as this, God's got all of us in different places. You're going to meet different people. You're going to come across different people in different places. God's got you there for a reason. To work. You're a little part of the wall. You're not responsible for Brother Howard's part over there. You're not responsible for Brother Hightower's part, Brother Chris's part, Brother Logan's part. You're responsible for your part. Your place. Look in chapter four. Of course, you know there's some opposition. By the way, if you ever do right, you're gonna find opposition. Opposition will come from within and it'll come from without. Here in Nehemiah chapter number four, they have some opposition and different things come up. So now as they work, you'll notice in verse number 17, They which build it on the wall and they that bear burdens with those that laid it. You see, there's a little different task for different people. I mean, you have to realize everybody can't do the same thing. Everybody doesn't have the physical capacity to do the same thing. But notice in verse 17, everyone with his hands wrought in the work and with the other hand held a weapon. Verse number 18, for the builders, everyone had his sword girded by his side, and so builded. And he that sounded the trumpet was by me, and I said unto the nobles, and to the rulers, and to the rest of the people, the work is great and large, and we are separated upon the wall, one far from another. In what place, therefore, you hear the sound of the trumpet, resort ye thither unto us, our God shall fight for us. So we labored in the work, and half of them had the spears from the rising of the sun, rising of the morning, till the stars appeared And so God has a place for you, not only working, but a place for you fighting. Don't forget, this is a fight. Paul says, I have fought a good fight. He exhorts Timothy, he says, fight the good fight of faith. God's got a place for you in this fight. Now there's some problems here when we come up with these boundaries, especially in this this very time we find ourself in the past few weeks, you gotta find the hill to die on. And you've gotta make up your mind that you're gonna stand by that Bible and you're gonna be focused on Jesus Christ, New Jerusalem, not Washington, D.C. Amen and amen. I pledge allegiance to New Jerusalem. You say, why? This world is not my home. And so when you think about this, you've got to realize the fight is, like Paul said, we wrestle not against flesh and blood. It's a whole lot easier to fight against a flesh and blood foe than it is an enemy you can't see. You can't see what's going on behind the scenes, because what's going on behind the scenes is a whole lot more sinister and a whole lot more devious than what you can see right in front of you. You can't even begin to imagine. If you read the book of Revelation, you can begin to see some of that. Because what you realize is behind the scenes is actual satanic. warfare, fighting against principalities and powers, the rulers of the darkness against this world, spiritual wickedness in high places. So he says, wherefore take on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand in the evil day, and having done all to stand. Stand therefore, having your Lord's gird about with truth. In Judges chapter seven, when Gideon chooses out, you know, he gets his 300 to fight. And of course, they don't have swords, they've got pitchers. And they've got little lamps inside of those pitchers. And the 300 are set up in those three companies. And Gideon says, well, you do what I do. So he blows the trumpet. And then he smashes that pitcher. Then all of them do that. And then the other group does that. And the other group does that. And then when those pitchers are smashed, you have all those lights begin to shine. But the thing that I thought was interesting about the passage, when you read about the reconnaissance that took place with the 300 and how they had to surround them, all those things, in Judges 7, he says about each man, and they stood every man in his place round about the camp. Every man. Only 300 of them, but every man is where he's supposed to be. That's all the Lord wants from you. Sometimes we'll look at our Christian life, we'll look at the big Bible, you know, 1189 chapters. We look at all the great themes and sometimes we get overwhelmed maybe and we look at some of these Christians we think are doing these great things and we think, oh, I've got to try to keep up and do this and do that. And we don't realize the Lord simplifies. It says, no, I just want you to stay in your place and do what you're supposed to do. My prayer for you is like Paul's prayer for the Ephesians and for the Colossians, that you stand perfect in the will of God. You do what God tells you to do. It's that simple. It's not, I don't have a little booth here somewhere that I can get behind and you come in and say, Father, I need some direction. I'm not gonna do that. I'm just as clueless as you are about half the stuff. I can tell you what the Bible says as far as the Bible gives us revelation about some of these things, but you have to follow the will of God. If it contradicts this, you know it's not the will of God. So there are some very dogmatic and clear things in the Bible. However, you've got to stand in the place God's put you. This idea of seeing the boundaries as a hindrance instead of seeing the boundaries as a blessing, these ideas of seeing where we are being discontentment, that's a dangerous place. What God will typically do, like He did with Timothy and Silas and some of the guys you see tag along with Paul the Apostle, He'll take someone that's working and serving and fighting and living for God in their place where they're supposed to be and then He moves them on to that next part of the journey. If you're not serving God now in the place where you are, what makes you think all of a sudden you're going to become