Summary: There is a principle in life about separation. It's a principle that says that our identity is not found in participation in the world's activities.

I talked with a man this week. He's thirty-nine years old. His name is Reggie. He works at

ShopRite. So you might see him there. Should you come in contact with him, you can greet him

as I did. We were talking about life. Reggie now at thirty-nine years old is getting his life

together, so to speak. He made decisions in his teens and his twenties that now have made it

difficult for him to kind of get his life together. But now he's getting his life together in some

good ways. And I commend him for doing that.

There's a word we use for that. It's called adulting. Adulting is a word. Maybe you haven't heard

of it, but young people use it a lot. Because it refers to this idea of kind of growing up. It’s when

you start managing yourself because your parents aren't managing you anymore. So you've got to

manage yourself. I was talking to some people in their twenties this week and they were saying,

“Yep, we're learning how to eat differently. We can't eat now like we ate in our teens.” I’m

thinking, “Yes, I’m learning that too.” There's these important lessons that we learn that are all

part of adulting in our lives. And Reggie now at thirty-nine is adulting.

I wish that I could help young people do the adulting thing earlier. Because there's so many

things, there's a path that you can take in life where you can avoid much of the stuff that you

accumulate when you go off and do things that aren't the best, that are not according to God's

ways. But sometimes when you're a teenager or when you're in your twenties you don't know the

dangers that are out there, so it's hard exactly to know what to do.

I made a decision at fourteen years old. I was saved already, but at fourteen years old I decided I

was not going to get involved in some of the things the other teenagers were getting involved in.

I wasn’t going to rebel against my parents, which seemed to be the norm at that time. I was going

to just try to do the right thing. And I am so glad that I did that.

There's a way to live your lives that can start adulting a lot easier. If you're here today and you're

thirty-nine and above or you're adulting now, that's okay. I commend you because whatever age

you are, adulting is important. But if you're younger, I just want to say, trust the Lord now and

start the adulting process early. It'll save you a lot of pain and a lot of challenges that you might

experience in your life.

If we were to look at a key passage of scripture that's about adulting, we would come to this one

in Ephesians 4:14-15. So let me read this to you. Because this is what it says. So that we may no

longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine,

by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes. Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are

to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ. When we understand what that

means it really helps us to make some decisions that could help us to be more serious about our

faith, to grow up in our faith because that is where so much of the success is found in our lives.

That's what the believers in Nehemiah’s time are discovering.

So we're only going to look at two verses today. I'm going to slow the whole study down a bit.

We've been taking a chapter at a time. But the next three weeks we're going to take just a couple

of verses. Next week, only one verse. And we're going to slow it down a bit because we're going

to see adulting happening in these people over the next three weeks.

What's happened is that they have… Well let’s read the passage. Stand with me. Let's read these

two verses, that's all, in Nehemiah 10. We're not going to read the first twenty-seven verses,

which are just the names of all the people that signed the agreement. But in verse 28, it's one big

long sentence. I'll take breaths in the middle. I can't get through the whole thing in one breath.

But it's one big long sentence. It says this: The rest of the people, the priests, the Levites, the

gatekeepers, the singers, the temple servants, and all who have separated themselves from the

peoples of the lands to the Law of God, their wives, their sons, their daughters, all who have

knowledge and understanding, join with their brothers, their nobles, and enter into a curse and

an oath to walk in God's Law that was given by Moses the servant of God, and to observe and do

all the commandments of the Lord our Lord and his rules (or shaphat - that’s the code) and his

statutes.

You may be seated.

This book of Nehemiah is one of the last books written in the Old Testament. It's written in about

485 B.C. Nehemiah is the third reformer that comes back to Judah in order to rebuild the temple

and the people that are there. He starts with the mission of rebuilding the walls. He does that and

then he shifts over to work with Ezra who was also a reformer. And together then from the rest

of the book, chapter 7-13, they’re rebuilding the people. That's their goal – to focus in on the

people.

