Nehemiah - Chapter 5

Nehemiah - Chapter 5: Nehemiah Helps the Poor

SERMON TRANSCRIPT

We are continuing in our Nehemiah series, and I hope you guys have enjoyed this. I know it's been something that us as a teaching team has really enjoyed, really digging into scripture and a lot of the historical background and a lot of the context of what's happening in Jerusalem and in Israel and Judea and kind of the surrounding nations of what's happening during this time in history. And what I love is that we can look back on these situations and these stories, and we can see that God moved. That it didn't matter what was happening in the world, didn't matter what society and culture was saying, whether they were obedient or wanting to worship God or not, God still moved. God still blessed, God still provided victory, God still moved in the hearts of his people. And so if there's anything I think for us to take away from Nehemiah as a whole is that God is still moving. God is still up to something. God is working sometimes in the shadows and out of our, maybe our peripheral, and we think, "God, I don't see you moving. "Are you really doing anything?" And I wanna encourage you today, he is. He's moving, he's doing something, he's up, always going and making things happen. And so if I can encourage you in that today, please, please be encouraged.

So Nehemiah chapter five, Nehemiah has come back to Jerusalem. They're rebuilding the wall. He's moved by God when he hears about the state of the ruins that is the beloved city. And so he asks of his boss, the cupbearer that he is, to the king, "Can I go back?" And by God's grace, he grants him that wish to be able to go back to Jerusalem. So Nehemiah goes back and finds that the city is probably worse off than he ever thought it was, or the stories that he had heard. But that doesn't stop him. He's encouraged still to begin to rebuild the wall and he actually becomes governor of Judea, the surrounding region, and by the grace of the king to be in charge. And so he begins the rebuilding process. He calls people to say, "Hey, stop what you're doing. Stop with your businesses. Stop with the things that you're working on in your own personal time, but come take on a section of the wall with us." And we together as a group, we'll take on all parts of the cities, all the gates, everything. And we're gonna re-secure Jerusalem. The temple has been rebuilt after it was destroyed. And that is great, but the city of Jerusalem itself is still at exposure for attack. And so Nehemiah with his crew, they start rebuilding the walls. And what happens when we say that I'm gonna answer the call to God in our lives? What happens? The enemy rolls in, right? The enemy shows up 'cause he goes, "I don't like what you're doing. I'm gonna start messing with you." And so last week, chapter four, Pastor Lauren talked about this opposition that has come out of the woodwork to show up, to tell Nehemiah and his team of builders, "You ain't gonna do this. There is no chance that you, a bunch of jabronis, are even gonna be able to think about rebuilding this wall. You don't have the talent. You don't have the resources. You don't have enough people. You don't have what it takes to rebuild this." And so Nehemiah pushes back against this opposition to the point where attacks start coming. His people start being attacked as they're trying to rebuild. Nehemiah goes, "All right, that's what's up." He's like, "All right, team. Tomorrow, when you wake up, you're gonna go to work with a hammer and with a sword. You're gonna use the hammer in one hand to rebuild the wall, and you use that sword to push back anybody who tries to come and attack you." Nehemiah ain't messing around. Nehemiah has showed up, and he is like, "There ain't nothing that can stop us from doing the calling and the will of God for our lives and what we have been for this moment and this time." I love Nehemiah's just grit to just not give up.

And so we're gonna jump in chapter five, and everything is perfect now. That's a joke. That's a joke. Not everything is perfect. It's gonna get a lot worse before it gets better. So Nehemiah chapter five, we're gonna start in verse one. It says this, "Now the men and their wives raised a great outcry against their fellow Jews." Uh-oh. "Some were saying, 'We and our sons and daughters are numerous. In order for us to eat and to stay alive, we must get grain. There ain't no food.' Others were saying, 'We are mortgaging our fields, our vineyards, and our homes to get grain during the famine.' Still others were saying, 'We have to borrow money to pay the king's tax on our fields and vineyards. Although we are the same flesh and blood of our fellow Jews, and although our children are as good as theirs, yet we have to subject our sons and daughters to slavery. Some of our daughters have already been enslaved, but we are powerless because our fields and our vineyards belong to others.’"

A little context of what's happening here in this moment in Jerusalem. There's a couple of things that are going on. We open up in this scene of chapter five, and it talks about the poverty in the province of Jerusalem and Judea and the surrounding countries. And the problem is there's two causes. The first of which is that during this time, commercial and opportunity for commerce is actually cut off with their neighbors because of the conflict that they have. So this normal trading and selling and bartering and flow of money that usually happens within a large metropolis or city center isn't happening because they don't have anybody to trade with. And then on top of that, they have been asked by Nehemiah to stop what they're doing in their craft, their business, their trade, to come help rebuild the wall. And so what happens with that? Well, if they aren't doing their job, they're not attending to their fields, they're not running their business, they're not at their shop, they're not working their trade, they don't have any income for their family. And as we read here, they're in a time of where food is scarce. And so what do they do? Well, they go to their fellow brothers and sisters, those Jews, and basically they mortgage up their possessions for food, knowing that the rebuilding wall isn't gonna last forever, and that for the short term, they can borrow money to buy food to feed their families, and they'll get by, and then on the back end, when they start their businesses back up, they'll get the money to repay back those who have been generous with them. So their houses, their land, their orchard, and even their family are being put on sale to be able to just pay taxes to the Persian empire and to buy food.

This was not a good situation. By this point, when we hear this, that people are coming to Nehemiah, it's gotten real, real bad. So Nehemiah realizes he's gotta do something about this. So he continues on, verse six. "When I heard their outcry and these charges, "I was very angry. "I pondered them on my mind "and then accused the nobles and officials. "I told them, you are charging your own people interests." See, what happened in this time is that the more wealthy, the more well-off people in this situation were basically giving out loans to those who couldn't pay or have money for food and their taxes. And this was a good thing. These people are taking up of their own life and putting on paws and rebuilding the wall. And so this charity that's happening is great. This is what God wants. When we're in situations where we face hard times with one another in our family, God calls of us to help each other out. Sometimes that means throwing some Benjamins out there and saying, "Hey, I got you on this one. "Don't worry about it. "It's gonna be okay." But the problem is, is they're charging interest on these loans. You may think, well, what's wrong with that? Like that's life. That's part of how business and commerce works. Well, actually, charging interest on loans against a fellow brother and sister, a Jew, was actually against the Jewish law. It says in Deuteronomy 23:19, "Do not charge a fellow Israelite interest, "whether on money or food or anything else "that may earn interest." Nehemiah didn't have a problem with people helping each other out and saying, "Hey, here you go. "I got you. "We're gonna rebuild this wall. "We're gonna get it taken care of "and we're gonna get our city back up and running." The problem was where they were charging interest to their fellow brother or sister, that they own family. They were burdening them on top of the burden that they were already facing.

And Nehemiah is outraged. He's furious. And he goes, "This is just another example "of how far Israel was lost coming back after the exile." But there's this greed in here, this greed for these wealthy Jews that were leveraging the less financially stable brothers and sisters for their own personal gain. Which if you really think about it, these people are just trying to rebuild the wall for the city that everybody lives in, where everybody has their business, where everybody has their families. And these people are charging exuberant interest to the point of basically going, "Okay, if I take my oldest, Adeline, "and I go, 'Okay, Addi, "'Dad and the family needs food for dinner. "'You're gonna go work for Mr. Smith today "'and do whatever and clean his house "'and do his dry cleaning and run errands "'and do his grocery shopping and go pick up Uber "'and get in his food and bring into his lunch.'" Like basically going, "Mr. Smith, I need 20 bucks. "Here's my daughter. "And I hope in the end I can take my money "that I've earned on the backside "and buy my daughter back." Like this is what's happening. And Nehemiah is just so frustrated. He's like, "Are you kidding me? "Why are you letting this happen?”

Verse seven, "So he called together a large meeting to deal with them. And he said, 'As far as possible, we have brought back our fellow Jews who were sold to the Gentiles, original captivity. Now you are selling your own people only for them to be sold back to us.' They kept quiet because they could find nothing to say. So I continued, 'What you're doing is not right. Shouldn't you walk in fear of our God and avoid the reproach of our Gentile enemies? I and my brothers and my men were also leading the people money and grain. But let us stop charging interests. Give back to them immediately their fields, vineyards, olive groves, houses, and also the interest that you are charging, one percent of the money, grain, and new wine and olive oil.' They say, 'We will give it back,' they said. ‘And we will not demand anything more from them. "We will do as you say.’”

So Nehemiah gathers them all up and is like, "All right, we're gonna have a little "come to Jesus moment here right now." And he calls them on the carpet. He's like, "What are you guys doing? "Are you for real right now?" That's my loose translation. Knock it off! What are you doing? He's like, "We've gone through this time "where we ourselves were in captivity, "and we've done everything we can to bring back "as many as we know about to come back to Jerusalem. "And then just to turn around "and you do the exact same thing that you hated before "that the Babylonians and the Persians did to you, "you're now doing it not to just other people, "but your own family. "Stop it! "Why? "Why do you even think this is okay?" And he's like, "I get that people would do that around us, "like our enemies, the other pagan gods "and cultures around us, they don't know any better. "They just do that because they think that's what life is. "You guys know better! "You guys know that you shouldn't be acting like this. "You are the people of God for criminy's sake, come on!" I think Nehemiah used some choice words here that probably aren't appropriate for livestream. And what happens? They ain't got nothing to say, why? 'Cause they know. You ready to call somebody out for something? And they just sit there in silence? They know! They know exactly what they've done, they know exactly how they've treated their brothers and sisters, their fellow Jew. This isn't any surprise to them. And so thankfully they admit what they've done and they're like, "We're gonna do everything we can "to make it right. "We're gonna give it back, we're gonna bring back the, "like give 'em back the interest, "and we're gonna give 'em 1% on top of all that "for all the trouble."

Nehemiah continues on, verse 12. "Then I summoned the priests and made the nobles and officials take an oath to do what they had promised.” Nehemiah ain't messing around. He's not like, "Oh, well yeah, we'll do it." And he's like, "Okay, cool, have a good day." He's like, "No, no, no, no, no. "We're gonna bring in the officials here. "We're gonna make this real." He said, "I also shook out the folds of my robe "and said, 'In the same way, God, shake out of their house "'and possessions anyone who does not keep this promise.'" Woo! "So may such a person be shaken out and emptied. "At this, the whole assembly said, 'Amen!' "And praised the Lord. "And the people did what they had promised.”

I think it's really important to look at this chapter and this first section and to really see how you and I, as people of God and followers of Jesus Christ, are called to address and confront injustice when we see it. Unfortunately, we live in a world where this is sometimes polarizing in the church. And that really breaks my heart because this shouldn't be something that's polarizing in the church, right? This should be something that we see in the light in which God sees it himself. God is a just God. And I'm not going down the path here of politics or critical race theory. I'm not going down that road. What I am going down is a biblical road. When we look at scripture, we see how God sees injustice in our world. And we live in a world where there is injustice. There's injustice against the unborn. There's immigration injustice. There's injustice against women. There's racial injustice. And we live in a broken world. Probably didn't think I was going somewhere like this this morning, but here we are. And when we look at this word, just, it actually has its roots in the word critique. And really what here we're focusing on is that the word of God should adjust our lives correctly, rightly in the way that God desires for all humans to live and to act and to care for one another. To be this idea of shalom or peace in a chaotic, broken, selfish world. To be as Christ followers, we are called to reflect the imago Dei or the image of God in which we are created to the world around us, to reflect Christ to those around us. And if so, if God is a just God, then our actions, our behaviors, and how we treat one another should be just as well. Justice really means using the word of God, his word for us, to make right decisions, to make righteous decisions, to make truthful decisions, to be God honoring, to be reflecting of who God is and what he desires for us. So when Nehemiah hears of what is happening with his people, he cannot even believe it. He can't even realize what's going on and he gets so angry. And I think sometimes we have this thought process in our mind that when we hear of injustice, if we just get angry about it, then we've checked the box. Or maybe we make a social media post and say, "This is not right." And we go, "Okay, did my injustice work for the day, God? "Thank you." But I think there's more to it. And I'm not saying that doing that stuff is bad. I think that's a good, maybe a starting place or what God is asking or calling of you to do.