super spiritual if God answers some crazy prayer that you've got to put you in some other place? Amen and Amen. So who are you going to give some jobs to? The people that are already busy? Contrary to what a lot of little churches do, a lot of little churches, somebody comes in, they try to give them a job real quick to try to keep them in the church. Take somebody that has no experience, and they try to put some big title on them to entice them to stay. Here's a businessman, so we'll make him a deacon. What does he know about being a deacon? Been in church five days and you're going to turn him over and give him a title or something to try to keep him in church? You know I'm telling it, right? Serve God where you are. God has a place for you to fight. The thing is, we're not gonna win every little battle and skirmish down here. I hope you realize that. We're not post-millennial. And what that means in theology is, back in the day, you had a lot of people that really thought they were gonna bring in the kingdom by way of some of the revivals. I mean, they kind of rode the wave of some of the great awakening revivals and so forth. I mean, it would be pretty amazing. I was reading about a revival in Chipley, Florida several years ago, where you had a couple hundred people saved on a Sunday afternoon in the downtown area. That's pretty amazing stuff like that. Nothing ever happened like that here in the small community, and I don't think nothing like that to those extent in Leon County. But I'm talking about going even way back further than that, and you get in the late 1800s, early 1900s, you had this idea of thought that you could still see these revivals sweep through that did sweep through where bars would all close down, movie houses would all close down, theater, which was the bad, wicked stuff, would all close down, and church attendance in the Methodist, Presbyterian, Baptist churches would double because of a revival that came through town. Not some thing where you had all these people come from five different states, or 15 different states, and one little bitty thing, and then they blow in, blow up, and blow out, and no church membership, nobody sticks it out. I'm talking about communities actually changing, where mayors would get saved, and city councilmen would get saved, and they'd change the laws on the books. People saw that kind of stuff, they figured, hey, we're going to take the world, you know, we're going to get things, and they begin to devotionalize a lot of the Bible and they begin to think they're going to bring in the kingdom. You have to realize we're way past that line of thinking. We're not bringing in no kingdom. The only kingdom that's getting ready to come in is the kingdom of the Antichrist. And then after that, thank God, the kingdom of Jesus Christ. You have to realize there's some skirmishes and there's some battles we're going to lose in this life. We know in the end who's going to win. King of kings and Lord of lords. You need to stay in the place God has you fighting. That's not all. We're still in Nehemiah. Turn over to chapter 8. Just a couple more and we'll be done. Keep the main thing the main thing. Let's keep our focus. And it's so hard to do. But look at Nehemiah chapter number 8. They all get together. Verse number one, Ezra gets up with the book. He opens it up. Everybody stands up when he reads. You notice in verse five. Come down, if you will, to verse number seven. It gives all the names of these people with Ezra, these priests, Jeshua, and Bani, Shurahbiah, Jamin, Aqab, Shabbathiah, Hadijah, Massiah, Kelta, Ezariah, Josabath, Hanan, Peliah, and the Levites, caused the people to understand the law, and the people stood in their place. So they read in the book of the law of God distinctly and gave the sense and caused them to understand the reading. God has you in a place of instruction. Now maybe some of you, you're not very book savvy. To me, reading is just like sitting down eating potato chips. I mean, I read, so I'll be eating cereal and I'm reading when I'm eating my cereal or whatever. You can go through a whole lot of books just by eating your cereal. Reading at night. I'm just always reading. It's no big thing to me. It's just constant. Now some of you, it's not that way. However, that's not to say you don't learn. It's not to say you don't receive instruction. When you come into this place, you read a little bit because we have some Bible we go through, especially in Sunday school. We're going through verse by verse. So you do a lot more reading there. But you're still sitting down and you've got your ears hopefully open and you're receiving instruction. It takes effort if you're really going to receive instruction. Just like in Proverbs, he talks about hearing. A wise man will hear and will increase in learning. You can sit there and zone me out and count the tiles on the ceiling and, you know, some of you young people in here, you know, you probably don't know what in the world I'm talking about, so you just hear, womp, womp, womp, womp, womp, womp, womp, womp, the Charlie Brown voice, womp, womp, womp, womp, womp, I get that, but when you start getting a little bit older, you need to start trying to follow a little bit. Hopefully, you can follow a tad. But it takes effort. So I'm not a big reader. Well, read what you can and find your place to receive instruction. Humble yourself enough to where you don't have to be the one that teaches everybody everything, but that you can be the one that learns something. That's a great principle of building wisdom. Don't be a know-it-all. There's a place God's got all of us. I don't care. I see Brother Todd here tonight, reminds me of his dad, Brother Ted Wormack. As much Bible as he knew, and he knew a lot of Bible, and as much that he served Jesus Christ, and he did. He, what fascinated me about him, we would talk about the Bible sometimes. We'd talk about things. He had