So they have this time where they come together and have this big celebration on the first day of

the year. The Feast of Trumpets, a special day. And they read the scriptures. As they're reading

the scriptures, they say, “Wow, this is really valuable. This is really important. We need this. We

need to understand this more.” In fact, as they started reading it, they started to grieve about the

regrets they had. Like I think some people who are thirty-nine years old or are in their thirties,

they say, “Oh man, I made some mistakes in my life. Oh, I wish I wouldn't have done that.” And

those are when Nehemiah’s famous words in Nehemiah 8:10 come into the picture. He says – Do

not grieve, for the joy of the Lord is your strength. He says in that same passage – today is holy

to the Lord. In other words, we're starting over. We're going forward from now. So wherever you

are in your spiritual walk, today is a new day and we're going forward.

But now the people have this great prayer that they pray in Nehemiah 10. And when they do,

they're seeing the faithfulness of God (as we saw last week) and the brokenness of people. That

we keep making mistakes. “Oh, yeah, I'm going to serve the Lord.” But then He does good

things and good things happen in our lives and we say, “Oh, I don't need Him now,” and so we

start sloughing off. So back and forth between the faithfulness of God and the frailty of human

people. So they come at the end of chapter 10 and they say, “This is it. We're going to adult now.

We are definitely making this decision. We're actually going to write it in writing so that we

have it.” And that's why you have all these names then in the beginning of chapter 10 where we

are today.

Now, we are going to pick it up in the last part because there are three things in this big sentence

that I want to point out that are characteristics of people who are adulting. I particularly hope that

if you're a young person today you will pay attention to this and receive it so that you can adult

earlier. So you don't have to have the challenges that other people experience that damage their

lives and they have to recover and have a hard time recovering.

Let's look at the three things that are mentioned here. I underlined this first one. It says that all

the people who separated themselves. There is a principle in life about separation. It's a principle

that says that our identity is not found in participation in the world's activities. It's found in

separation unto God. That we understand that we're separated to God, then we're distinct, we're

different. And when we find our identity there, that's a key to life. If we can find our identity

there, we don't have to keep validating ourselves with other people and having people like us and

befriend us and approve of us. And we don't have to meet other people's expectations, so to

speak for our identity. But now we have those identity needs met in God Himself. And that's

really special. It has to do with separation.

Separation is a very important concept that's taught in God's word. It started in creation when

God said – “And let there be light,” and there was light. There was already darkness on the

earth, but God created light. He didn't have to create the dark because there's already darkness in

our world. There's all kinds of problems that are around us. But God creates the light. And it says

– He separated the light from the darkness. That's our word. He separated the light from the

darkness. It gave the light distinction, it made it different.

A little bit later, in the same chapter in creation, God separated the waters from above from the

waters below. He separated them. Now you have a distinct atmosphere and the distinct waters

below. There's a distinction because of separation. There's the separation of the waters from the

land. He separates it. That same word here is used about separating in creation. And then God

starts working with people and He describes how He wants us to be separate, how He wants us to

be different.

I want to take you to a passage that describes how God wanted the Israelites to be separate.

Because we can take the same principles and apply them to our lives. Watch this. This is very

interesting. This is what God says to the people as He's giving them the law so that they

understand the code, the shaphat. They understand the code, the success principles for life. You

are different. This is what He says: You shall therefore keep all my statutes and all my rules.

That's shaphat. That's the code. That’s the code of life. There is a code that's out there. And that

code is very important because it's the secrets to life.

Here's the problem. Sometimes young people will say to themselves, “Oh, it's just an ancient

book. It's an ancient code. I can just do whatever I want.” So they find themselves rejecting the

code and trying to do whatever they want and they end up in all kinds of places that they wish

they wouldn't be. Oh yeah, it's pleasurable to engage in the code of the world. But it's dangerous.

There's all kinds of bad things there.

