The What are you looking for when you attend a weekly church service? A great sermon, a great

worship team, some encouragement to start your week. Today on Truth for Life,

Alistair Begg explores the lessons we can learn

from how God's people gathered for worship in Nehemiah's day

after the walls around Jerusalem had been rebuilt.

For God our Father, it is our earnest cry to you that beyond the voice of a man and

beyond the pages of this wonderful book that we may hear your voice and may meet with you.

We pray this for us as a church

so that we might increasingly be brought into conformity with your word and we ask this as individuals.

No matter what it means, no matter what changes it brings, we tell you that we want to hear you speak, and we

pray in Jesus' name, amen. Chapter 6 was all about Naya dealing with intimidation. Chapter 7 gives us a wonderful record of NAMIA and his organization.

And Chapter 8 brings us to the place of Ezra and the proclamation. There is a sense in which this morning

study helps to go some way towards answering the question, why is it that a church such as this would give

such place and priority and preeminence to the public reading and teaching of the Bible.

Because after all, not every place that names God's name and sets about to conduct worship services does as we do.

Therefore, any thinking person presumably would want to try and analyze

as to whether we were doing something that was merely preferential or something

that was influenced simply as a result of external factors of time and culture or whether we're actually doing something

that was of primary and foundational importance, if you like, something that has

a biblical mandate, that there is both precept for it

as well as the practice of it which we're able both to obey as well as to observe. Because some of you have

come from backgrounds even as recently as last week where your experience of

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