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Sep 28, 2014

Taking Stock-Taking Aim

Passage: Nehemiah 1

Preacher: John Repsold

Series: Rebuilding the City

Keywords: renew, rebuild, city, souls, revival, confession, repentance, prayer

Summary:

This message looks at how God goes about preparing His people to renew their hearts towards Him in order to equip them to rebuild the city. The focus of this passage is on honest, humble taking stock of the situation among God's people (now the church), confession, repentance and prayer as prerequisites to being a renewed people who can rebuild our city.

Detail:

Taking Stock—Taking Aim

Part 1 of Rebuilding the City…Renewing the Soul

Nehemiah 1

September 28, 2014

In case you haven’t picked up a newspaper this month or listened to a news broadcast, let me clue you in on something: the world is rapidly becoming a much less secure, peaceful place.

For example, the brutal advance of the Islamic State in Syria (ISIS) this past week focused on the Kurdish town of Kobanê in Rojava (Syrian Kurdistan). As of a few days ago, this city, which has swelled to as many as 400,000 people, many of them now war refugees, was completely surrounded and under attack by ISIS forces. The Kurds of this city have been pleading for help from the international community and warning that if the city falls it will result in an ethnic and religious genocide of tens of thousands of people.

Just try to imagine what it must feel like to live in Kobane this morning.

It is an unbelievable blessing to live in a place of relative security. But even here, in quiet little Spokane, we take measures to protect ourselves. While very few cities today are actually walled cities, we nonetheless take measures to protect ourselves and our property.

Just what are some of those measures we employ virtually every day to make our lives and property safer, more secure?

  • What do you do when you are out at 11 or 12 at night, stop at a stoplight and see 15-20 gang-looking youth milling around at the intersection? [Lock your car doors.]
  • How many of you have a key or pass card that grants you access to your place of work or college”
  • How many here have locks on their doors at home? Windows that close or lock?
  • Anyone use pin numbers for your credit or debit cards?
  • Anyone have property/homeowners insurance that protects against theft?
  • Disability insurance that protects against loss of your ability to earn a living?
  • Health insurance to stave off the devastating effects of a catastrophic illness?
  • Auto insurance to protect the value of your car and keep someone from suing you for everything you have?

Besides these modern day “walls” that protect many of us here on a day to day basis, what other “walls” has our society constructed to make cities safer places to live?

  • Police
  • Neighborhood watch
  • Security firms
  • Streetlights

Nationally?

  • Boarders (Well, we used to.)
  • Standing army/military/national defense
  • CIA/FBI

Even in today’s world, I doubt that many of us would want to live in nations that have no boundaries, walls or means of self-protection. Even our President seemed grateful for protective boarders and fences around the Whitehouse last week when some crazy man scaled the fence, ran across the front lawn to the north entry and was finally tackled by the Secret Service inside the Whitehouse! His reason? “The atmosphere is collapsing.” Wow, now there’s a reason to get shot on the Whitehouse lawn!

What does all this have to do with God’s word to us? Well, we’re launching into a new 8-week series on the book of Nehemiah. It’s a book whose story line is all about rebuilding the city of Jerusalem after years of devastation, destruction and decay. In the process, it’s also about renewing the hearts of people for God. So as we press forward into what God has called His people to do in the cities where He has sent us, it’s important that our own souls are renewed by God at the same time.

            That’s what we’re involved in here at Mosaic: we’re called by God to be a catalyst for the rebuilding of our city from the inside out—from the inside of every person out…from the soul to the city…and from the core of our city to the country, nation and world.

City-reconstruction is useless without soul renovation. Sinking millions into building material infrastructure in any city is a losing proposition without God and His truth sinking into the moral infrastructure of people’s souls. While the church cannot rebuild this city single-handedly, without the people of God truly being the people of God, no house…or city…or nation can prosper or long endure.

“Unless the Lord builds the house, the builders labor in vain. Unless the Lord watches over the city, the guards stand watch in vain,” (Ps. 127:1)

So as we study Nehemiah’s rebuilding of Jerusalem, I want us to learn how to rebuild our city. And as we think about rebuilding our city, we must also think and pray about the rebuilding of our own souls.

Renovated cities come because people are renewed in their passion to see good things happen to their community. Strong, revived communities happen when enough people in a community are awakened, renewed and revived in their relationship to God.

So let’s get started rebuilding Spokane!

PRAY

This book of Nehemiah takes place some 26 centuries ago. It’s the latter part of the 5th century, B.C.