He says – Look, you shall therefore keep all my statues and all my shaphat (my code, my rules)

and do them, that the land where I am bringing you to live may not vomit you out. I mean, those

are graphic words to describe what happens when you're not obeying the code. And you shall not

walk in the customs of the nation. The customs, the culture. There's a culture out there today in

our society that's dictating a different code than God has. It's very different. And He says –

“Don't walk in the customs of the nation that I'm driving out before you, for they did all these

things and therefore I detested them. But I have said to you, ‘You shall inherit their land, and I

will give it to you to possess, a land flowing with milk and honey.’ I am Yahweh your God, who

has separated you from the peoples.”

You are distinct. You're different. So their identity… This is really important. Think identity.

Because that's one of the things that young people are looking for is their own identity. Your

identity is found in Christ. And if you find it there and you have the code, then you can live this

life that God has given instructions for. It works.

In the same passage in Leviticus (let me continue), it says because it affects how you eat. And

you need to understand that the code that God gives us affects every area of our lives. For them,

it said – You shall therefore separate the clean beast from the unclean, and the unclean bird from

the clean. You shall not make yourselves detestable by beast or by bird or by anything with

which the ground crawls, which I have set apart for you to hold unclean. It even affects your

dietary things is what He's saying to them.

Notice verse 26 – You shall be holy to me. Now the word holy is an interesting word that He

throws in here, because holy means separate. And you might look at holy and go, “Whoa, whoa,

whoa. That's just for God. I can't even think about being holy.” It’s His holiness that is

separateness. We're not trying to fit into a culture as Christians. We want to participate in the

culture. But we're not fitting into the culture. We're not changing our values and our convictions

to make other people happy. Our convictions are based on the code, on the shaphat, on the rules

that God has given to us.

He says – You shall be holy to me, for I Yahweh am holy and have separated you from the

peoples (why?), so that you should be mine. So that you'll have your identity in me. So there's a

personal relationship we have with God that really changes everything. When you have a

relationship with God, it changes everything because God gives us this shaphat, this code that

helps us to move forward. If you think the code is antiquated, it comes from this old book, it

doesn't apply today, you will miss out on the secrets that God has for us. It's this separateness

that is where our identity is, and we must separate ourselves.

Now, this principle of separation must be balanced with the principle of participation. Because

God wants us to separate, but doesn't want us to live in monasteries necessarily. He wants us to

also participate in the culture because that's how we're going to share Christ with other people.

That's how we're going to be relevant to the people. So they understand that. But we don't

sacrifice our distinction in order to participate. We're involved in the culture, we're participating,

but we're not losing this distinction. We have to have both of those. It's really sad when a church

or an individual decides I want to be liked by the people. Some churches then change their

doctrine in order so other people will like them, so they can attract more people. But then they've

lost the distinction that God has for them. This distinction is so important. It is the word be

separate. Be separate.

And that's why Paul picks up this idea in 2 Corinthians in the New Testament. He says this: I will

make my dwelling among them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they shall be

my people. Do you see the identity there? Therefore go out from the midst, and be separate from

them, says the Lord, and touch no unclean thing, then I will welcome you and I will be a father to

you, and you shall be sons and daughters to me, says the Lord Almighty. Paul's picking this up in

the New Testament. In the New Testament they could have said, “Those are ancient rules. That's

not appropriate for today.” Just like sometimes young people or even adults will say, “Eh, that's

an old book. It doesn't apply today. It's irrelevant.” And I want to tell you, it's a code that

transcends all the ages, all the cultures. Wherever you are in the world, this code is relevant and

applicable in all of our lives.

One of the things I do is I train coaches (biblical parenting coaches) to work with parents. I do

this training three times a year. People sign up for this training, they do it online with me. I

started the training last week for this current semester. I've got coaches in there learning how to

work with parents. And these coaches are from United States, but also from Latvia (I know some

of you don’t even know where that is – it’s a country), Australia, Nigeria, Ecuador, and England.

It's really interesting to have all of these people in this network, interacting together and talking

about the parent they're working with, because they're describing how God's principles apply in

every culture. The shaphat, the rules are not just for one culture. They're for any culture, they’re

for any period of time, any age group, any needs. God's code works.

