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South Hampton SDA Church

Dwayne Lemon

The Call of Nehemiah

Our loving Father, we are so grateful, dear God, for the opportunity and the privileges to hear Heaven speak.

We thank you, Lord, for the time in which we can dedicate our minds in a special way to study, to show ourselves approved unto God, that we can be workmen that need not be ashamed, for we have rightly divided your words of truth.

Lord, I pray, please take my life and let it be consecrated, Lord, to thee.

I pray that you will literally put your words in my mouth and I pray that these words will reach even the hardest of hearts that those stony hearts will become hearts of flesh And it will not be by human might nor human power, but by your spirit.

And so grant us the presence of your Holy Spirit even now.

And may he come and truly teach us and truly open our eyes and help us behold wondrous things out of thy law.

This is our prayer that we do ask in Jesus name.

You know there's a statement about God's character I learned a long time ago and it has absolutely changed my way of studying the Bible.

I learned that when Jesus says search the Scriptures for in them you think you have eternal life.

He says for they are they which testify of me which means that Christ can be found all throughout scripture.

And whenever I see Jesus, I see salvation.

And so I've learned to condition my mind that whatever I read in the Bible, it is helping me understand something about my savior.

And then to understand that is even deep because the more that I understand about Jesus is the more that I understand about our Heavenly Father because Jesus came to reveal the very character of our Father which art in heaven.

I remember 1 time I was in Luke the 11th chapter, and I want you to turn there with me.

And as I was going to Luke the 11th chapter, I started to look at things in the Bible that would help reveal characteristics of God.

And I found 1 in Luke the 11th chapter that I thought was so amazing, because what I saw in Luke 11, I actually identified in my biological father.

It was in Luke the 11th chapter that I thought was so amazing because what I saw in Luke 11, I actually identified in my biological father.

It was in Luke the 11th chapter that the Bible says something that I want us to all consider.

And when you get there, just let me know by saying amen.

The Bible says in Luke the 11th chapter, we're going to start at verse 9.

And it says in Luke the 11th chapter, we're considering the 9th verse.

And the Bible says, And I say unto you, Ask and it shall be given you.

For everyone that asketh receiveth, and he that seeketh findeth, and to him that knocketh it shall be opened.

And then Jesus puts this rationale, this mind frame of reasoning in the next few verses.

He says, if a son shall ask bread of any of you, that is a father, will he give him a stone?

He says, or if he ask a fish, will he for a fish give him a serpent?

Or if he shall ask an egg, will he offer him a scorpion?

If he then being evil know how to give good gifts unto your children how much what?

How much More shall your heavenly father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask him the Spirit of God is a good gift Is it not and I praise God that every day we have a privilege of seeking more and greater endowment and outpouring of God's Holy Spirit God loves to give God so loved that he gave And I began to look at that and I said, that's beautiful because that was my father.

My father, whenever there was an opportunity for him to give me something or to give any of my siblings something, I'm the youngest of 8, And when my dad would go ahead, and dad never gave us things in common ways, dad would always set up the stage.

He would set it up real nice and he would create all sorts of surprises and he couldn't just simply say, son here's something for you.

He would have to go ahead and plan and strategize and do it just right so that at the moment and the element of surprise that my heart would just leap with joy and I would jump on my daddy and give him the biggest hug and say, Daddy, thank you for this precious gift.

I have found that that character has now passed on to me.

Once I became a father, now all of a sudden I got these 2 boys and these 2 girls.

And any time there's an opportunity that we want to do something good for them, We would go ahead and make a big deal out of it.

We would go ahead and plan and strategize.

And I would talk to my wife and I'd say, we gotta do it just right.

In other words, I have discovered the love of giving.

It's like I love to give and I like to give and I like to give and I like to make a big deal sometimes out of giving.

And so it is that as I see this character of God and I saw that characteristic of God in my father and now that characteristic has taken possession of my own mind I began to reflect way back in the beginning of time when God made man.

And when God made man my brothers and sisters it was after man was made after man was coming into existence that God decided to give a very special gift to man and you know that gift was called it was called the Sabbath day a gift you know most of God's people do not understand the precious experiences of this gift.

Today, when you think of us being Sabbath keepers all we simply say is that at certain hours on a certain day we show up and then eventually go home.

Sometimes the Sabbath has become so dumbed down to the people of God that sometimes we look forward more to its end than its beginning.

God wanted us to understand that this was a gift that in an unadulterated manner that heaven and earth could have special communion 1 with another And we have become so busy and we have become so perplexed and we work so hard throughout the week that even during the Sacred hours of God's Sabbath they rest even when we're in the sanctuary.

Sometimes we find ourselves more sleeping than listening.

Not understanding that sometimes inspiration says that it's just when the minister is about to give the word that that individual needs most, Satan will come behind them and breathe on them and put them to sleep so that they will not hear the very point of the message that would have brought victory in their lives.

Some of us don't even know how to enjoy the gift that God gave to humanity, which is his holy Sabbath day of rest.

And 1 of the reasons why is because we pack the Sabbath up with too much stuff, too many services, too many meetings.

I remember I grew up in, I'm going to say this, I grew up in the black conference.

I'm so thankful there won't be any black sides of heaven and there won't be any white sides.

But I grew up in the quote unquote black conference.

And in the black conference, I noticed that there was this common thread, this common activity that you would see.

You would have Sabbath school, and then you'd have church, and then you have prison ministry, and then you have Bible study, and then you have Adventist youth service.

And there was always these things just piling up.

So I was going ahead and doing this thing as if it was normal.

And then 1 day, my family and I moved out to the country.

And when we moved out to the country, we switched conferences.

We joined a different church and all of a sudden we weren't under the black conference, now we were under the quote on quote white conference.

So when we went to 1 of the churches that was under the quote on quote white conferences, we noticed that it was Right after 11 o'clock hour, we would say, what time's Bible study?

And they would say, we don't have none of that.

And they said, nope, we don't have any of that stuff.

They said, we go home, we go to places in nature, and we enjoy times for the remaining hours of the Sabbath with our families.

And I said, I've heard strange things today.

You mean to tell me that after the 11 o'clock hour, that all y'all do is you go, if they have a potluck, that's a big deal.

They would go ahead and after the service, they would leave and then they would go ahead.

So for a while, my wife and children and I, we're kind of looking at each other after church like, we don't know what to do now.

And we had to figure out all this stuff and eventually God started getting us used to it.

We got to a point that we couldn't wait for service to be over, so that way we could go ahead and go to our favorite place in nature, and we would enjoy time with the creator and with 1 another.

And I began to realize, wow, you can enjoy the Sabbath gift a lot better when it's not so bogged down with all these meetings though they be even religious.

God has appointed the Sabbath day to be special communion time with him.

You see, when you love Jesus, you don't long for the Sabbath to pass.

When you love Jesus, you look forward to having that unadulterated communion with God.

When you get to study like you've never studied before, when you get to pray like you never prayed before, when you get to think like you never thought before.

And I think to myself sometimes, you know I have the privilege of staying by 1 of the Saints homes here and I just love how every time I get up in the morning, the first thing I see is that incredible ocean.

The Call of Nehemiah

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