Originally the O.T. book of Nehemiah was “Part II” of one O.T. book under the title of Ezra. Nehemiah’s name means, “The Lord comforts.” I like this guy already. In a world desperately in need of comfort, filled with people who are wounded and broken and hurting, God sends someone to remind people, “Hey, it’s The Lord God who comforts!

It’s not wealth…or even health. It’s GOD! It’s God who heals and comforts people who have been wounded or damaged or displaced.

APP: We need to remember that as much as we remember our own name. WE don’t have the capacity to comfort the core of Spokane, broken as it sometimes is. But God does. We must be the ones who are not only always pointing people to the God of all Comfort; we must be running to Him ourselves whenever we feel we need some consoling and comforting.

Q: So what is it that hurts right now in your life? What DIScomfort are you experiencing at this stage of your life? Unless you look to the Lord God to deal with that, you will either continue to live in pain and isolation OR you may go running to insufficient and inadequate substitutes for God’s comfort which will eventually lead you to more disappointment, more addiction and more pain.

Every time someone called Nehemiah by name, it was to be a reminder to him (and to them) that it is God who comforts. How did it sound when people called His name? “Hey you there, you…the one called “The God who comforts”…what can you do about this mess I’m in?” Every time his name was called was to be a reminder of God’s ability, not Nehemiah’s.

So let’s read Nehemiah 1:1-11

The words of Nehemiah son of Hakaliah:

In the month of Kislev in the twentieth year, while I was in the citadel of Susa, 2 Hanani, one of my brothers, came from Judah with some other men, and I questioned them about the Jewish remnant that had survived the exile, and also about Jerusalem.

3 They said to me, “Those who survived the exile and are back in the province are in great trouble and disgrace. The wall of Jerusalem is broken down, and its gates have been burned with fire.”

4 When I heard these things, I sat down and wept. For some days I mourned and fasted and prayed before the God of heaven. 5 Then I said:

“Lord, the God of heaven, the great and awesome God, who keeps his covenant of love with those who love him and keep his commandments, 6 let your ear be attentive and your eyes open to hear the prayer your servant is praying before you day and night for your servants, the people of Israel. I confess the sins we Israelites, including myself and my father’s family, have committed against you. 7 We have acted very wickedly toward you. We have not obeyed the commands, decrees and laws you gave your servant Moses.

8 “Remember the instruction you gave your servant Moses, saying, ‘If you are unfaithful, I will scatter you among the nations, 9 but if you return to me and obey my commands, then even if your exiled people are at the farthest horizon, I will gather them from there and bring them to the place I have chosen as a dwelling for my Name.’

10 “They are your servants and your people, whom you redeemed by your great strength and your mighty hand. 11 Lord, let your ear be attentive to the prayer of this your servant and to the prayer of your servants who delight in revering your name. Give your servant success today by granting him favor in the presence of this man.”

I was cupbearer to the king.

The chapter starts out in the month of December. The city is Susa, the capitol of the Media-Persian empire, the hub of the then-known world. The King is a pagan fellow named Artaxerxes.

            One of Artie’s chief aids is a God-fearing guy named Nehemiah. Nehemiah was probably a 3rd or 4th generation war child. About 140 years earlier, Babylon’s King Nebuchadnezzar had invaded Jerusalem and taken most of the inhabitants captive back to Babylon. Thus the “Babylonian Captivity” of 2nd Chronicles 36.

            The city of Jerusalem was left like many a war-torn city in the Middle East today-- burned out buildings, a looted religious sights and destroyed defenses. Almost everyone who survived and was able to walk was rounded up, chained up and herded like cattle some 800+ miles to Babylon. It undoubtedly rivaled any “death march” we’ve seen in the last century.

All of this was God’s judgment on a chosen people who had chosen to reject their God and live like the surrounding world system. So judgment began, as it always does, first with the house of God. And it was not a pleasant sight. But as we read last week in Jeremiah 27, even in judgment, God wants His people to prosper and to strive for the prosperity of the cities in which they find themselves.

Forty-five years passed and the Persians took over. They defeated Babylon with its horde of Hebrew refugee-slaves. Now the chosen People had a new triumphant pagan leader named Cyrus. But God was moving in this man’s heart to let the captive Hebrews return to Israel to begin reconstruction of the ransacked temple. Some 42,000 did so under the leadership of Zerubbabel in the latter part of the 6th century B.C..

The work was plagued with starts and stops. A second group of migrants was allowed to return years later under Ezra. Pagan Kings came and went when finally we come to Nehemiah under the rule of Artexerxes.

