This transcript was generated by whisper.ai.

Hi, this is Pastor Tom and I want to welcome you to week four, our last week of
looking through the book of Nehemiah. This is the first day of this last week of
looking through this great book about how you can rebuild in your life, how you
can re-energize your life. We've been walking through these seven principles
that Nehemiah teaches us.

We've gotten five and we're going to look at the last two this week. We've
talked already about reaction, how to begin to see your problems as
opportunities, initiation, how to take the first step, appreciation, how to stay
focused by giving thanks, opposition, how to expect and reject opposition, and
then organization we talked about last week, how to organize your successes, how
do you learn from your failures, and then organize your successes. This week as
we look at the sixth principle, we start by talking about celebration, the
principle of celebration.

How do you regain and retain the joy in your life? Celebration is one of the
keys to being a successful rebuilder in your life. A lot of people, they rebuild
the wall, whatever it is, the relationship, the career.

They go through all of the rebuilding only to find out that they have crumbled.
They accomplish the task only to find out that they've been consumed by it. They
become so busy, so successful that life is no fun anymore and then they cave in
inside.

Listen, rebuilders are not unsmiling workaholics. They've learned to accomplish
great tasks while still being able to enjoy life because celebration, enjoyment
is one of the keys to holding on to what you've rebuilt. So when you look at
your life right now, where are you?

Do you have a sense of energy in life? Do you have like a spring in your step or
do you feel sprung in your step? How can you begin to rebuild energy in your
life?

How can you keep energy in your life? One of the keys is a spirit of joy. So how
do you regain, how do you retain a spirit of joy in your life?

Nehemiah shows us how. He shows us some very simple principles for how this
works in our lives. We're going to talk about one of them today and one of them
tomorrow.

The first principle is this. Celebration grows out of worship. You can't truly
celebrate without worshiping because God is the one whom we most celebrate.

God is the one whom we will eternally celebrate. So worship is one of the vital
keys to personal celebration and personal joy in your life. Now I know people
often go to a worship service every week and yet still seem sadly lacking in the
joy department.

So what's going on there? If worship is one of the keys to joy, what's
happening? In many churches the Sunday morning service is more like a funeral
than a festival.

And Christians look more like they're depressed than that they're celebrating.
They look like they've been baptized in vinegar and like they took the Lord's
Supper with lemon juice. There's not a smile on anybody's face.

So showing up at 11 o'clock on a Sunday morning for worship is obviously not
enough for this kind of worship that becomes a celebration, that becomes a giver
of joy in my life. What kind of attitudes result in joy in the worship service
that spills out into your life? Well Nehemiah shows us.

As you walk through chapter 8 in the book of Nehemiah as he talks about
celebration, he gives us some simple principles for how this happens. In chapter
8 verse 1 he says that all the people assembled as one man in the square before
the Water Gate. Now first of course you see Water Gate.

Well does that have anything to do with Nixon? No, no. This is the gate where
the water went in and out.

This Water Gate was thousands of years before the other Water Gate. But it has
to be mentioned that the words Water Gate are in the Old Testament. So they
assembled as one man in the square before this Water Gate.

A vital aspect to joy-filled worship is being with others. They assembled
together and being in unity with others. So to increase your celebration in
worship, you have to increase your enjoyment of the people that you worship
with.

And sometimes that just means noticing the people that you're worshiping with,
knowing that you're not alone in worship, looking around. Sometimes it means
choosing to be with other people in worship. There will be many, many times in
your life, maybe a lot of them are happening right now, where you won't want to
go to church.

You will go anyway and you'll find out those are the weeks you most needed to be
in church because you needed to be around other people. And there are times when
you have disunity with a brother or sister in Christ. And that's stealing your
joy in worship.

You need to settle a relationship problem. To increase your celebration in
worship, you enjoy the people that you worship with. That's one of the keys.

As you read through, the next thing that they do is they honor the Word. Verse
4, "Ezra the scribe stood on a high wooden platform built for the occasion. " In
verse 5, "Ezra opened the book and all the people could see him because he was
standing above them.

As he opened it, the people all stood up. " Part of celebration is this sense of
significance. If you go to a World Cup soccer final, there is this sense of
celebration because of the significance of the event.

Somebody's going to win the World Cup that day. Well, the significance of God's
Word may not be as obviously greater than a World Cup, but it is obviously
greater. I know some churches even that stand for the scripture reading in their
church, and it's because of this verse that when they heard the verses of the
scripture read by Ezra, they all stood together.

But whether you stand or not is not the most important thing, although it can be
a good thing. A sense of importance and significance that's attached to God's
Word. That's one of the keys that creates this joy, this celebration in worship.

I am doing something important. I'm hearing something important. There's really
nothing more important than what I'm hearing from God's Word.