But I think there's so much more here that we see from Nehemiah that applies to our lives. The problem is that this isn't just limited to us today. When we read the Bible, even from the first book in Genesis, we see of injustice happening immediately after the fall. Why? Because we're selfish people. We're sinful people. We like to be God ourselves. We wanna be in charge, we wanna be in control. We want what we want. And so in that naturally happens the putting down of others because we think higher of ourselves. And honestly, when people are selfish and there's an opportunity for money, this gets cranked up to the max. It's the downfall of society since the beginning. And this is just the natural bent when we have someone who lives their life apart from Jesus, apart from the Holy Spirit. It's just the natural flow in which we go. But God expects us to live different, right? God expects us to treat one another in a different way because of who he is. And this isn't a political thing. This isn't because we find ourselves in this season right now, but the reality of when Nehemiah hears injustice, he knows that he has to move. Nehemiah hears the cry of the people and is moved. He can't sit back. He can't just let this go on. He can't just turn a blind eye. He realizes he has to act. And he moves in boldness. He doesn't just go, "Oh, you know, I'll give another week." It'll probably clear itself up in six months or so. If I just ignore it, it'll just correct its own path. Like, right? It'll be all right. Nehemiah, no. He realizes he has to do, so what does he do? He calls everybody together. He groups them up, says, "Stop it. "This is not how we care for one another. "This is not how we share the love "that God has shared with us, with each other. "How could we be doing this?"

And you think, "Well, you know what? "Nehemiah's in charge. "He's the boss. "It's not that hard." Have you read chapter four? Nehemiah has outside people coming at him, and now he's got inside people coming back at each other. Nehemiah can't walk through the city without somebody probably giving him an ugly glare. He's probably not the most popular person in town right now. Nehemiah is having it come at him from all sides, and yet what? He still moves in boldness. He says, "I don't care what other people think of me. "I don't care what others may do to me. "I don't care what the repercussions of this "is going to be when there is injustice. "I have to move." Nehemiah realizes that he is going to have to lead by example. He can't just sit and watch and let this happen. He has to act.

Verse 14, "Moreover, in the 20th year of King Arxerxes, when I was appointed to be the governor of the land of Judah until his 32nd year, 12 years in total, neither I nor my brothers ate the food allotted to the governor. But the earlier governors who preceded me placed a heavy burden on the people and took 40 shekels of silver from them in addition to food and wine. Their assistants also lorded it over the people, but out of reverence for God, I did not act like that. Instead, I devoted myself to the work on this wall. All my men were assembled here for the work. We did not acquire any land. Furthermore, 150 Jews and officials ate at my table, as well as those who came to us from surrounding nations. Each day, guys, catch this, "Each day, an ox, six choice sheep, and some poultry "were prepared for me, and every 10 days, an abundant supply of wine of all kinds. In spite of all of this, I never demanded the food allotted to the governor because the demands were already heavy on these people.”

Nehemiah leads by example. This wasn't a singular moment in the history of Nehemiah and his leadership reign that he just moved. It was a situation where it started way back when he became first governor, 12 years earlier. He made a choice to honor God above honoring himself. And I think for us, this is the example for our lives, that consistent behavior outshines a single moment or decision. For Nehemiah, it meant the past 12 years, he led different than the previous governors. He did not take and act in the same way that he had done by adding extra taxes, taking food allotments from the people, land seizure, or anything in the like. But not only that, even the nobles and political officials underneath him didn't do that as well, which was the usual day of culture. Nobody would have judged Nehemiah if he had acted in that way. Previous governors had done it, previous governors before them had done it, the officials underneath them had done it, everybody had taken their extra piece along the way and padded their pockets. But when Nehemiah showed up to Jerusalem to rebuild the wall, he knew his behavior needed to be different. He knew his behavior needed to lead in a way that was not like usual, in a way that was honoring God, not necessarily for the sake of the people, but out of reverence to his heavenly father. Nehemiah wasn't out here thinking, okay, well, I gotta build a wall and I need a lot of people, so if I just don't take from them, maybe they're gonna be more inclined to pick up a hammer and help out. No, Nehemiah made this choice himself to say, I'm going to honor God above anything else. And even though he could take and have personal gain and to have wealth and to build up what he wanted, he said, no, I'm not gonna do that and everybody underneath me will neither do that. We're gonna lead with integrity, we're gonna lead with honor and we're gonna lead with respect as a witness to God. I hear this sometimes and it kind of makes me chuckle because of it being overused in the church sometime, but Nehemiah had an audience of one and that was God. Nehemiah didn't care about anybody else, their approval, their popularity, their money, their wealth, whatever. Nehemiah cared about honoring God.

And not only that, every day Nehemiah opened up his home. Now I don't know how big this dude's house was, but if you're hosting 150 people every single day, you probably have a pretty good getup. But every day he fed 150 people, whether it was those working on the walls, it was the people in town, it was people that were using Jerusalem as a travel waypoint to get to the Persian capital city and the empire, whatever it was, every single day he fed 150 people with an ox, it's a big old cow, that's a lot of meat, six sheep, and not just the leftover sheep, the choice sheep, the best of the best, and birds. I don't know how many birds, but I think you probably need a few birds plus the ox, plus the sheep to feed all of those people. And even with all of that, providing that every single day, Nehemiah never took a dime extra for anybody in the city. It's quite an example. If you ask me, that's quite a witness of consistent behavior outshining a single moment or the decision. You might've heard that people don't care how much you know until they know how much you care. The relational equity that Nehemiah had built up after 12 years of daily inviting people in, of showing up at the wall, of putting himself on the line, he wasn't a supervisor. Nehemiah didn't wander the walls with a clipboard and an orange helmet. He was there working with a hammer and a sword right beside his brothers and sisters, rebuilding that wall. And yet he continued to serve them, to love them, to care for them. So when he hears of injustice, he realizes he has to move.

And what's his motive? It says in verse 19, "Remember me with favor, my God, for all I have done for these people." Nehemiah's boldness to step up, to take everything head on, and to address this economical injustice is a powerful example for us. It's a powerful example for you and for me and how God has called us to live our lives today. For how we see injustice in so many forms in our life today, and we too are called to respond. We are called to act just like Nehemiah did. And for Nehemiah, it was a daily consistent act of generosity in the way that he treated his fellow Israelites and anybody who traveled through the city. It was in small ways that he shared with them. It was in not taking extra that was even allotted to him, but in turn to give witness to God. It was through his living in lockstep with scripture that showed the people around him who was God.

So what about us? This past Wednesday, we started a study on generosity. I didn't mean for these to line up here, but here they are lined up. And we learned in our study that 25% of the teaching that Jesus gave here on earth was about money and possessions. That would mean if we followed in lockstep, every fourth sermon, you'd hear me talking about money. I don't know how many of you would last. You'd be like, I'm going to the church down the street. See ya. But this is pretty powerful if you think about this for a moment. That Jesus saw and thought of it to be that important that 25% of the time, he's talking about money and possessions. Why? Because he says this in Matthew 6, 22 and 23, which I think puts us all in perspective. Jesus says, "The eye is the lamp of the body. "If your eyes are unhealthy, "your whole body will be full of light. "But if your eyes are unhealthy, "your whole body will be full of darkness. "If then the light within you is darkness, "how great is that darkness." What does Jesus mean by this? Well, he means this. There was a Jewish understanding that the eye of the body was your perspective. And if you had an healthy eye, you had a healthy, good, right perspective on life. And if you were to say, "Oh, that guy has an unhealthy eye." That would mean that that person does not have a biblical, sound, healthy, righteous view on life. And so Nehemiah was a man who had a healthy eye. He had a healthy perspective and an understanding on what it meant to live life to honor God, to address injustice when he saw it and act boldly in the leading of God. But it started with him. I think sometimes we see justice in this world and we just think those people need to change. We see something and go, "Well, they're the one with the problem.”

But it starts with you and me. It starts with us. The people of Jerusalem were acting different than the surrounding nations in no way. Nehemiah says, "You're nothing different "than the people that we call our enemies "treat each other around us." How are we to live like this? The calling of generosity that God set in Jerusalem was for them to loan money, which was good without interest or extra stipulations to solely lend a helping hand to those who were working towards the rebuilding process in their efforts. Where they went wrong was when they were treating those with which they had loaned that money to, to power over them, to lord over them, to control them, to take extra from them. Sometimes I think the biggest obstacles to community is ourselves. The biggest thing that gets in the way from God moving in a group of people is themselves. And our willingness to own up our mistakes and to repent, to ask for forgiveness and take the necessary actions to correct it. When confronted by Nehemiah, the nobles and officials admit to their wrongdoings and agreed to restore what had been taken. I think this illustration shows, improves the importance of restitution and restorate, restorating, restoring, sorry, broken relationships to foster unity. Unfortunately, recent studies have shown that the church isn't a very loving and trusting place anymore. Now I think you might go, well, they didn't interview our church.

But I think the reality is that the world looks at the church and goes, you're no different than us. Just like the surrounding nations looked at Pete, the Israelites in Jerusalem and said, you're no different than us. But God says we're called to live in a different way. They're called to be witnesses. And you and I are called to be witnesses. Not only in this, our family inside these four walls, but outside these as well. Where people drive by every day at this stop sign and look at that church, what do they say? Do they say they got a jokester who puts jokes on the corner? Do they say that that's a caring, loving place? Do they say those people are a bunch of greedy haters? Would they think of coming through those doors when life hits them hard? To think that they would find something different than the world had promised them where they find emptiness. Would they find hope, encouragement, joy in this place? I hope so. That's my heart, that's my prayer. Pastor Andre talked about this all the time going, how can we become the greatest example and witness of Jesus at the corner of Sunset and Fairway? How can we do that? We too are called to live and act in this same way because our credibility comes in the consistency of the small things. To be a witness in our generosity, the way that we treat our fellow brothers and sisters both inside and outside of the church, to give to the poor, to the needy, to the hurting, to the lost, it starts with us. It starts with you and me having a consistent daily heart of generosity, living out and looking for ways in which we can care for others even when they don't deserve it. 'Cause what happened? Jesus came and gave of himself to death on the cross when we weren't deserving. That's the ultimate example of grace and mercy and love. And we want no love without Jesus on the cross. It says in Micah that we are called to act justly, love mercy, and to walk humbly before God just like Nehemiah did. So a couple questions as we close this morning. How is God calling you to a more consistently generous life? I think it starts opening our hands and living our life with what God has given us. And to say, Jesus is yours. You've blessed me with it. How do you want me to use it? And then the other question, where do you need to act justly, love mercy, and walk humbly before God this week? I mean, we all can get better at this. I'll be the first to raise my hand and say I need to be better at this. I got this on the schedule in this chapter. I was reading through it. I'm like, okay, cool, Nehemiah. And I started digging in deep and I'm like, oh, I don't wanna teach this guy. I don't wanna be the bearer of bad news. I wanna be the funny guy. But I think for us, it's to act justly, love mercy, and walk humbly before God every single day. To walk in lockstep with the Holy Spirit guiding our lives. And he will let us know how to move in boldness. I don't have time to get into the weeds of how we address injustice in our world, in our life today.

But when I look at Nehemiah's example of how he lived it out every single day for 12 years, I think that's where you start. And then when God says you need to move, you need to act, you need to step up, you've already practiced it for years on the daily. That'll be a natural movement. It's not gonna be awkward. It's not gonna be strange. It's not gonna be scary. You're gonna be, I'm just moving the way that God is asking me to move. How will we be generous today, tomorrow, and every day until we see Jesus?

Let's pray. Jesus, thank you so much for your word. God, thank you for your servant, Nehemiah. Jesus, that he moved in boldness. He stepped up and addressed the injustice. But it didn't happen in just a moment. It was a lifelong habit, a lifelong rhythm that he had built in for 12 years to act differently, to not take what he could have taken, to not lord over the people of Israel, but to walk humbly with you, God, his audience of one. So God, I pray for us today that we would trust you. We would listen for the prompting of the Holy Spirit in our lives to move. We would listen for the prompting of the Holy Spirit in our lives to move how you want us to move, to act how you want us to act, and to be generous, God, with everything that we have been given. Jesus, give us a healthy eye of the world around us and how we are to treat one another who are all created in the image of you, God. We love you, Jesus. Amen.