So we see this calling to be distinct, to be separate in order to embrace what God has for us. He

wants our identity to be in Him. He wants us to receive that blessing. There's a different way to

live life. It's hidden in the code that God wants us to obey. It means being separated.

And that's why he says in our passage today – they have separated themselves from and to.

Notice, it's from the peoples of the lands to the Law of God. From the peoples of the land to the

Law of God. From the culture, the people that you hang around with, maybe even the people in

your own family, you're separating from your values, from them to the Law of God. It's the code

that he's describing. What a great principle we must understand. If we're adulting, we're going to

grab on to this idea and say, “Yes, I need this in my life.”

Which is going to lead me to the next principle, this beautiful word understanding at the end of

verse 28. Now you can circle that word and you can draw a line across it and write the word

binah. Binah. It’s the word understanding. But really, it's this word discernment. It’s one of the

wisdom words. There are several words that describe wisdom, all of which are found in the book

of Proverbs. So we have a number of words that describe wisdom. This is one of them. Binah. It

has the idea of being able to recognize future consequences of present decisions. That's why it's

called understanding. “Oh, I get it. Oh, I wish I would have gotten that earlier.” It's that

understanding that takes place. It's just a beautiful word. And it's a word that we need to be

aware of. Because if you're adulting, you want more understanding, you want more discernment.

You want to realize that what you're looking at has some ramifications beyond it. We all need

that in our lives.

Let me just take you to a book of Proverbs where this word is shared with us. This is now the

very first chapter of the book of Proverbs. This is introducing to us the book of Proverbs. So we

know why the book of Proverbs was written. It says there – to know wisdom and instruction. To

binah. Words of binah. I underlined them both. It's the same word – binah. To understand words

of discernment (that's the word insight). We will need this in our lives. We need to see the

ramifications for our decisions. And sometimes we don't know them.

A young person might look at this decision and they say, “I don't know why I should do that.

That doesn't make sense to me.” But they don't know that down the line. There is a consequence

that's waiting to grab them. How many people go through life saying, “Oh, there's another credit

card application. Look at that. They're giving me a $500 credit limit. I'm going to max it out. I’ve

got 500 free dollars,” and don't realize, they don't understand, they don’t binah, realize that

they're getting themselves into financial bondage. What a painful thing.

There's some people who say, “Well, I'm just going to say what's on my heart. I just want to be

honest, I just tell people what I'm thinking.” And they don't realize that the binah, that there are

consequences for just saying what you think. That sometimes we don't say anything. What the

code says is only say what is edifying to other people. And so there's this test that's out there. Oh,

I wish I would have understood that more. I wish I would have…if I knew that, I probably

wouldn't have taken that action. That's binah, you see, this understanding about life. God has a

plan for every one of these aspects of life, we must understand in order for us to be effective.

Sometimes the binah comes too late or not too late, but later than we would like it. So in verse 5,

he says – Let the wise hear. Can you be wise now? At twelve or fourteen or sixteen or twentytwo? Yes. Let the wise hear and increase in learning. The one who binah, who understands

obtain guidance. If you want guidance in this world and you want to be able to navigate all the

challenges in this world, you want to understand binah.

Oh, don't we wish we had more of this binah? Oh, there are people who approached marriage in

a way that wasn't all the best and now they're suffering because of that. There is a way to

approach marriage wisely. That's what we're going to spend our time talking about next week

because that's the next verse in Nehemiah 10. We're going to talk specifically about that. There

are people who go into their lives and at the end as they’re getting up, their kids are growing up,

going, “Man, I wish I've done this parenting thing differently. I thought it was get my kids into

the best school. I thought it was get them on the best sports team. I thought it was investing in all

these extracurriculars. But now they've left the faith. Now they're suffering in their lives. I wish I

would have done it differently.” That's the binah. So you might look at your life, as I look at my

life, and say, “Wow, you know, there's a lot of binah I didn't have,” because binah comes with

maturity. Discernment comes with maturity or it comes by trust in the shaphat, in the code.