an insatiable desire to learn more Bible. And I want to have that. That's something that I wanted to take away from his life. I never want to get to the place where I don't want to have a place of instruction. Remember Mary, how she sat at Jesus' feet? Martha, she was busy serving, and God has us in a place of serving. God has us in a place of fighting, a place of working, all those things, but he has us in a place to receive instruction. Mary hath chosen that good part, Jesus says. Not that it's not good to serve, but Martha, you're in there worried about the biscuits burning, and Mary's sitting here at my feet, and I'm teaching her some stuff that's gonna help her. You need the place of instruction. Very important place. God set those boundaries up for us to teach us. Boy, I don't want to listen sometimes though. You ever have a disaster happen, or I say disaster, or a mishap? You know, you get in there and clunk. Or whatever the tragedy may be, or the trouble may be at the moment. I guarantee you most of us don't think, our first response is not, oh great, I wonder what the Lord's gonna teach me with this. The doctor leaves a message on a Friday where you can't find out what he wants. And he wants to see you on Monday. Oh, praise the Lord, all weekend I can pray and find out what the Lord's going to teach me through this news from the doctor. That's normally not how we think. We're thinking, oh, great. We're thinking, what can go wrong now? Comes in threes, right? It's like pastors, we're notorious, you know, you get ready to go on a vacation thinking, I wonder who's going to die this weekend. I mean, that's just, that's awful. But different professions, I'm sure they think that. I mean, it's just inevitable. You know, getting ready to go do something, wonder what's going to happen, you know, it's just like. Instead, we should realize God has us in a place, it didn't catch him off guard. Especially if you look at the thing and go back and trace it. God's chosen this place and He's prepared this place and He's got us there for instruction. We just need to see it that way. And finally, look in chapter number 9. Verse number one, now on the 24th day of this month, the children of Israel were assembled with fasting and with sackcloths and earth upon them. And the seed of Israel separated themselves from all strangers and stood and confessed their sins and the iniquities of their fathers. And they stood up in their place and read in the book of the law of the Lord their God, one fourth part of the day and another fourth part of the day they confess and worshiped the Lord their God. There's a place of worship. Over in 2 Chronicles 35 it mentions the singers, the sons of Asaph, were in their place according to the commandment of David. There's a place of worship. It's more than just instruction. I know we come in here and a lot of times we get instruction. And I know I tried the best of my ability to balance things out. We can get on this side sometimes. We can lay the hammer down. We can get all on the judgment. And we need that from time to time. You need to be told that you're a rascal. That you have a sin problem and you need to deal with some of that stuff. But we also need that exhortation over here. To be told, hey, you're in church on Wednesday night. That's a blessing. It's good that you've got your Bibles and you do want to learn something. That's a blessing. I want to encourage you to keep doing that. Keep doing the right things. You're trying to pray. You're trying to read your Bible. You're concerned about other people. You know, hooray for you. That's good. That's an encouragement. We try to balance these things out. But more than just coming together in preaching and instruction and encouragement, we come together and you know what? Just like we did tonight, we sang together. We prayed together. We worshiped. together. There's a place of worship. I know he that, you know, if you worship God, you worship in spirit and in truth, and you should worship God everywhere. But there's something to be said about an assembly. Ecclesia, that word for churches, a called out assembly, the word exit, an exodus, you're called out. We don't mind if we have some visitors come in some people from the world, they want to come in, they can come join us. But this is for us. It's for us to worship God. It's a place of worship, and God's got a special place of that. And finally, I wanted to mention a place of fellowship, and you can use this in several ways. It's not in Nehemiah, but 1 Samuel 20, you know the story when David's having all that trouble with Saul initially, and him and Jonathan are talking things through, and David's like, look, I'm not gonna, at the new moon there, I'm not gonna be there at the supper table, because I think your dad's out for me. And Jonathan says, nah, you know, I'll try to feel him out and find out. And so he's not there, and he makes the statement here, the Bible says, the king sat upon his seat as at other times, even upon a seat by the wall, and Jonathan arose and Abner sat by Saul's side, and David's place was empty. A spot that he always sat in, he wasn't there. And that'd be a place of fellowship. And so God's got that for each one of us, individually between him and the Lord. I hope you have your place. It may be A little chair that you sit in with your Bible. It may be your bed. You sit up with your Bible. Might be a literal prayer closet. Might be whatever it is, a place. I like mine with coffee, amen. And you start off with you and the Lord in a place of fellowship. And then that fellowship with Him extends out here. And your seat's missing, empty. That's a sad thing because we like you to be here. I'm glad that you're here. And I think the Lord's glad that you're here. So this is these are some boundaries and things God set for our place. And I hope that your place is not empty tonight. That's all stand for prayer. Lord, thank you for the