So what was Nehemiah doing in the Washington, D.C. of his day?

He’s living a paradox: He’s there because God is pouring out his judgment on his rebellious forefathers. He’s living proof of a nation under divine discipline. He’s a foreigner, a prisoner of a lost war, a captive under the command of a pagan power.

APP: Friends, I think we are living in just such a time. I don’t think God is going to judge our nation; I think He IS judging it.

  • How else do you make sense of the very steep decline in the percentage of God-fearing people in this country in one generation?
  • What else accounts for the total lack of common sense when it comes to basic issues of national security, of the overwhelming growth in our national debt, of 90 million Americans eligible to vote who didn’t last election, of the reelection of hundreds of politicians who keep driving our nation off a cliff…and the list goes on and on and on. These are common sense issues, not political issues. Yet we continue to surrender our God-given liberties for the empty promises of people who have already proven their incompetence and total lack of integrity.

The messages of the O.T. prophets to God’s people under discipline have never been more timely to God-fearing people in America than today. We are walking the same path of divine discipline they did. So we need to pay close attention to what God said to them and called them to do.

Back to Nehemiah. Here’s also a very privileged man. He’s one of the personal aids to one of the most powerful of world politicians.

Look at the last verse of this chapter. It tells us the Nehemiah is the “cup bearer” to the king. While it may sound like he is sort of a glorified dishwasher, the reality is that his position was actually a political appointment somewhere between a Secret Service agent and Secretary of State. There was an intimate level of confidence and counsel between the king and cupbearer. There was also an integral relationship between the safety of the king’s food and the survival of the cupbearer:

--Good food…another great day for the cupbearer.

--Bad food…bad news for the cupbearer.

But even that daily danger of death was not what was the preoccupation of Nehemiah. Rather than worry about his own safety in the palace, he was driven by a concern for someone and somewhere else. Read vs. 2-- “Hanani, one of my brothers, came from Judah with some other men, and I questioned them about the Jewish remnant that had survived the exile, and also about Jerusalem.”

            Amidst the duties of state, Nehemiah’s passion was for a.) the people of God, and b.) the place where God’s presence was to be manifested most—Jerusalem. Even as a prisoner of war, Nehemiah never lost sight of the bigger picture. Rather than feeling sorry for himself or totally immersing himself in all the perks of the pagan court, Nehemiah felt deeply for the people of God and the reputation of God.

ILL: Like a TV satellite stationed high overhead which receives an impulse message from a transmitter station on earth and then beams it back to a whole field of viewers over a large area on earth, so the Jews were to be the “receivers” of God’s truth and then beam it back in living color and national blessing to the rest of the world. Jerusalem was to be the focal point, the satellite, of that transmission. In essence, the Hebrews were to enjoy God…and the world was to enjoy the Hebrews as a result.

            Instead, for so many years, the world only received a contaminated, scrambled signal from a people gone haywire with sin. The message the world received was ultimately so distorted that God blew His elect nation out of the Promised Land and to the ends of the earth.

APP: Isn’t that what we’re experiencing right now in the church in America? Because we’ve gone whoring after the gods of our culture, God has allowed that pagan culture to decimate the church.

What are some of the evident indicators of that today?

  • Abortion rates in the church.
  • Sex outside of monogamous marriage in the church
  • Divorce rates in the church.
  • Teen and young adult drop-out rates from church.
  • Financial bondage and debt levels in the church.
  • Unemployment levels, welfare levels in the church
  • Addiction levels to pornography, to entertainment, to foods, etc.

We’re supposed to be radically and refreshingly different from the culture around us, yet the culture so often can’t even detect a difference.

How passionate are we for a.)the people of God, and b.)the place where God wants to display his presence today (the church)?

The more I ponder this passage, the more I admire this man Nehemiah. He didn’t really have to concern himself with the state of God’s people 800 miles away. He could have so easily buried himself in the comforts of his day. Jerusalem held no personal attraction for him. In all likelihood, he had never even visited the city.

            So what on earth would compel a 3rd generation exiled Hebrew to even inquire about someplace related to his failed heritage?

            I think Nehemiah is a beautiful example of a truly Spirit-directed man. Here he is, suffering for the failures of his forefathers, men and women who wouldn’t shovel the manure of their own sins as it accumulated in their generation. When the nation caved in morally and spiritually from the weight of that sin, innocent generations like Nehemiah’s got hurt.