Sometimes you don't know the consequences of these actions, but I'm going to trust the Lord.

And I'm going to obey the code, even though I don't understand the ramifications. So I'm going

to do that so I don't have to learn by experience. Learning by experience is a painful teacher

sometimes. Let's avoid that.

But if you are in that place right now where you’re going, “Oh, I have so many regrets in my life.

I wish I would have been wiser,” then you need to go back to Nehemiah 8 where Nehemiah says

this is a new day, dedicated to the Lord. This day is holy to the Lord. Do not grieve, don't have

these regrets. The joy of the Lord is your strength. So you can go on from any point. If you're

thirty-nine years old today and you're getting your life together, I say congratulations. You've

made the best decision of your life. Let's go forward. As the people here are signing their names

and we're going to make this a written decree. This time we're adulting that's what they're saying

here. I love that.

Proverbs 8:5 says – O simple ones… These are the people that are kind of naive. They just

wander around life doing what they please, whatever pleases them. They have no idea, they have

no binah at all. O simple ones, learn prudence. Binah. Binah. Learn prudence. O fools, learn

sense. It's a warning. It's a call out there. As we see in the book of Proverbs, wisdom is calling

out to us. Grab onto this. This is what we must embrace in our lives.

If we go to the New Testament, Paul takes this idea of discernment and let me just read to you

what he says in Ephesians 5. Let no one deceive you with empty words. For because of these

things, the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience. Therefore, do not become

partners with them. For at one time you were darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk

as children of light, for the fruit of light is found in all that is good and right and true. And try to

discern. Try to discern what is pleasing to the Lord.

See, young people if you would do this by faith and you would say, okay, I don't understand this.

There's a lot of people doing things out there. It looks like they're having fun, but I'm going to

choose the distinction of being separate. I don't understand it all. But I'm going to trust that the

Lord's code, the shaphat, is right. And I'm going to do that. You will save yourself so much pain,

so much heartache. Follow the code. So powerful.

Well, there's one more word I want to draw your attention to back in Nehemiah 10. Because I

want you to see what their commitment looks like. They're saying, yes, we're going to adult here.

And they say, as part of that, we're going to walk in God's Law.

The idea of walk has this idea of being practical. It's going to take it to my daily walk, to my

daily progress in life. It means I'm going to take God's code and I'm going to bring it into the

way I handle my emotions, handle my finances, handle how I eat, how I handle my schedule and

time planning. It's going to take all of those things. It's this walk. I'm going to walk in God's law.

As we're walking in God's law, we're doing something different. We're living our lives in a way

that has a path.

Jesus really wanted the people to understand this. He wanted to grasp this idea. So He said to

them, I want you to know, guys, there's a broad road that people are walking on. It looks really

attractive because it's broad, and a lot of people are there. If you look around, you're going to

say, “This doesn’t make sense. This narrow road doesn't make sense because I see so many

people on the broad road. Looks like they're having a lot of fun.” And they do, they are having a

lot of fun. I don't doubt that at all. But it says the end of that road leads to destruction. Oh man,

what a warning. He says but there's a narrow road. It's narrow because there aren't a lot of people

on it. And it's a road that leads to life. Jesus was pleading with people to understand this concept.

Because if you don't get it, you end up in a place you don't want to be. You can save yourself a

lot of heartache if you follow the code. If you follow the Lord in this kingdom plan that He has,

good things can happen, amazing things can happen in your life. If you are following the code of

the world, then a lot of bad things take place.

Sometimes you don't understand the things on the narrow road. That's why we gather together as

a church. Because if you're with other people who are also trying to understand the code, trying

to discern what's right, then you're walking with other people. If you're trying to make a

decision… I'm going to tell you right now, if you're trying to make a decision to buy a house,

buy a car, or get married, or whatever else that’s really big, I would encourage you get some

wisdom from other people before you make the decision. Talk to other people as counselors that

you have in your life. People that you go to that you can trust who understand the code. Am I

doing this right? Is this okay? Do you see any red flags? That's the binah that we want to develop

because we want to walk. And so when you walk with wise people, you become wise, Proverbs

says. So this walk is a very important part of our lives – what we do, how we do it. And God

wants us to be able to embrace that in such a powerful way. Consider your walk. The walk is the

practices that you have it. It means how do you handle your cell phone or how do you handle

your schedule? How do you handle your time? How do you handle your entertainment? That's

your walk. And your walk needs to be something that is in line with the shaphat.