Nehemiah - Chapter 4

Nehemiah - Chapter 4: Opposition to the Rebuilding

SERMON TRANSCRIPT

We are in our Nehemiah series. So if you are here live streaming or you're listening later, welcome. Sorry you're going to miss out on the food, but we are diving into chapter four. So the first week, Pastor Chris talks about Nehemiah kind of set us up for the whole story and talks about prayer and what that looked like in Nehemiah's life and how he constantly turned to prayer first. And then in week two, Pastor Andre talked about being put in places of influence and how we can leverage those positions, whether it's at work or it's in our homes or even just our position in relationship with God and what that looks like to pray for other people and to leverage that relationship. And then week three, we talked about unity within the group, how the Jews had to come together and be unified and they had a common purpose of rebuilding the wall. And they were unified in that despite their differences, their different statuses, their different positions, their different jobs, they all had different skills. And so they came together and were unified in that. Well today, they are going to come up, we're going to see in chapter four, that they're going to come up against some more opposition. And we're going to talk about what it looks like when we come up against roadblocks and opposition and discouragement. So that's our main focus today. I realized as I was reading through this, I say the word discourage or discouragement a lot today. So if someone wants to keep a running tally, you know, if you're bored, you can just tally up and let me know how many times I say it, because it's probably going to be a lot today. But I think that there's a lot of truth in Nehemiah that we can draw from, that we see how he responds to it, how he encourages the people and how we can respond to it in our own lives.

So we're going to just start off in Nehemiah four. So if you want to turn there or scroll on your phones, it'll be up on the screens as well. But we're going to just start right at verse one. When Sambalat heard that we were rebuilding the wall, he became angry and was greatly incensed. He ridiculed the Jews. And in the presence of his associates and the army of Samaria, he said, "What are those feeble Jews doing? Will they restore their wall? Will they offer sacrifices? Will they finish in a day? Can they bring the stones back to life from those heaps of rubble, burned as they are?" Tobiah, the Ammonite, who was at his side, said, "What are they building? Even a fox climbing up on it would break down their wall of stones. Hear us, our God, for we are despised. Turn their insults back on their own heads. Give them over as plunder in a land of captivity. Do not cover up their guilt or blot out their sins from your sight, for they have thrown insults in the face of the builders." So we rebuilt the wall till all of it reached half its height, for the people worked with all their hearts. We were introduced to Sambalat and Tobiah in chapter 2, and they were from a nearby country and they had some feelings about this wall being rebuilt. They did not want it to happen. When the wall had been destroyed and the Jews were in captivity, the remnant that was there were pretty easily manipulated, and the idea of this nation becoming strong again threatened the way of life of these other surrounding nations. And so they did not want it to come to fruition. They did not want this plan to work out. So they started off of just dissenting to the idea, and then they turned to ridicule and criticism. They thought, "If we can discourage them enough, maybe they'll quit. Maybe they'll give up on this project." And we see here in verse 4, "Nehemiah didn't even give them the time of day." He did not engage at all. He went immediately to God. As he has done, as we've seen in earlier chapters, he's done in the past. He immediately goes to God in prayer. One commentary I read said he didn't debate. He didn't form a committee.

How many times have we done that? Try to get everybody else on our side, right? He didn't form a committee. He didn't even deal with the two enemies directly. He took it to God in prayer. See, he knew God was in on this project. It was God's idea. It was God's plan. So when he prayed for God to intervene, he said, "God, fight this battle for us. Come against our enemies." Some may even be shocked by some of the words that Nehemiah was using. He said things like, "Turn their insults back on their own heads. Give them over as plunder in a land of captivity." That may seem a little shocking or aggressive, but it wasn't about revenge. It was about justice. Nehemiah was asking God to be God. He was asking God to be who he said he is. God is just. God is righteous. And he's saying, "God, be those things. Be who you are and go fight for us." God had this plan. So when the enemies were coming against the people of God, they were coming against God. So he had a reason to push back, which is why Nehemiah prayed the way that he did. And then in verse six, we see that the people just kept working. They kept their heads down and they kept working. Their work was not without problems. They came up against issues, roadblocks, problems within their own community. But we see right off the bat here that the was trying to discourage them.

And the enemy of our souls in our lives discourages, distorts, and distracts. He discourages with words, with circumstances, with trying times that we're going through, maybe even with other people in our lives, he discourages. And then he distorts the truth. He takes maybe kernels of truth and he twists it. He distorts it. And then he distracts us, whether that's through other things in our lives. Maybe it's through our phones. Maybe it's through, again, the circumstances we're going through. Maybe it's through just the discouragement itself. That's distracting enough as it is. If you look at the specific insults and criticism that Sambalat and Tobiah were giving, they were attacking them on multiple fronts with their words. They were talking about their ability. Can they even do this? The integrity, their skill, perseverance. Are they going to be able to even complete this wall? A fox will knock it down. They were trying to hit any and all insecurities and weaknesses that they could. And if you think about it, some of the things they were saying actually started in truth. They weren't all skilled in building a wall. They were kind of making it up as they went along and praying that the Lord just made it sturdy. But they had God on their side, so it didn't matter their skill level. So while maybe there was some truth in there, they twisted it just enough to distort what was actually true. When we are discouraged, when other people's words or our circumstances have even a kernel of truth, we're tempted to believe them. We're tempted to take that on as real and as truth in our own lives. Satan loves partial truths and to twist things around just to make them just enough that they're not true. Listening to these half-truths and these distortions can cause us to neglect the actual truth that God is with us. He's with us in our circumstances. He's with us in our trials and in our discouragement.

Deuteronomy 3:1 says, "He will never leave us or forsake us." So if we start to believe the lie that He's not in it with us, we know immediately that that is not a lie because it goes against what His Word says. Something else that I think Nehemiah knew and that we should consider is who's this criticism coming from? The people that were criticizing them were not allies, they were not friends, they were not trying to be helpful. When we come up against criticism and ridicule in our own lives, even from ourselves sometimes, we can ask ourselves, "Do we trust that person? Does that person trust God? Does that person have our best interests in mind?" Now, there is a time and a place where we need to be open and receive criticism and maybe course correct as needed. But we have to consider the source first. We have to think about who it is that is bringing this criticism so that we don't forget that it is actually God who equips us. It is God who's giving us what we need to do, what we need in order to do what He has called us to do. So instead of engaging with them or being distracted by it or believing these half-truths, Nehemiah prayed to God and he got back to work. Essentially, he was saying, "You have your opinion, but you just watch what my God can do." So we have discouragement. We have the truth distorted. We have distractions.

But the counteract to that is that we live differently when we live by faith. We can combat the discouragement and the enemy's tactics when we are living by faith. We will just behave differently when we live by faith versus living out of a place of discouragement. Ultimately, when we are operating from a place of discouragement, we become ineffective. We become ineffective in our Christian life. We become ineffective for the building of the kingdom. We are no longer pointing people to Jesus. It is no wonder that our enemy, our spiritual enemy, uses discouragement time and time and time again because it's an effective tactic. I mean, honestly, discouragement can lead to just apathy because you're just frustrated and tired of it. It can lead to stronger things like depression or just tapping out and saying, "I can't do this anymore," whatever this thing is. Satan's tactic of discouragement is to inhibit the Christian from working with all their heart like it said in verse 6. God didn't answer Nehemiah's prayer the way Nehemiah prayed it. Nehemiah had some strong words and some strong suggestions for God. And God didn't answer it that way, but what he did do is he gave the people a mind to work. He had them working with their whole heart. He gave them intention and focus. He gave them the ability to combat the discouragement by getting to work, by doing what he had already called them to do.

Deuteronomy 6:5 says, "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all of your strength." When we live in discouragement, when we just sit in it, we become divided in our own hearts. We may want to serve God, we may want to live for him, but we're so stuck in our discouragement that it divides our attention and we become ineffective. God helped the people work with their whole hearts, and he can do the same for us. Just like the enemy was hitting them on all sides with their verbal attacks and their ridicule, Satan loves to hit us on all sides. He knows our weaknesses, he knows where we're vulnerable, and he will exploit that. But when we trust God and we operate out of faith in him, we can combat the discouragement. So we see how the enemy, both in our story and in our own lives, uses discouragement. But when that stopped working, and they saw that it wasn't going to be effective, things started escalating.

So we're going to look in verse 7 here. But when Sambalat and Tobiah, the Arabs, the Ammonites, and the people of Ashtod heard that the repairs to Jerusalem's walls had gone ahead and that the gaps were being closed, they were very angry. They all plotted together to come and fight against Jerusalem and stir up trouble against it. But we prayed to our God and posted a guard day and night to meet this threat. Meanwhile, the people in Judah said, "The strength of the laborers is giving out, and there is so much rubble that we cannot rebuild the wall." Also, our enemies said, "Before they know it or see us, we will be right there among them and we'll kill them and put an end to the work." Then the Jews who lived near them came and told us ten times over, "Wherever you turn, they will attack us." So there's almost like a lot of dialogue happening here. Sambalat and Tobiah go from mockery to threatening, and they rally their people and the other nations and they make plots and threats against the people. Then you have the people of Judah who, they're doing the work and they're tired. They're saying, "There's too much going on. We're just exhausted." And then you have the other Jews who live close to the other countries, the other enemy lines that have heard these plans, and they're coming to Nehemiah and they're coming to the leader saying, "They're going to attack us on every side." You can hear the panic in their voice. It says they said it ten times over. "They're going to attack. They're going to attack. It's going to happen." Fear can be paralyzing. The threat alone were making the people afraid and it could have kept them from working. So now we have the enemy of the people making threats. We have the Jews getting tired and discouraged, and we have other Jews just panicking. Here's the thing though, nothing actually happened. There was no attack. It was just the threat of attack. How many times do we let our thoughts spiral out of control? We think about what could be, what might happen. How many of us, don't raise your hand, how many of us play out future conversations or scenarios? And we think, "Well, if they say this, I'm going to say this." We plan. Anxiety and spiraling thoughts are another really effective tactic of the enemy because it makes us ineffective. It keeps us from doing the work we've been called to do.

We talked about how the enemy discourages, distorts, and distracts, but he also, or he does this, he discourages us through fear, fatigue, and failure. Let me some alliteration. Fear, fatigue, and failure. The enemies used fear, threats. They didn't actually attack, they were just threatening it. But the fear was enough, the panic set in. The enemy uses fatigue. I don't know how many times people ask me, "How are you doing?" "Good, I'm just tired." Right? We're all tired, whether it's because of our life or our circumstances or the state of the world or whatever, we're just tired. And failure, even just the sense that we might fail or the fear of failure, he can use that too. And once he uses those things to tear us down and weaken us, he attacks us in our weakened state. It puts us in a really vulnerable place. So, we've got a half of a built wall, which means they're not fully protected yet. There were gaps in it, it wasn't tall enough yet. We have tired workers and panic and discouraged people. Being halfway done with the project might sound good, but they knew how much more work they still had to do on top of already being tired from the work that they did. Again, that can lead to being stuck, to quitting, just throwing in the towel. Can lead to the spiraling thoughts, the fear of failing, and so then we just do, we give up. So the thing is here, the Israelites had a lot to be fearful and tired about. They had enemies threatening attack. They had a lot of work behind and ahead of them. If you look at verse 10, the people from Judah were saying there was so much rubble that we can't rebuild the wall. It was taxing and it was hard work, but it had to be done. The rubble from the previous wall had to be removed before they could start building the actual wall, the new wall. The same thing can be applied to our spiritual lives. We have to clear out the junk before the Lord can rebuild anything in our own hearts. Maybe it's a sin issue or lingering shame from your past. Maybe it's beliefs that you have deconstructed that you grew up with or were put on you, and you need the Lord to clear those out before he can rebuild in you what is true. But we have to clear that out in order to have a clear and clean foundation and a solid foundation to build from. But that was really hard work for them.