And then the next thing that happened came from the leaders. They taught the
Word in a way that people could understand. In verse 8 of chapter 8, they read
from the book of the law of God, making it clear and giving the meaning so that
the people could understand what was being read.

If something is significant and yet you don't understand it, you just feel
confused. If I went to a World Cup soccer final, I might enjoy what was going on
because I know what the goal was. But if I went to a World Cup cricket final, I
don't understand cricket, I have to admit.

I don't understand the sport. So I would just feel confused. I wouldn't feel the
significance, the importance of the event because I wouldn't understand what was
going on.

Well, as a leader, as a teacher, one of my jobs is to make clear what's going on
in God's Word. What is he saying to us? And when you understand it, you're able
to begin to live it out.

When you understand it, you'll be able to have more enjoyment in worship. So
that's what the leaders did for the people that day. They explained God's Word.

Here's what it means. Here's how we're supposed to live it out. That's what
leaders do.

But when it comes to responding to God's Word in worship, that's not even the
most important part. The most important part isn't what the leaders do. As
important as it is, people have to understand it.

The most important part is what we as the people do when we hear the Word. It
was what the people did that day that resulted in truly joyful worship. They
listened attentively to the Word.

That's one of the keys to enjoying worship. If you just come and while the
Bible's being preached, you're thinking about everything else in the world, of
course you're not going to have joy because you're thinking about your worries
instead of thinking about God's Word. Listen to what they did in verse 3,
Nehemiah 8.

3. He read it aloud from daybreak until noon. That's a long worship service, by
the way, daybreak, say 6 a.

m. until noon. You think your worship services are long.

He read it aloud from daybreak until noon as he faced the square before the
water gate in the presence of the men, women, and others who could understand.
And all the people listened attentively to the book of the law. So here they
are, four, five, six hours listening attentively to the book of the law.

Everyone listened. They really listened. And one of the keys to understanding
why sometimes you have joy in worship and sometimes you don't is this key of
attentively listening.

There's a difference between listening and hearing and attentively listening. In
my house, if I'm reading the newspaper and, Shondell, my wife says something to
me and I'm going, "Uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh. " And she says, "What did I say to
you?

" I could put the newspaper down and maybe even repeat what she just said, but
you know I was not attentively listening. I had my mind on something else. I
didn't have my mind, my heart on what she was saying.

Attentively listening. That's when you put your mind, your heart on what God is
saying to you. And when you do that, the joy goes up.

The celebration goes up in your worship experience. They listened attentively to
the word. And then a final thing we learned from what happened with Nehemiah,
how to bring the celebration to your worship experience is they praised the
Lord.

Obviously, you're going to have more celebration when you take time to praise
God. So in verse 6, Ezra praised the Lord, the great God, and all the people
lifted their hands and responded, "Amen, amen. " And then they bowed down and
they worshiped the Lord with their faces to the ground.

This expression of humility. Throughout the Old Testament, in the temple
worship, in the Sabbath worship, in the festivals that God proclaimed that they
should have, they built into their lives, they built into their schedules these
opportunities to praise the Lord. And you and I need to do the same thing.

That's what worship is. When you come on a Saturday, a Sunday, a Monday,
Tuesday, whatever day you regularly worship, when you come to worship with other
believers, you are building into your life a weekly opportunity to take time to
praise God. And when you take time to praise God for what he's doing in your
life, even in the midst of the difficulties, you're celebrating God in worship.

And that celebration causes you to have the energy to continue to strengthen
whatever's been rebuilt in your life. It changes your attitude toward church.
You begin to think, "I'm headed to church and I'm going to have a great time.

" Because you celebrate at church. You begin to be able to say to your friends,
"Hey, how about coming to church with me? " You're going to have a great time.

And the great time isn't just like you'd have at a sporting event, as fun as
that might be. It's a great time of God speaking to your heart, of your heart
being lifted, of celebration truly happening in your life. This is the attitude
that begins to happen.

"I'm going to be there. God's going to do some great things. I'm going to have a
great time.

" That attitude starts to happen when you allow worship to become a celebration.
And Nehemiah has taught us some things about how to do that today. Celebration
and worship, it is one of the keys to re-energizing your life, to rebuilding
your life.

So let's ask God for strength to do that right now. Would you pray with me? And
in prayer, just say, "Father, teach me to celebrate you in worship.

" You know, sometimes I get caught up in not wanting to be there, or I get
caught up in letting my mind wander during the entire time of worship, or
focusing on what's happening in the room rather than what you want to do in my
heart. "Lord, teach me to celebrate you in worship, to do the simple things of
focusing on praising and being attentive to what you're saying. God, give me the
strength to do that this next week.

And Lord, as I do that, help me to feel the sense of celebration that comes out
of that. Help me to sense it. And in that sense of celebration, God, I pray you
would give me energy and strength for the doing of your will.

I pray this in Jesus' name, amen. " Tomorrow we're going to talk together about
the fact that celebration is God's idea.