So I think it's important. The shaphat is the code. It’s this we need to align ourselves with God's

word. So regularly looking at God's word, regularly studying God's word, regularly hearing

God's word or being in a study is so helpful, because we're all trying to develop this. This code

has a lot of things in it and it applies to us in so many different ways.

So Paul takes this idea and brings it into the New Testament about walking and he says this. This

is the same words that I read already to you. So I just want to read from walk. It says – Walk as

children of light, for the fruit of light is found in all that is good and right and true. That's so

great. So encouraging. And try to discern what is pleasing to the Lord. Yeah. Paul had it. Very

important.

So there's these three ideas that describe adulting in this passage in Nehemiah, and I just wanted

to park there because I believe they're so important and so valuable for us to understand in our

lives. We must grasp this idea of what it means to grow up in every way. I’ll go back to

Ephesians 4. It says – Grow up in every way. How are you going to do that? It's not just by

physically growing. It’s by having the insight of how does God work? What does He mean?

What does that fit into my life? This is not an archaic book. This is the Bible says of itself that it

is living and active. That means that when you open it up, God will speak to you. If you're not in

the habit of opening the Bible, young person, I'd say open it up. God will speak to you and He

will call you to be distinct. He'll call you to wisdom. He'll call you to walk in His ways. And

you'll go, wow, I think I'm going to do this. It's going to be a little different. Because some of the

people in my family aren't doing this, but I'm going to do it anyway. Some of the people at work

aren't doing this, but I'm going to do it anyway. Some of the people at school aren't doing this,

but I'm going to be distinct because I want to have my identity in God Himself. I want to be His

child. I want to trust in Him.

That's why when we come into the faith, we make this decision to accept Jesus Christ as our

Lord and our Savior. We say, “I want to follow the Lord. I want to become a disciple. I want to

follow Him in everything that I do.”

As our children were growing up, each night we would sing the song to them “Oh Lord, our

Lord, how excellent your name is.” And then at the end of the song, I would put my hands on the

kids, each one in their own room and I'd say, “Lord, bless Josh. Give him a good night's sleep

and good dreams. In Jesus’ name, amen.” Because I know that dreams and sleep is very

important for a person's health and wellbeing. And so we're saying, “Lord, I just want to ask for

your blessing. I want to pray for you, I want to guide you. I want to lead you in this. I just want

this to be so powerful in your life, son.”

Well, my son goes off to college. He goes to Bible college. And when he goes to Bible college,

he's eighteen years old, first year of Bible college. He's living in a dorm with four other guys on

bunk beds in this room and a lot of them are having bad dreams, nightmares, and all kinds of

things. And so Josh says, “Wow, you guys, why are you having all these nightmares?”

One of the guys says, “Well, for me, I did a lot of bad things before I came to Bible college here

and I guess they're just coming out my dreams. I just have to work through a lot of stuff. And I'm

glad I'm here at Bible college to learn more, but I'm trying to overcome some of those things.”

So he says, “Well when I was growing up, my dad at night would pray for each of us. Put his

hand on our head and our back and he would say, ‘Lord, I pray that they have good dreams and a

good night's sleep.’”

And they said to him, “Would you pray for us?” Eighteen years old, just goes around to each one

of these guys. “Lord, I pray for this guy. I pray that you'd give him a good night's sleep and good

dreams tonight.”

There's a way to live by the code. And I encourage you to grasp that as fast as you can. Wherever

you are in life, now is the time to live by the code. God has designed that for us. Let's serve Him

with all of our hearts. Amen?