So to combat some of the fear and fatigue and the failure, we have to allow God to clean out the rubble. Building the wall, honestly, was probably more fun or at least satisfying than the cleaning out part, than the removing and clearing out all the rubble. It was painstaking work. And honestly, a lot of these people were cleaning up a mess they didn't even make. A lot of these workers were born in captivity before they came back. They were even there when the wall fell the first time. There is rubble in our own lives that we didn't put there. Someone else caused problems. Someone else caused hurt. But thankfully, we're not the ones who have to clean it out. We just have to be willing to let the Lord do it. I don't know if we have any DIYers in here, but I've been threatening to repaint our bedroom furniture for a couple years now. And then I think about all the work that I have to do before I actually get to start painting and I don't do it. Because I think, "Okay, so then I got to take all the hardware off and I got to clean out all the drawers and I got to move it somewhere where I can actually paint it. Then I got to sand it and then I got to prime it and then I probably, I might need to prime it again." And all that time waiting for it to dry in between and then I get to paint it. That does not sound fun to me. Some of y'all are like, "Yes, that is my jam. Give me a project. I want to work." That is not my thing. I want the end result. I want the final coat of paint. You give me a paintbrush for the final coat of paint, I am your girl. So I can see the end result. But it's all the work leading up to it that makes me want to quick before I even start. It's the nitty gritty. It's the painstaking slowness of the process. See the devil doesn't have to completely take us out. He doesn't need us to completely renounce God. He just needs to make us ineffective. He needs us to say, "That's too hard. I'm not going to let God do the work he needs to do in my life. That hurts too much." And often that is just simply done through discouragement. We will stay stuck in discouragement and spiraling thoughts if we don't clear out the rubble and make room for the renovation. I'm going to say that one more time. We will stay stuck in discouragement and spiraling thoughts if we don't clear out the rubble to make room for the renovation. And when you are in a state of discouragement, that sounds even harder. But it's got to be done. So let's look at what Nehemiah actually did in order to defend against the discouragement so that we are equipped as well to combat the enemy and to be ready for when discouragement comes.

We're going to jump back to verse 9 because it starts up there. It says, "But we prayed to our God and posted a guard day and night to meet this threat." So the first thing he said, a guard. Then jumping to verse 13, "Therefore, I stationed some of the people behind the lowest points of the wall at the exposed places, posting them by families with their swords, spears, and bows. After I looked things over, I stood up and said to the nobles, the officials, and the rest of the people, 'Don't be afraid of them. Remember the Lord who's great and awesome and fight for your families, your sons and your daughters, your wives, and your homes.' When our enemies heard that we were aware of their plot and that God had frustrated it, we all returned to the wall, each to our own work. From that day on, half of my men did the work while the other half were equipped with spears, shields, bows, and armor. The officers posted themselves behind all the people of Judah who were building the wall. Those who carried materials did their work with one hand and held a weapon in the other. And each of the builders wore his sword at his side as he worked. But the man who sounded the trumpet stayed with me. Then I said to the nobles, the officials, and the rest of the people, 'The work is extensive and spread out, and we are widely separated from each other along the wall. Wherever you hear the sound of the trumpet, join us there. Our God will fight for us.' So we continued the work with half the men holding spears from the first light of dawn till the stars came out. At that time I also said to the people, 'Have every man and his helper stay inside Jerusalem at night so they can serve as guards by night and as workers by day.' Neither I nor my brothers nor my men nor the guards with me took off our clothes. Each had his weapon, even when he went for water." So he first set a guard, the very first thing he did. Now, setting a guard didn't mean that he lacked faith that God could protect him. He took action and he prayed for God's help. He did both.

One commentator I read wrote, "Our prayers do not replace our actions. They make our actions effective for God's work." We are conduits that God can use, but we got to get up and do something when we have a job to do. He set a guard day and night. This showed their commitment to not only the work, but also to protecting their city. It sent a message to their enemy that they and God would not be thwarted. Their plan would continue. It was a faith that was full of action. He had faith in God. He prayed to him. It says he prayed and set a guard. But he protected the weak spots. He made sure those things, those people were in place. He wasn't naive to their weaknesses. He didn't ignore them. He didn't say, "Ah, it'll be fine over there." He set the people in the weak spots to make sure they were protected. We too must set a guard. We have to know our own weak spots because the enemy does too.

Proverbs 4:23 says, "Above all else, guard your heart for everything you do flows from it." Maybe those weak spots for you are you're just tired and overwhelmed. And when you're feeling that way, you're weakened. Maybe it's a particular struggle that needs some accountability put around it. You need to bring in some other people in on it. Maybe it's a particular relationship or person that needs some, you know that that's a weak spot for you and you need to be aware of that. Ask the Lord if you don't know or aren't sure, ask him to reveal that to you so that you can set up a guard against it.

Secondly, we must be prepared. The Jews who were working had a sword at their side and the other ones had a trowel in one hand and a sword in the other. They were working, but they were ready. Commentator David Guzik wrote, "The kingdom of God is built with both a sword and a trowel, a sword to come against every spiritual force of wickedness in high places and a trowel to do the work of building up the people of God." We have a work to do as the body of Christ. As the church, we've got work to do. Not only in our own family, our own church family, but in the people out there who don't know Jesus that we come in contact with every day, we have work to do. But we also must be prepared for spiritual battle. They were armored up. In order to be prepared, they had to have their weapons. They had to be carrying their armor. They had to be ready.

Ephesians 6.10 says, "Finally, be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power, put on the full armor of God so that you can take your stand against the devil's schemes." And then Paul goes on to list how we do that. Putting on the spiritual armor means protecting our minds and our hearts. It means knowing truth and wearing it like a belt. Being ready to move when he says, "Move," and to carry his peace with us wherever we go. It's having faith that protects us like a shield, and it's knowing the word of God so fully that we can use it to attack the enemy. We put our heads down to work, and we stay on the defensive. We let God fight our battles for us, but we are not caught unprepared. So Nehemiah set a guard. He protected the weak spots.

And lastly, he remembered the greatness of God. So for us, we need to remember the character of God. He didn't want his people to forget who God said he was. He said, "We have to remember this. We have almighty God on our side." There's some power there. First John 4.4 says, "He who is in you is greater than he that is in the world." We have a real spiritual enemy, but we know the end of the story. We have God on our side. Verse 14 in our chapter today says, "Remember the Lord who is great and awesome." And then later in verse 20, it says, "Our God will fight for us." We often forget who God is. We forget how big he is, that he is good, that he is just, that he is righteous, that he loves us, that he is kind, that he will protect us and be our defender. But when we remember God's character, we are more likely to break free from the discouragement that weighs us down. We're more likely to be set free from the fear that keeps us trapped and paralyzed and to get back to operating from a place of faith and trust in him. Guys, discouragement is going to come. Fear will stop us in our tracks from time to time. The enemy of our souls will exploit our weak spots if he's given the chance. But we have Almighty God on our side. So we need to always be ready. We need to always be on our guard. We need to be clothed in our spiritual armor, and we need to be reminding ourselves over and over and over sometimes, daily, minute by minute, who God says he is, so that we can be confident in that and build our trust in him.

Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you for who you are. We thank you that you are a big and awesome God, that you care so deeply for us, that you will fight our battles for us, and you will equip us to come against the enemy of our souls that wants to destroy us, that wants us to become ineffective, that wants us to stay in a state of discouragement. God, I pray that you will help us to dig into your word, to dig into community, to rely so heavily on you that we will not be surprised by attacks, that we will be prepared, we'll be armored up, we will be ready. God, we thank you for who you are. We thank you for the things that you have given us to equip us to do the work you have called us to do. Pray a blessing over our family today. In Jesus' name I pray. Amen.

Nehemiah - Chapter 3

Nehemiah - Chapter 3: Builders of the Wall

SERMON TRANSCRIPT

We're continuing in our series. We've covered chapters one and chapter two in the previous weeks. Chapter one, Pastor Chris focused on Nehemiah's prayer and the importance of prayer. And last week we talked about being placed in unique positions by God and leveraging that position for the good of others. And today we're going to tackle chapter three, where at the end of chapter two, we saw Nehemiah rally the people to rebuild the wall. And so they are ready. And we're going to read our passage this morning. Now, let me give you a warning. What we're about to read is such good scripture. It is challenging. If you, okay, this would be a passage of scripture where maybe in your personal study, and I'm saying this as one who has done it, you might be tempted to skim over it because the names are so difficult and you're just like a list of names. You're like, okay, I get the picture. There's a lot of people who did a lot of things, but we are going to read it today together because we value reading scripture. It's good and we're going to do it. So you can pray with me as we read this. Let's go ahead and open your Bibles.

You can follow along Nehemiah chapter three. It says, "Elias Shib, the high priest and his fellow priests went to work and rebuilt the sheep gate. They dedicated it and set its doors in place, building as far as the tower of the hundred, which they dedicated as far as the tower of Hananol. The men of Jericho built the adjoining section and Zachar, son of Imri, built next to them. The fish gate was rebuilt by the sons of Hassanah. They laid its beams and put its doors and bolts and bars in place. Meramoth, son of Uriah, the son of Hakaz, repaired the next section. Next to him, Meshulam, son of Barakiah, the son of Meshezabel, made repairs. And next to him, Zadok, son of Banna, also made repairs. The next section was repaired by the men of Tekoa, but their nobles would not put their shoulders to the work under their supervisors." We're going to come back to that. That's important. "The Jeshenah gate was repaired by Joahida, son of Pesaiah, and Meshulam, son of Besediah. They laid its beams and put its doors with their bolts and bars in place. Next to them, repairs were made by men from Gibeon and Mizpah, Meletia of Gibeon and Jadon of Meranoth, places under the authority of the governor of Trans-Euphrates. Uziel, son of Hurahiah, one of the goldsmiths, repaired the next section. And Hanahiah, one of the perfume makers, made repairs next to that. They restored Jerusalem as far as the Broad Wall. Rephiah, son of Hur, ruler of a half district of Jerusalem, repaired the next section. Adjoining this, Jadiah, son of Haramath, made repairs opposite his house, and Hathush, son of Hashabaneah, made repairs next to him. Melchijah, son of Harem, and Hashub, son of Pahath-Moab, repaired another section from the tower of the ovens. Shalom, son of Halahesh, ruler of a half district of Jerusalem, repaired the next section with the help of his daughters. The Valley Gate was repaired by Hanun and the residents of Zenoah. They rebuilt it and put its doors with their bolts and bars in place. They also repaired a thousand cubits of the wall as far as the Dung Gate. The Dung Gate was repaired by Melchijah, son of Rekeb, ruler of the district of Beth-Hakiram. He rebuilt it and put its doors with their bolts and bars in place. The Fountain Gate was repaired by Shalom, son of Kol-Hazeh, ruler of the district of Mizpah. He rebuilt it, roofing it over and putting its doors and bolts and bars in place. He also repaired the wall of the Pool of Siloam by the King's Garden as far as the steps going down from the city of David. Beyond him, Nehemiah, son of Azbuk, ruler of a half district of Beth-Zer, made repairs up to a point opposite the tombs of David, as far as the artificial pool in the house of the heroes. Next to him, the repairs were made by the Levites under Rehum, son of Benai. Beside him, Heshabiah, ruler of half a district of Kilah, carried out repairs for his district. Next to him, the repairs were made by their fellow Levites under Benui, son of Hanadad, ruler of the half district of Kilah. And next to him, Ezer, son of Jeshua, ruler of Mizpah, repaired another section from a point facing the ascent to the armory as far as the angle of the wall. Next to him, Baruch, son of Zebai, zealously repaired another section, I love that, from the angle to the entrance of the house of Eliashib, the high priest. And next to him, Meramoth, son of Uriah, the son of Hekos, repaired another section from the entrance of Eliashib's house to the end of it. The repairs next to him were made by the priests from the surrounding region. Beyond them, Benjamin and Heshub made repairs in front of their house, and next to them, Azariah, son of Masiah, I'm so sorry, Maaseah, the son of Ananiah, made repairs beside his house. Next to him, Benui, son of Hanadad, repaired another section from Azariah's house to the angle in the corner, and Pelal, son of Uzay, worked opposite the angle on the tower projecting from the upper palace near the court of the guard. Next to him, Padiah, son of Perosh, and the temple servants living on the hill of Ophel, made repairs up to the point opposite the water gate toward the east and the projecting tower. Next to them, the men of Tekoa repaired another section from the great projecting tower to the wall of Ophel. Above the horse gate, the priest made repairs each in front of his own house, and next to them, Zadok, son of Emar, made repairs opposite his house. Next to him, Shemaiah, son of Shekiniah, the guard at the east gate, made repairs, and next to him, Hananiah, son of Shelemiah, and Hanun, the sixth son of Zelophe, repaired another section. Next to them, Meshulam, son of Berekiah, made repairs opposite his living quarters, and next to him, Melchizedek, one of the goldsmiths, made repairs as far as the house of the temple servants and the merchants opposite the inspection gate, and as far as the room above the corner. Between the room above the corner and the sheet gate, the goldsmiths and merchants made repairs.

