God's Word is living and active, it's powerful.

And yet even solid biblical teaching can be ineffective if we're not listening expectantly.

Today on Truth for Life we'll learn how we should gather for worship and we'll discover

four things that can prevent us from benefiting from the preaching of God's Word.

Alistair Begg is teaching from Nehemiah chapter 8 verses 13 through 18.

We've got three points this morning, exposition, application, celebration.

Let's begin then by noticing that what took place on the second day of the month was largely

what was taking place on the first day of the month.

If you're wondering about where we get this from, you will notice in verse 2 of chapter

8 on the first day of the seventh month, Ezra the priest brought out the law, when we

come to verse 13 what is taking place between 2 and 12 has all taken place on the first

day.

They listen to the word proclaimed, they start crying, they start laughing and then they

go home.

On the second day when they come back it's more of the same.

Now under the heading of exposition I want to address three simple questions.

First of all, who was there?

Who was there?

The answer is the men were there, the men were there.

Now it is not at the denigration of ladies that I now make this emphasis, but there are

come times when the scriptures emphasize things in a certain way and make points that are

directly applicable in certain avenues and hear the emphasis is clearly upon the men.

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