Rather than isolate himself from the resulting pain or insulate himself from reality by ignoring it, he chose to participate in the pain of discipline and the healing process.

At one time or other in life, most of us will have to grapple with this dilemma. What will we do with the “fallout” of another’s sin? What will we do with…

  • The abuse we experienced as a child or spouse?
  • The divorce or abandonment that was forced upon us by an unfaithful partner?
  • The employment or business we lost because of someone else’s greed or envy?
  • The church split we went through
  • or the loss of important friendships because of the sins of others?

Nehemiah didn’t go to blaming or bailing on either God or people. He went to embracing the heart of God about the sins and the people. And he kept growing his compassion for the people themselves.

The report back concerned both the people’s condition and the city’s condition.

Vs. 3--“Those who survived the exile and are back in the province are in great trouble and disgrace. The wall of Jerusalem is broken down, and its gates have been burned with fire.”

In so many ways this seems like a description of the church worldwide today. Never in my lifetime have more Christians been persecuted more severely. “Trouble” and “disgrace” are what the church is experiencing everywhere from India to Iran, China to Chad.

  • In Foshan City, in China’s Guangdong Province, last Sunday, 100 people including children were arrested during the Sunday worship service by over 200 police. Thirty were still being held in prison earlier this week.
  • 100,000 Christians are believed to be among the more than 1 million displaced by ISISin Iraq in the last few months. Since 2003, over a million Christians have left the country due to violence that has plagued the country, often specifically targeting Christians in the midst of broader sectarian clashes.
  • Saudi Arabia’s Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice (Haia) arrested 28 people for using a home as a church. They confiscated Bibles and musical instruments the Christians were using at the home for a prayer meeting. Saudi Arabia is the only nation state in the world with the official policy of banning all churches. This is rigorously enforced even though there are over 2 million Christian foreign workers in that country!.
  • In Syria, some 200,000 Christians have fled the country in the past 3 years of civil war.
  • Last month, a church in Asroi village located in India's Uttar Pradesh state was forcefully turned into a Hindu temple after members of the church were forcefully converted to Hinduism.According to reports, Christians in India have been attacked over 600 times in just 4 months. 
  • More than 300 church crosses have been removed, under that guise of “Three Rectifications and One Demolition,” in China’s Zhejiang province.

How about our own nation? Any pressure against Christianity? While it’s nothing like China or India…

  • A charter school in Temecula, California has begun purging the school library of Christian literature, saying they "do not allow sectarian materials in our state-authorized lending shelves." One of the titles removed includes "The Hiding Place" by Holocaust survivor Corrie ten Boom.
  • Football coach Tom Brittain at Tempe Preparatory Academy in Arizona has received a two week suspension from coaching for joining his team in prayer. As one parent put it, referring to a recent incident in professional football in the United States "“Ray Rice gets two games for cold-cocking his fiancé and Tom Brittain gets two games for praying.”
  • The American Humanist Association is making a second attempt to keep American high school students from reciting the "under God" portion of the pledge of allegiance, arguing it violates the separation of church and state.

Do you know what it’s like to live in a house where all the windows are broken out and the only thing between you and the street is a hole in the wall that used to be a door? No, most of us don’t. But millions of our brothers and sisters in Christ know that feeling TODAY…and every day of their lives. The protective boundaries afforded most people are eroding for Christians worldwide.

            The political, legal and social “walls” that used to protect so many of God’s people are crumbling. The gates that once swung open to godly people have been chard and burned by the fires of secularistic humanism and political correctness.

So what should be the response of the people of God? Well, I can tell you what Nehemiah’s response was to bad news about the condition of God’s people.

Vs. 4ff—4 When I heard these things, I sat down and wept. For some days I mourned and fasted and prayed before the God of heaven.

  • He wept. He didn’t try to hide his sorrow. He mourned the losses of God’s people.
  • He interrupted his “business as usual”, stopped his routine and got off the governmental merry-go-round.
  • He put his job in jeopardy by fasting for days.
  • He lost sleep over it (vs. 6—“day and night”)
  • He PRAYED. And it wasn’t some little mealtime prayer. It was a prayer infused with truth about God and informed by Scripture.

5 Then I said:“Lord, the God of heaven, the great and awesome God, who keeps his covenant of love with those who love him and keep his commandments, 6 let your ear be attentive and your eyes open to hear the prayer your servant is praying before you day and night for your servants, the people of Israel.