Oh, I'm literally sweating. That was... Amen. Should we go home now? That was it. That was a workout. All right. So, we all got what happened there, right? Everyone understands... Yes, exactly. A lot of guys did a lot of stuff. So, in this chapter... Yeah, let me just break that down a little bit without the names. They're great. They're in history and great forever. But in verses 1 through 5, they're repairing the north wall. I'm going to paint a picture now. I wish we kind of had this... If we were there, this would make a lot more sense. We could just turn around and see. These are the sections that they did. So, verses 1 through 5, they repaired the north wall. In verses 6 through 13, they did the west wall. 14 through 15, the south wall. 16 through 31, the east wall. And that last verse is the eastern stretch of the northern wall. And so, if you're looking at a map of the city and you're standing there, you start at the top and they went counterclockwise, fixing everything. And some places of this wall needed to be completely rebuilt, while other sections just needed a lot of repair. And there was also a focus on 10 gates as the gates are a vulnerable spot for the city. And so, as they're thinking of repairing everything and protecting themselves again, walls and gates, everything gets fixed. Now, besides recounting who did what and how it was rebuilt, I think there are some other observations that are really helpful as we look at this chapter. And that's where I want to spend the rest of our morning.

And the first observation is that there was unity in the rebuilding effort here. The walls and gates, this was extensive work. This isn't easy. We're not talking about a small gate like in your side yard. We're talking massive city gates, massive walls. As we talked about in chapter one, some of these places where houses were built into the wall. So, these are significant projects that they're taking on and everybody had to pitch in and make it happen. This was all hands on deck and they were able to accomplish so much because they were all bought in. They were giving their all to this monumental project. And let me ask you this, have you ever seen the power of unity at work in something in your life where you've seen a lot of people come together unified over something and you've seen them accomplish something amazing? If you have, you would know that it's a pretty, it's a testimony to the power of unity to see a bunch of people come together, maybe from all different backgrounds, working on one thing and seeing that thing get done. I want to share a bit of my own experience with that. In 2011, I got to go overseas to do some missions work in Greece. And I was working a lot with refugees in the city of Athens. But for two weeks of that time, we did work with something called Operation Joshua, which is an organization that has the goal and the mission to see every single household in Greece have a New Testament in their modern Greek language. If you know anything about the Greek language, there's old Greek and there's new Greek. And so there are old Bibles. It's not that the Greeks have never heard Jesus, they obviously have. But not a lot of people have the New Testament Bible in their modern language. And so, this happens every year, it started in 2008. And for two weeks, every year, this organization gathers people from around the world to help distribute these Bibles. And Greece is divided into provinces. And so each summer, they take on a couple of different provinces. And I just want to share kind of the extent of this project. It's amazing. I was a part of this team. And so the two weeks, the first week is all about gathering the resources. So we are in assembly lines on tables. We're at this campsite. And I was blessed enough to be in Corinth, where the book of Corinthians is addressed to. And so we're in this campsite and we have pallets of pallets of Bibles. And we unpack the Bibles and we're on this long assembly lines. You take out a Bible, you're putting it in a bag with other information, and it's going down the assembly line. You're bagging it back up, putting it back in boxes. And we're doing that for five whole days. And the second week is when we distribute those Bibles. And so we are getting all those boxes in the morning. You wake up, you get into a car, and it's all mapped out as to who's going where and drivers and everything. And we're loading the trunks of these cars with as many Bibles as we can pack. And then we all sit, all five seats, if we're taking a car, we're filled. And then you sit down and someone's putting more Bibles on your lap. And so you can't even see through the windows because we were just packed with Bibles. And you go out all day and we would go from places like Sacramento, where we're in a city, and we're going to apartment complexes and just leaving a bag on every door, to the same day we could be going out to, you know, heading out, what would look like heading out to Jackson. And you're just on dirt, you know, small roads. And then you find a dirt road and it's like, "Oh, I think there's four houses up there. We're going to go up that dirt road." And so just distributing Bibles everywhere. And we come back and at night, these are people from all over the world. So we're on these assembly lines or we're in these cars with people from the US, from Canada, from other places of Europe, South Africa, Australia. And then at night we come together and we sing praises all in our own tongue. And we're singing praises, we go to bed and we do it all over again. I just want to share some. In 2011, in those three provinces, we reached over 390,000 people. We had 269 volunteers. We gave away over 100,000 New Testaments to over 866 villages. We drove over 72,000 kilometers, which I don't have that conversion, but it's a lot. And an update, so that was 2011. They started in 2008. They said that God has blessed them. This is the organization. I looked it up just to kind of see how far they've done in the past, so 10 years plus. And they said that almost 85% of the entire population has gained access to a New Testament in their modern Greek language. Just amazing, amazing work. And so today they've distributed over 1,500,000 New Testaments. They've reached over 7,600 villages, and they've driven over 700,000 kilometers with the help of 5,000 people from all over the world.

That was a blessing for me to see the unity of God's people come together to accomplish something so important, where every hand was needed, every footstep was needed to spread God's Word to these people. I'm sure that many of you have seen something similar, where God's people coming together to work and accomplish something for caring and loving and serving other people. Maybe even here at Spring Valley, if you've been here for a lot longer than I have, longer than Pastor Chris, you can think back to things like the car clinic or trunk or treat, or even what we do today, which is our fireworks showcase, where we are all working together as a church and loving people in our community, reaching people for the sake of the gospel. The point is that when we work together, there is power in being unified and striving for God and His kingdom. The people in Nehemiah's time were unified in a powerful way, and things were getting done. They were no small projects. How did the unity impact what they were working on? Have you ever come across someone who's in the zone when they're working on a project? You might be talking to them, they can't even hear you. They're so focused. They're hyper-focused on what they're doing, whether it's a project around the house or they're at work. You're like, "Hey, hello, I've been talking to you." And they're like, "Oh, sorry, what? I'm in the zone." This is what Israel was doing. They got to it. All the people were on the same page. They all had that rhythm. They were getting so much done. So one of those moments where the unification brought them to a different level and they were able to take on a major rebuilding project. So there was unity and there was power in their unity. Now, while the majority of people were unified, there were still a few who were reluctant to join in the effort.

This brings us to our second point, which is that there was opposition from within. In verse 5, there's a few nobles who do not want to partake in the rebuilding of the walls and the gates. It's the only time in this passage where there is opposition. And this time from within, in the last couple of chapters, we've talked about opposition from the surrounding nations, seeing that Israel's rebuilding. They don't like this threat that Israel could be. But now from within their own people, there is opposition. And scholars think that they didn't want to join Nehemiah because it would give their opponents a reason to attack. "Hey, if we're getting stronger, then we might actually go to war and we don't want to go to war." They also think that maybe it's just their pride. Everyone was getting involved and maybe these nobles thought highly of themselves. They're like, "I don't want to get dirty. I don't want to do that work. I'm used to being up here, high class. I haven't done that work since I was a kid. I don't want to do it." Either way, if it was pride or if it was fear, their opposition is working against what everyone else is doing and what the people are trying to accomplish. And now before we are so comfortably looking at disgust at these nobles and saying, "Oh my goodness, these fools," we should be honest and look at ourselves, right? And say sometimes, and admit, sometimes it's easier to oppose things than to be unified. Sometimes opposing something is convenient or it just might be lazy. Whereas being unified is a choice. It takes effort to get on board with something, to choose to be unified with someone else. Sometimes opposing them is just, it's easier. It's convenient.

You ever find yourself being a contrarian in conversation, maybe with your spouse or with your family or with friends? You don't really set out to, but all of a sudden someone points out like, "Why are you disagreeing with everything I'm saying? Why are you putting down every option that I'm throwing out? You're just saying no. Why are you, I'm trying to, we're all being positive here and you're the only one being negative and you're like, "Oh, I don't even, I'm just, I don't know why. I'm just being a contrarian. I'm just opposing everything that's happening." And again, sometimes it's just easier. Maybe that's where our heart is at. But I think if we were to look at that, being in opposition to what's being unified, it's a heart issue and it's a matter of pride. And pride is the number one source of divisiveness. Just like the noble showcase for the rest of the people of Jerusalem, I'm sure we've all seen how someone's pride causes divisiveness in a group of people. And it can be devastating. It can leave behind a wake of hurt and ruin. This is especially true of the church. Now perfect unity in the church won't happen until heaven. And in fact, in times it can be very difficult for the church to be unified. It's such an issue that Paul addresses this over and over and over again in his epistles to the early churches. And he speaks to the threat that pride and divisiveness are to the church and to the mission of God's people. And the answer, he says, is to humble oneself and to submit to Christ. To lower yourself, to humble yourself, and to submit to Christ. He says we shouldn't settle for what is convenient or easy, but make the effort, make the choice to be unified with God, with his church, with others. And that means humbling ourselves and submitting to God. This is exactly what so many of the people that we read, all those names, so many of them did. They were working on the walls and the gates. They humbled themselves. They submitted to the plan and the leadership that was given to them by Nehemiah that got it from God.

And so that leads us to our third point, which is they were leading, for the rest of the people, many of them were leading by example, what we call servant leadership. Besides those few nobles, we see so many in this chapter who are choosing unity, choosing to lead by example, and choosing to serve the larger community by getting to work. We have in verse 7, people from various towns outside of Jerusalem. In verse 8, people from various professions. They're not all wall builders and gate repairers. No, these are just people with their own jobs who are coming together to get a project done. We see in verse 9 that there's government leaders. Verse 12 shares that there are entire families working on sections. Verse 21, we even have faith leaders. Everyone was on board, willing to lead by example. Now we can't interview these people, obviously, but I bet if we were to ask them about their attitudes during this rebuild, they would come across as excited, as eager, and as enthusiastic to help out with this project because none of them saw themselves, besides those nobles, as too big for this job. They understood what was on the line. We've been talking about unity this morning, and the leaders in this chapter led in a way as to encourage others to rally behind them. They led in a way that invited participation. Come follow me. Do as I do. They're servant leaders. I want you to think, can you think of a time when you experienced a leader impacting for the positive, the unity of the group that you were a part of? Maybe, hopefully, by the way that they were leading and how they were doing whatever the project was or whatever the task was at hand because they were involved. I'm sure you can think of a time when you experienced a leader who led by example. Servant leadership is key for me. When I'm following someone, I'm much more likely to respect them and to follow them if I see them doing the very work that they're wanting me to do.

I grew up playing sports. Soccer was a sport that I played the most. I can recall a time. It was my junior year. I was on varsity. The guy who I played defense. At the very beginning of the season, this guy broke his leg. I got a start. I was very intimidated. I was not that gap between maybe being a junior and a senior. I just was like, "Man, these are all guys who are just really good. I'm pretty good, but I'm not at their level." But being thrust, "Hey, you got to start." We were getting into playoffs, and there was a team that was very physical. Our whole defensive back line, I'm going to try not to be technical here, was playing very soft. The other team was kind of halfway. They were passing the ball wherever they wanted. At halftime, it was still tied, but you could tell that we were just feeling stressed out. We're like, "This team is really good. I don't know if we can do this." We come back out at halftime, and the captain, I really appreciated our captain, he kind of gathered the players and said, "Hey, be more physical. You guys got this. Step up, be physical, shove them off the ball, do all this stuff." We're like, "Okay." He didn't just tell us that because after the whistle blew, the second half started, and within that first five minutes, we all saw our captain doing everything that he just told us to do. He was not football tackle, like soccer. It's a good soccer tackle. Tackling the ball, tackling people, getting the ball, winning the ball back, shoving people shoulder to shoulder, and all of us were like, "We can do this. We got this." Because we saw him do it, we knew that he was serious, and he led the way, we all got on board, and we ended up winning that game, and it was great. But I think of leadership by example, I think of him of like, he didn't just tell us. He didn't just instruct us. He said, "Watch me do it too. I got this. Follow me." Servant leadership is the most effective style of leadership, and the leaders of the city of Jerusalem understood that, and so they were on board to help out with the rebuilding of this city. Even from the very beginning in verse 1, we see Elias ship Israel's high priest, which means he would have been the top leader of Israel at this time, and he didn't let his position prevent him from getting his hands dirty and rebuilding that wall. Now, of course, we can't talk about servant leadership without speaking of the one who did it best, the goat, Jesus. He came not to serve, but to, he came to serve, not to be served, and he led his disciples by telling them how to follow him, not just physically, "Hey, follow me wherever I go." No, "Do as I do." Talking about our community group. So servant leadership is exactly how Christ lived, and it's exactly what he's called us to do. And servant leadership not only keeps us humble, but it's inviting too. It invites others to get on the same level that we're at, saying, "Hey, see what I'm doing? Come join me in this." Living like this, serving like this, loving others like this. Our chapter today was full of, yes, difficult names, but people who were servant leaders, who held high positions and said, "I'm getting to work. Who else is going to join me in that work?" I'm thankful for a chapter like this in our story where the names can be praised for the work they did together. And despite inner opposition, they served each other as they were unified in this rebuilding project.

And so I want to end our time with just a few questions to help us reflect on the truths that we've heard today. And the first question is this, what area of your life needs the support of God's people? What area of your life needs the support of God's people? There are things in this world that we cannot do alone. Just like Nehemiah could not have rebuilt the wall by himself. He needed to get the people on board. There are things that are done best when everyone comes together to help. Now we're in a society that tells us otherwise. In America, they really value someone's lone ability to achieve something all by themselves. But as this story shows, there are things where it's not only better, but the support of others is needed. It's truly needed. And so what area of your life needs the support of God's people? Needs the support of the church, of this church, of the people around you?

Secondly, what would it look like to meet people's needs even when we don't feel like it? If our lives were ever to be written out into a testament, we do not want to be the nobles who said, "Our names are the ones that didn't want to get our hands dirty, who didn't want to do the work." So what would it look like to meet people's needs even when we don't feel like it? Sometimes we avoid getting involved when there's clearly a need or helping out. Maybe we don't feel equipped. We're like, "Hey, that's out of my scope. I don't know how to do it, so I'm just going to let them go through that. God bless." Maybe we simply just don't feel like it. It's an inconvenience. We have a lot of stuff going on in our own lives, and we're like, "I just don't have the time. I wish I could, but I'm not going to." Maybe it's just a pride issue. Sometimes it's easier to stick to our own business because things can get messy with other people, and we don't like messiness. Or pride. Pride can be difficult to let go of. But what would it look like to meet people's needs even when we don't feel like it? To take on that servant leadership role, to choose unity, to choose to support, to love one another and carry each other's burdens as Christ has called us to and as Christ does for us. So what would that look like for you in this next week? As you go about, what opportunities might God be laying before you to say, "This is an opportunity to help out someone.”

Lastly, do you feel like you have a valuable role to play among God's people? Do you feel like you have a valuable role to play among God's people, amongst this church? Then let me tell you that you absolutely do. We need you, and you need us. We need the church. We need each other. God made you with a purpose and a reason. And a part of that was to be a partner with God and a part of his church family. And if you're hearing this today, then it's for Spring Valley Church. Now, the enemy loves to try and tell you otherwise, to get you to doubt your purpose or to inflate your pride and think that you're more important than maybe you really are, to trip over yourself. But you have a place, you have a role, you have a purpose in God's kingdom. And if that's what the Spirit is emphasizing to you today from this sermon, then we'd love to hear that. So come find Pastor Chris or myself after the service. And if you want to share with us that, just feel affirmed that God has a purpose, or if you're wondering, "What is my role? What can I do? I want to be a part of this church in a bigger way. How do I do that?" We'd love to talk to you. But you have a role among God's people. And I pray that you would feel that, you would know that, you'd be secure in that, God's purpose for you. I'm going to close with this. Our prayer is that everyone comes to know that they can play a part in serving God's people. And we pray that hearts are inspired to serve alongside each other. And our desire as a church is to see changed lives as the church grows in unity through the love that we have for other people and how we serve one another. I would love, theoretically, if there was a book written about Spring Valley Church, that everyone in this room, all of our names would be in a chapter like this, with ways that we served each other. This person did this. This person served in this way. This person supported the church by doing this. What a beautiful picture of a church, of God's intention for His family, for His people.

Let's pray. God, thank you again for your word and for your instruction, for your encouragement. And God, as we seek to live for you, I pray that you would reassure us in our hearts that we have value, that we have a purpose, that you mean for us to be exactly where we are. And God, as we're where you want us to be, I pray that you would help us to understand and know what it is you want us to do, how you want us to serve, how you want us to love, how we can support each other. And God, maybe also we're on the other side of that, where we need the support, we need the love of other people. I pray that you would help us to let down our walls and to let people in, to ask for help, ask for prayer, ask for support. Say, "God, I can't do this alone. I shouldn't be doing this alone. I need my church family with me." God, as we go about this week, make those opportunities where we can serve others so clear, give us the strength, give us the words to say, guide us with your spirit so clearly. And may you get all the praise, God. We pray this in your name. Amen.

Nehemiah - Chapter 2

Nehemiah - Chapter 2: Nehemiah Goes To Jerusalem

SERMON TRANSCRIPT

We are continuing in our Nehemiah series. just started this last week, so if you haven't had the chance yet to listen or watch last week's sermon, I encourage you to do that. Listen on the podcast, you can watch it online. But this is a 12-week series, and this series is all about the return to Jerusalem, the rebuilding of its walls, the city, and the hopeful restoration of a people, the nation of Israel. And Nehemiah is continuing the restorative work that began in the book earlier in Ezra, but just to remind us of what Pastor Chris introed last week in this timeline of where we're at in Israel's history. We have a timeline to put up, I think. And yes, we do. Oh, awesome! So this is after the period of the kings. This is after the period of the divided kingdom. And Jerusalem is falling. Remember, by the way, I don't, this is just, I have to remind myself this. I'm going to remind you that the time as we're going forward in BC gets smaller. So we're not going, but it's the right way. So Jerusalem falls into captivity at 597. and then King Cyrus allows the Jews to return to Jerusalem in 538, and the temple is completed in 516, and then Ezra, again the book before this in 458, leads a group back to Jerusalem, and then we are starting in our series in around 444 BC, where Nehemiah goes back to Jerusalem. So just a hopeful timeline there for you guys to see, this is where in Israel's history this is happening. And in this particular story, in our series, we're kind of caught in this liminal space, this in-between, of despair from coming down from Israel's glory days, of like the best is in the past, to a hope of the future where the prophets are starting to say, "Hey, there's a coming savior at some point." So Israel's saying, "Okay, well the best was behind us, but there is something great ahead of us. This coming savior, we don't know what that exactly means, but it's gotta be better than this.”

And so in this book of Nehemiah, we have all those emotions and intentions, And some of the themes that we'll see are the doctrine of God, the supremacy of Scripture, the continuing history of salvation, the nature of leadership, and also the importance of prayer. And that's the theme that Pastor Chris honed in on last week. He shared that Nehemiah's first response to hearing the state of despair of Jerusalem was prayer. And we looked at how Nehemiah modeled a prayer full of adoration, confession, thanksgiving, supplication. And I love this quote from Pastor Chris. He said, "Prayer is a vital means for finding guidance, "expressing concerns, and seeking God's intervention "in our lives." It's exactly what Nehemiah needed in that moment. And so in chapter one, we learn that Jerusalem State is one of despair and ruin, and we are introduced to the character of Nehemiah, who is this cupbearer to the king of Persia, this kingdom that's ruling over the land of Israel at this time. And we see God stirring in Nehemiah the need to act and move. Let's continue that story this morning in chapter two. Let's find out what happens. We're gonna first see in the first couple of verses here that Nehemiah has the opportunity to come before the king and say something. So if you wanna follow along, this is verse one of chapter two, it says, "In the month of Nisan, in the 20th year "of King Artaxerxes, when wine was brought for him, "I took the wine and gave it to the king. "I had not been sad in his presence before, "so the king asked me, 'Why does your face look so sad "when you are not ill. "This can be nothing but sadness of heart. "I was very much afraid, but I said to the king, "may the king live forever. "Why should my face not look sad "when the city where my ancestors are buried lies in ruins "and its gates have been destroyed by fire? "The king said to me, what is it you want? "And then I prayed to the God of heaven "and I answered the king, "if it pleases the king "and if your servant has found favor in his sight, "let him send me to the city in Judah "where my ancestors are buried so that I can rebuild it." All right, we're gonna pause right there.

Couple of things. I just wanna point out that the time between chapter one, verse one, and chapter two, verse one, is four months. Four months has occurred since Nehemiah first found out about Jerusalem to this moment where he gets the opportunity to say something to the king. And I point that out just to remind us that God can move in a lot of different ways. And it's not always on our timeline where we want it. We find out something maybe moves us or our hearts are broken, and we want immediate resolution. God, can you fix this now? And Nehemiah, I'm sure, wanted to act right away. My heart is broken, I am feeling, I am mourning over the state of my home city. But this is four months later before he even gets to share about it with the king. Again, we might be ready sometimes, but God hasn't presented that opportunity. I don't know if any of you are bargain shoppers looking for a good deal, but I feel like it's kind of like that, where you have something on your wishlist, you know you wanna get it, you will get it at some point, but you're waiting for the deal. And as soon as that sale happens, or you see it on Amazon marked 50% off, it is boom, bye, now. And Nehemiah is in that state now. He's ready, he's waiting, just waiting for the right opportunity. The king notices in that passage that Nehemiah looks distraught. And what he's noticing is, like we said, four months, four months of Nehemiah's reaction, which we found out in chapter one, was prayer, mourning, and fasting. That takes a physical toll on someone when you are mourning and fasting for four months. Now, just to be clear, it's not four months of not eating ever. He did eat, but the fasting in that time just means you're significantly taking less food. And so that takes a physical toll, and he comes in one day, and the king just notices, "Nia Ma, you are not looking good. What is going on?" We have to remember that in that time, the king's court requires a certain countenance, maybe even a performance. There's an expectation of how you look and how you present yourself before a king. It's kind of like working at Disneyland. Have you ever seen sad people who have worked there at Disneyland? Probably not, you're not supposed to. My wife and I went to college, 20 minutes from Disneyland. We had a few friends who got jobs there And whether you're a character, which definitely means you have to be happy, or you're just someone who picks up trash, there are expectations of how you represent the happiest place on earth. And I think working in the king's court was very similar. And so we gather that Nehemiah, one, he couldn't hide it any longer, the despair that he felt, or two, he felt comfortable enough to finally share. I think it's probably a bit of both. We also see from these first five verses that Nehemiah knew how to share in a way that would get the king to empathize with him. Ancestors in Eastern culture are very important, very sacred. And so Nehemiah speaks to the king in a way that he knows the king will at least understand. Whether he will get what he wants, we'll find out here in a second, but he knows that the king will understand what he's trying to say.