            Notice how his prayer is infused with TRUTH. His vision of God is BIG, as big as the universe. Yet it is deeply personal and loving too. The greatness of god without the covenant love of God simply leaves you with a cold, impersonal, dispassionate god of the Deists. But a God of power greater than the entire universe with its millions of galaxies and trillions of stars who has willingly bound himself to sinful and seemingly insignificant human beings like us through His promises, that is a God we should set everything aside for in order to call down His loving compassion on our desperate need.

            And notice how his prayer is informed by Scripture.

8 “Remember the instruction you gave your servant Moses, saying, ‘If you are unfaithful, I will scatter you among the nations, 9 but if you return to me and obey my commands, then even if your exiled people are at the farthest horizon, I will gather them from there and bring them to the place I have chosen as a dwelling for my Name.’

And smack dab in the middle of a very high view of God and His promises, Nehemiah acknowledges a very honest view of God’s people’s own failures.

Vs. 6ff-- I confess the sins we Israelites, including myself and my father’s family, have committed against you. 7 We have acted very wickedly toward you. We have not obeyed the commands, decrees and laws you gave your servant Moses.

Do you find it hard to identify with the sins of the church today? Maybe it is because we live in such an individualistic society. But God doesn’t see his church that way. Just look at his 7 messages to the 7 churches of Revelation. He spoke to “the church” in every city, not individuals and not even simply local congregations in those cities. And he called most of them to repentance about something. In doing so, I think God was telling us that being His people has never been an individualistic thing…a private journey. That is a very American concept of the people of God.

            In the process of any type of shared, corporate renewal, be it national or local, there needs to be a personal identification and confession of corporate failure.

ILL: When you get the stomach flu, it’s not a problem for just your stomach to tackle while the rest of you goes about it’s merry way as if nothing has happened. Illness affects the entire body. Some parts feel the effects more acutely than others. But the infection or bacteria must be addressed at a body-wide level.

To personally confess corporate failure and sin is not hypocrisy; it’s honesty. We fail to grasp the biblical concept of “chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation” (I Pt. 2:9) if there is no room for personal identification with corporate failure. Our American obsession with success has too often kept us from honest admissions of where the church has and is failing. The result is that we fool no one. We look and sound rather like some of the biggest hypocrites in the county.

APP: take a few minutes to let God’s Spirit speak to us about where Christians and the church is failing today. Then identify with those sins by speaking out a prayer of confession.

There is much more in this prayer but let’s conclude with one more observation. More than anything, this prayer of Nehemiah shouts to us of THE fundamental reason for why a city should be rebuilt and souls should be renewed.

--Vs. 9 tells us that when God restores a people and renews their lives it is with the intent of making them an example of what happens when His presence resides with people. When God rebuilds a city and His people, He gets the fame and the glory, not us.

--Vs. 11 reminds us that when God’s reputation in this city is the most important thing to us, we will be people who come to God early, often and passionately in PRAYER. And the result will be that God’s answers to our prayers will bring joy to us and glory to His name in this city.

Put yourself in this closing part of his prayer:

10 “[We] are your servants and your people, whom you redeemed by your great strength and your mighty hand. 11 Lord, let your ear be attentive to the prayer of [us] your servant[s] and to the prayer of your servants who delight in revering your name.”  

Here’s the clear call of this chapter: PRAY as if the future of the people of God and of this city depends upon you…because it does!

If we are going to rebuild this city and see renewal in our souls, then WE must be the people who call out to God. Nehemiah knew that his success depended upon God’s answers to his prayer. And so he prayed like he had never prayed before.

  • Are we that desperate yet…or must we experience first hand the desperation so many of our fellow Christians around the world are in today?
  • Will we make some changes NOW so that we can experience some rebuilding and renewal in the near future?

Will you do some deeper praying this fall?

  • Will you and I lead our families in 1, 2 or 3 times of prayer each week—prayer around the dinner table…or prayer before bedtime together…or prayer at breakfast before we scatter to work and school?
  • Will you invite a fellow student or Christian coworker to spend one lunch time each week this fall praying with you?
  • Will you keep a private prayer journal, writing down some of your heartfelt prayers to God for this city and His glory?
  • Will you pray out publically in your home or community group? Will you care more about what God thinks than about what others think when you have the opportunity to pray in church or pray for someone you know needs God’s intervention?

Rebuilding the city starts in the presence of God. Renewing our souls begins in the same place too. So let’s actually do it rather than just talk about it. Let’s actually talk to God about the rebuilding our city needs and the renewing our souls long for.

PRAY