And that brings us to our first point. I love the way that one pastor said it. He says, point number one, Nehemiah leveraged his position to help others. He knew that it meant risking everything, his livelihood, his job, possibly his life if the king was in a really bad mood. People had big fears over bringing something before the king and asking something out of turn in a way that a cupbearer wasn't supposed to just have these open conversations with the king. But he leveraged his position to help others. He knew that he had the ear of the king and that he could use it to benefit his people, the people of Israel. Just imagine waiting four months, mourning, fasting, praying. And then finally one day at work, the king says, "What's bothering you?" The one person in his reality on earth at that time for Nehemiah that could seriously influence the status of Israel. And after telling him, the king asked, "What do you want?" So Nehemiah used his position of being close to the king to try and benefit the entire nation of Israel. We've already heard the king ask Nehemiah what he wants, let's find out what else he says, and the king's response starting in verse 6. It says, "Then the king, with the queen sitting beside him, asked me, 'How long will your journey take, and when will you get back?' It pleased the king to send me, so I set a time. I also said to him, "If it pleases the king, may I have letters to the governors of Trans-Euphrates so that they will provide me safe conduct until I arrive in Judah. And may I have a letter to Asaph, keeper of the royal park, so he will give me timber to make beams for the gates of the citadel by the temple and for the city wall and for the residence I will occupy?" And because the gracious hand of my God was on me, the king granted my requests. So I went to the governors of Trans-Euphrates and gave them the king's letters. The king had also sent army officers and cavalry with me. Clearly, there is trust between the king and Nehemiah. What a response after saying, "Here's what I would like," and he says, "How long do you need?" It's like getting a blank check. "I hear what you need, take your time. What's it gonna take for you to do what you wanna do?" There's so much sympathy and willingness to accommodate his cupbearer's desires. And while it's not stated here in this chapter, this ends up being 12 years. 12 years that Nehemiah is gone. It's not, I'll just be gone for a couple weeks, few days, should be back by, it's 12 years that Nehemiah asked to leave before he comes back in the presence of the king. We also see that Nehemiah was prepared for this moment. He knew what it would take. He had clearly given it some thought. And he had a list of things ready to present the king. letters for the governors, letters to get the right timber.

He was ready. This reminds me of being a kid around birthdays or Christmas, especially when I was a little bit older, nine or 10, I figured out how to best, you know, ask my parents for gifts. You guys know, I'm preaching to the choir here. You knew, as I'm sure as a kid, all these things. So a couple of factors. One, you had to wait till your parents were in a good mood. Cannot ask for gifts when they're in a bad mood. That's a recipe for disaster. So you wait till they're in a good mood. You also wait for them to ask if possible. You want them to be interested in the gifts that they're going to give you. And so that way you can kind of be like, oh, you want to give me something? That's so nice of you. Let me tell you what I would like. And then when that opportunity arises, you're ready with the specifics. You're like, this is the SKU number. This is the model number. It's on aisle 10, 50 feet down. It's going to be on your right. It's going to be on the third shelf. I want the big box. You are ready. And I think Nehemiah was ready. He was prepared for this moment. He's like, "Hey, can I go?" "Yes, what do you need?" "Funny you should ask. "I need a letter to here, I need this letter. "I'm gonna need safe travel." He was ready for this moment. And again, the king responds positively. At this point in the story, I'm a fan of King Artaxerxes. He's turned out to be a great ruler. It's not true of all the cases of the rulers that Israel goes up against or is involved with, but in my study this week, I learned that King Artaxerxes was known to be the most remarkable of all the kings for Persia, in Persia's history. He was a gentle and noble spirit, and he had a kingdom of justice. Now, maybe Artaxerxes sanctioned this whole endeavor to ensure that Israel would remain loyal to Persia, if this were to be positive and the city would be rebuilt. From a political standpoint, Jerusalem served as a buffer from other Western nations. But whatever the motivations of the king, it's clear that the king felt comfortable sending Nehemiah, That says a lot. And so far in Nehemiah, we have a bit of a pattern developing here, at least similar responses to hearing about another's misfortune or despairing circumstances. The response is compassion and a desire to help and a broken heart. In chapter one, we saw Nehemiah have that. After hearing about the state of Israel, he has a broken heart and wants to do something. And now in chapter two, the king hears and he has compassion and wants to do something. So just, I love that pattern that's developing here. That's a good response for people to have when we hear something that breaks us. So the king gives him the letters, the time to go back to Jerusalem, and even a military escort.

So this king went above and beyond. But what might be most important in these verses that Nehemiah had come ready before the king. And that's our second point today, which Nehemiah was prepared to make a bold request and trust God with the result. He was actively praying to Yahweh in that conversation as he was asking the king to leave his job, to leave the city, and to rebuild another city of a people that were once captured. Nehemiah makes this bold request and had to trust God with the result. He didn't know what the king was going to say. Even after the initial response was positive, Nehemiah kept asking for more. Again, not knowing, maybe he said yes, but if I ask this, maybe the king is gonna get upset after this. Maybe this is too much to ask. But he was bold, and he trusted God with the response. Nehemiah now has what is needed to make the journey. And so let's read about his next steps in verse 10. It says, "When Sanballat the Horonite and Tobiah the Ammonite official heard about this, they were very much disturbed that someone had come to promote the welfare of the Israelites. I went to Jerusalem and after staying there three days, I set out during the night with a few others. I had not told anyone what my God had put in my heart to do for Jerusalem. There were no mounts with me except the one I was riding on. By night, I went out through the valley gate toward the jackal well and the dung gate, examining the wells of Jerusalem, which had been broken down, and its gates, which had been destroyed by fire. Then I moved on toward the fountain gate in the king's pool, But there was not enough room for my mount to get through. So I went up the valley by night, examining the wall. Finally, I turned back and reentered through the valley gate. The officials did not know where I had gone or what I was doing because as yet, I had said nothing to the Jews or the priests or nobles or officials or any others who would be doing the work.

So first we see these surrounding nations are not happy with this new movement happening around Jerusalem. And if we're in their shoes, that kind of makes sense. They haven't had to worry about Jerusalem as a threat to them. And so with all of a sudden a military escort and a leader going back to apparently rebuild the city, that's cause for worry and concern for them. But Nehemiah makes this journey to Jerusalem. And this journey could have taken up to four months to take from all the way from Persia to Jerusalem. So no small trek. And again, just as a point of reference, that means that it's been around eight to nine months at the quickest since Nehemiah first heard the news to when he finally arrives in Jerusalem. It's a long time. I think sometimes we read this and we're just like, "Oh, this happened and this happened the next day." But this is almost a year now of this story unfolding in just a few chapters. And again, I remind us of this to say that God works in many different ways, and sometimes it's immediate and sometimes his plan unfolds over a longer period of time. But Nehemiah rests for three days, which makes sense now with such a long journey, he rests up before getting to work. And by verse 15, he's gone all around the city, all throughout it, all the gates, to all the wells. And in those verses, what we get are just scenes of destruction. Walls are down, homes are gone. In some of the places, homes were built into the wall, and so when a whole wall came down, that means no one could live in that section of the city anymore. It's just heartbreaking scene for him, the evidence of what was lost, and the inability of the people so far, even though they've been there for quite a long the inability to restore the city to its former glory. And yet Nehemiah has confidence because he's not alone in this journey. I'm not talking about the military escort.

Point number three is that Nehemiah partners with God in the redemption, the rebuilding, and the restoration of Jerusalem. Despite the discouraging scenes that he walks into, Nehemiah still has confidence because he is with Yahweh, The God who rescued Israel from Egypt, who sustained them in the wilderness, who brought them into the promised land, that is the God that is with him. And he knows that he doesn't have to carry the weight of this plan and this hope on his shoulders alone. He understands that this is God's plan, and if it's gonna happen, it's God who's gonna make it happen. From redeeming the people to rebuilding the city to the restoration of the nation, It is all gonna come from Yahweh. So it's that confidence that leads Nehemiah to say what he says next in verse 17. Then I said to them, "You see the trouble we are in. "Jerusalem lies in ruins, "and its gates have been burned with fire. "Come, let us rebuild the wall of Jerusalem, "and we will no longer be in disgrace." I also told them about the gracious hand of my God on me, and what the king had said to me. And they replied, "Let us start rebuilding." So they began this good work. But when Sanballit the Horonite, Tobiya the Ammonite officially, oh and the official Geshem the Arab heard about it, they mocked and ridiculed us. "What is this you are doing?" they asked. "Why are you rebelling against the king?" And I answered them by saying, "The God of heaven will give us success. "We his servants will start rebuilding. "But as for you, you have no share in Jerusalem "or any claim or historic right to it." Nehemiah shares his observations of the city, as well as the blessing he has from the king and God, and the people are ready. This just shows how God works, where hundreds of miles away in Persia, God had been working on the heart of the king and of Nehemiah to go back, but he's also been working in the hearts of the people who were there in Jerusalem, getting them ready for when that leader that God appointed came, they would be ready to work. And so as Nehemiah shares, "Hey, this is what we're gonna do, let's rebuild," They are on board. The time is now. We also see that these surrounding nations, the leaders are present again, which probably alludes to some shiftyness going on in Jerusalem, maybe some spies, 'cause how else would these other nations have known so quickly about what the plan is? And it just, again, shows the state that this Jerusalem is in it's not in a good place, it's not secure. But those leaders represent the surrounding nations on all sides of Jerusalem. You have Samaria to the north, Ammon to the east, and Arabia to the south. And I would imagine, if I'm Nehemiah, this could be pretty intimidating. You just got into town, the state of the city is very bad, and all of a sudden you have the surrounding leaders of all these nations coming up, giving you flack and trying to intimidate you. What do you do?

Well, point number four is exactly what Nehemiah did. Nehemiah gave a confident response in the face of criticism and confrontation. Nehemiah shows incredible faith and trust in God, not backing down in the midst of opposition, but resting in and taking courage from God being with him, sharing boldly the plan partnered with God to see his people redeemed and the city restored. Nehemiah was confident, not in his own ability, Not in the people that he's looking at, but in God. And he knew, again, that this plan was gonna happen because God wants it to happen, God would make it happen. So, Nehemiah really pushes us forward here in chapter two and helps set the tone for what to expect in the rest of the story.

But I wanna shift now to some personal reflection as we, and ask a few questions as we look back on chapter two. So the first question I have for you today is this. Has God placed you in a strategic position to help others? Before you say no, I don't have any position of influence in my life, I just want you to examine your life for a moment as I ask questions in a couple different areas of your life. So again, has God placed you in a strategic position to help others? What about the friendships that you have? The friendships and inroads that you have with a person that other people may not? Maybe you're the only one who has a voice to influence that one friend who doesn't listen to anyone else, but for some reason, they listen to you. Is God wanting you to use that position in that person's life to help him, to help bring them closer to Jesus? What opportunities do you have at work to help others? Maybe you are manager or you're the boss, and so your influence is pretty straightforward. I have the opportunity to bless a lot of people who work beneath me. Or maybe you are an employee, but the boss really admires how you work, you have great work ethic, and you're able to share the concerns and the desires of the team that you are a part of, and help your team by sharing that with the boss, and say, "Hey, we all would really appreciate this. "Thank you for listening to me." What opportunities do you have with your family? Maybe God's been doing something in your heart, teaching you new things, helping you have more grace, more love, more kindness, more compassion. And you are the one that gets to show those things to that family, to your family, and also teach them how they can show that to others. What opportunities does your financial status give you? Do you have the ability to give financially to those in need? Do you have the opportunity to invest in others and help them realize their passions and dreams? And what opportunities does your influence provide? Are you in a place to be a voice to advocate for people? Are you able to bring people together to rally them, to unify them around a common cause? Again, has God placed you in a strategic position to help others?

And whether you are now or you're waiting, The second question is still for you. Are you prepared to be bold and to trust in God? There are times when you might have a big ask of someone, when you might need to speak up, when you might need to say something, you don't know how it's gonna be received. And that's where preparation comes in. In the waiting, in the meantime, are you doing your due diligence to know what to do when that time comes? What to ask for if that one person asks what you need? What to say if that one person decides to listen? My dad taught me this, I know you're all familiar with this saying when it comes to large requests, but the worst they can say is no. Now for Nehemiah, that might've been a little bit different. I think his life was on the line possibly, if the king was in a bad mood. I don't think that's the case for us in hopefully your spheres of life. No one's, I don't think so. But the boldness that you might have to have might mean crossing some social boundary that you're kind of uncomfortable with. I don't normally ask this, I don't normally feel the freedom to say this, but maybe you need to be bold in a moment, prompted by the Spirit to say that thing or to ask that question. And as we are prepared and ready, we have to still trust God with that response. Maybe that person will say no. Maybe you'll get denied, But we can't control that. That is in God's control. And so we trust that whatever comes after we follow God's prompting, that's exactly what God needed, that's what God wanted.

Third question, where are you partnering with God in his redemptive, rebuilding, and restorative work? This is a prayer of ours right now as a church, church leadership. We're looking for where God might want us to serve our community in new ways. I'm trying to do so with wisdom and with discernment. Obviously as a church, our primary way is by reaching people's hearts, by sharing the gospel and partnering with God in the transformative work of people's hearts. And maybe that's your answer. You're saying, "I'm doing that on my own. "I have conversations with people. "I'm sharing the gospel with friends and family." And praise God for that. But it can also look like other things. Maybe feeding the homeless or helping bring reconciliation to broken relationships around you. Spending time with those who are lonely or lost. Volunteering at your kid's school to be another positive adult influence around those kids. Where are you partnering with God in His work? For a long time, missions was a primary aspect of ministry for me and I've been blessed to go all over the world for missions. What I miss about going overseas is that overseas, it's often easier to recognize that you're partnering with God in his redemptive work, because you're in situations that you probably wouldn't normally find yourself in. Why else would I be eating food that really doesn't agree with me? Or sleeping in a place that is infested with cockroaches, or drinking water that also is not good for me, or being away from family and friends Well, the answer to that is because I'm partnering with God in His kingdom work. But I found that when I would get home, the clarity over time would get hazy with just the everyday grind that we find ourselves in. And so I think it's important to ask this question to remind ourselves, this is how I'm partnering with God in His kingdom work in my day-to-day life.

And then lastly, I wanna ask you, will you be confident to what God has called you to do? Even in the midst of whatever criticism and confrontation you experience, even if those who have power and influence come against you, even if it doesn't make sense to the world and you're maybe offending some people, will you be confident to the work that God has called you to do? Will you remain steadfast to Him as He is perfectly steadfast to you? Whether that means you have something to say out loud or it's all inner resolve, will your heart trust in God that He has called you to a holy purpose and He will give you everything that you need through His Spirit to accomplish that task? Will you be confident to what God has called you to do? Nehemiah did a lot in chapter two. A lot of time has passed and he's modeled so much to us, from leveraging his position to the benefit of others to being prepared to make a bold request and trusting God, to partnering with God in His kingdom work, and to being confident in what God called Him to do. And this story is just getting started. We are very excited where it's going, and we're excited to learn more in chapter three next week.

Would you guys pray with me? God, again, thank you for your word, for these real stories that happened that show us your love and grace and your sovereignty as you work in people's lives for your goal that it takes time sometimes, God. So if we're in a place where we are frustrated, we're anticipating you moving, God, I pray that you would help us to be patient, help us to be ready for when that time or that opportunity comes. And God, I also pray that you would help us to look for opportunities to use whatever influence we may have for your kingdom. Help us to see how we can help others, love others, point people to you. And God, I also pray that you would help us to be confident, not in our own ability, not in our own words, not in anything that has to do with us, but in you, in who you are and what you do. God, help us to take all of our confidence from you and be able to live this life, go about our day with our family, at work, with confidence that we are doing what you want us to do in a way that glorifies you. So empower us this week, encourage us, use us God for your kingdom. We pray this in your name, amen.

Nehemiah - Chapter 1

Nehemiah - Chapter 1: Nehemiah’s Prayer

SERMON TRANSCRIPT

I am pumped to be kicking off our Nehemiah series today. Me, Pastor Andre, and I, we've been working on a teaching series and figuring out what was next and how things were coming. We both kind of just stumbled in, I felt like, into this book of Nehemiah, but I feel like every time that I've done planning and prepping and year scheduling and stuff, when we kind of stumble into the sermon series, it's like, "Okay, God's got something for us. God's leading us in this place. God has something He wants for us today and in this series." I'm really excited we're going to kick this off. We're going to be about, I think, 12 weeks or so. We're going to have a break in the middle for a little bit, so we're not going to do all 12 weeks in a row. But this is going to be, I think for us, a really powerful study and book for us as a church and I think individually for us as well. So I'm really looking forward to you. If you're trying to find Nehemiah in your Bible, we just finished Psalms. If you head towards Genesis, a couple books, you'll land right in Nehemiah. Nehemiah is actually a two-part kind of a book where originally Ezra and Nehemiah were included together. These are all written in the same period and same time frame. The first part of the book being Ezra. I don't know if you guys have ever studied through Ezra, but this is a really incredible moment for the Israelite people. They in this time have been in this Babylonian exile. You're looking at around 586 BC, so if you want to get your time charts out, you guys can track exactly where that's at. But the Israelite people have gone through this season of amazing kings. You have King Solomon, King David, King Saul, just this year of reigning and then things just kind of fall apart. And the Babylonian Empire rises up and just basically conquers everything of the known world at that time and takes over everything. And so they march into Jerusalem and they destroy the city, they destroy the temple, they destroy the walls, they destroy everything about Israel and Jerusalem and they take basically everybody captive. They take everybody and they take the brightest of the brightest and they take them back to their main cities. The Babylonian Empire had this huge focus on learning and knowledge and education. And so as they conquered the surrounding nations and people, they would take the brightest of the brightest and bring them to their main capital city and they would just begin to learn and grow and understand all the different cultures and the societies and all their learning and growing with them to become the biggest, the brightest and the best that they could be.

And King Nebuchadnezzar at this point just had full reign of everything. He controlled basically everything in the world at that point. There were other subsidiary kings in different regions, but King Nebuchadnezzar was in charge of everything. And this displacement of the Jewish people was just a heart-wrenching time. I don't think we can fully understand what this would be like, but if you had the place where you were born, your hometown, your love, your family was there, people you grew up with were there, and all of a sudden somebody came in and packed you up and took you to the other side of the globe and said, "You can never go back there again," that would be horrible. It would be a horrible, horrible place to be. And the Israeli people are just so confused. They're like, "God, you brought us out of this slavery in Egypt. You brought us through all this stuff. You brought us into this promised land you said was going to be our place. It's going to be our home. We're going to have prosperity. We're going to have our families here for generations upon generations. This is where we're supposed to be, and yet you've now allowed this empire to take us away." Well, the Babylonian Empire eventually falls to the next biggest and best, and that's the Persian Empire. And they take over, and we have this King Cyrus the Great who comes in and conquers Babylon, and so now you just get passed off to the next king. But something special was happening here. Shortly after the Persian Empire takes over, God prompts the King Cyrus to issue a decree to allow everybody who had been captured in the Babylonian Empire to have free travel to go home to wherever home was at some point. And I find this pretty interesting, because God moves the heart of someone who does not have a heart after God.

This gives us a little glimpse of who God is. It doesn't matter who's in charge. It doesn't matter who the top dog is, who holds the throne, who is the one in the big house. It doesn't matter who is there or what's going on. God is still sovereign above all. Amen? I want us to hear this this morning, because I feel like even in America right now there's a heaviness on the nation. I don't care what side of the aisle you're on. There's a heaviness right now. And we're looking at what would be doomsday come November. I wasn't going to go here this morning. Holy Spirit's leading me, okay? We look at this doomsday of if this person, it's all gone. If this person, it's all gone too. And we've got the third guy out there. I don't know what his deal is. And we look at that and go, like, if my person doesn't get in there, it's over. We might as well pack up our bags. Jesus, come now. Still a prayer of my heart. Because it's always better when God's in control, right? Always better in heaven than it is down here. But God still has us down here. God still has us down here to love people, to care for people, to be there for people.

But King Cyrus is moved by the heart of God and issues a decree that people can go home. And so this fulfills a promise, a proclamation, a prophecy that Jeremiah said, that even though my people will scatter, they will come home. And it's after a guy has no heart for God, moves for God. And so this guy by the name of Zerubbabel, say that 12 times past, Mr. Z, Papa Z, we'll call him Papa Z. Papa Z says, we can go home. So he grabs a group of people, packs them up on their camels, their donkeys, dusts off their sandals, and they start trekking home. Going home to find only Jesus knows what Jerusalem is like. And so they get there and they have this incredible moment of God's faithfulness being blessed upon them to rebuild the temple. They get back to Jerusalem and it's in ruins. And begins to mark this amazing moment as the post-exilic period in our Bibles. And this is around 539 BC. So if you do the math there, you're looking at about 80 years or so of exile. So the people who have grown up that are the second generation have only heard of this mythical place called Jerusalem. Their parents, their grandparents, maybe their great-grandparents have shared with them of this place where God had this temple. And he came down and he dwelled among us and we had worship in God's presence. We had community with God Almighty. Our Yahweh was with us at all times. They've gone a whole generation without being able to experience this. And so the homecoming that is happening here is just marvelous. Their home. And they rebuild the temple and everything seems to be going great. They're trying to begin to find the old scriptures that were there in Jerusalem and begin to read God's word and begin to fall in line to follow God's law. And they think everything is going great. They got the temple rebuilt, but something just isn't right. Something's missing. God hasn't come back down to dwell in the temple like he did before and the people are confused. We thought we'd follow these laws and check the boxes like God was going to show up. And yet God's not showing up like they had taught.

So we move about a decade or so later and you have this guy Ezra who comes on the scene. He's in exile in Babylon and he hears that he can go back to Jerusalem as well. And so he grabs a group of people and this is kind of that second wave of coming back in Jerusalem and they show up and they think, "You guys have been here for a couple, like 10, 20, 30 years. You've done it. You fixed everything." And they show up and then they realize everything's not good. The city's still in disarray. Yeah, the temple's built, but it's not working. People are living in the way that they've learned being in exile and they're worshiping other gods and they're being deceitful with each other and there's this selfishness and this pride that just kind of lures over the people and something just isn't right. And so Ezra tries to bring in more laws and more strictness going, "Okay, if we just follow more laws, everything will be right." But we know what's wrong is the heart of the Israelite people. No matter how many laws were forced on them, no matter how many decrees from the leaders, no matter how strict they were with their code of conduct and their lifestyles, there was still something missing. And so we come on to the scene here now a little bit. Even after that, the temple's been rebuilt, Jerusalem is kind of functioning, but it still just isn't where it needs to be. The social and spiritual renewal about the people is not happening in Jerusalem like they thought. Still a disaster.

And so we come on to Nehemiah chapter one and we find out about this guy who has this incredible heart for the Israelite people. It says in Nehemiah chapter one, "The words of Nehemiah, son of Hakaliah, 'In the month of Kislev in the twelfth year, while I was in the citadel of Susa, 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. They said to me, 'Those who survived the exile are back in the province and in great trouble and disgrace.' The wall of Jerusalem is broken down and its gates have been burned with fire." Nehemiah is an Israelite living in exile and he's serving as the cupbearer to King Arxazerxes I of Persia. This is about 445 BC that Nehemiah has some family come to town who have been living in Jerusalem and have been in that region and he gets his visit from his brother and he's just so excited. Nehemiah asks about Jerusalem and he's like, "Hey, the people are back, they're living in Jerusalem, how amazing is that? What's going on in the city? How's it going? How's everyone doing? Is it amazing or what? You guys are back there, the promised land, the land of milk and honey, you've got the temple. Oh man, I can only imagine how amazing it is to live in Jerusalem and to be back there. Tell me all about it." Womp, womp. Not the news that he was hoping to hear, right? All these years of being forced out of their homeland, all these years where their beloved city lying in ruins, all these hopes and these dreams and these prophecies and holding on to God's word and His promise and His covenant word that we will go back someday and they're back and yet it's not what they had hoped and dreamed. Turns out what's really going on is pretty grim. The people are in great trouble, disgrace, the walls of Jerusalem are broken, the gates are burned. Yes, the temple's built, however the rest of the city is just a hot mess. It's run down, it's all broken, it's all messed up still. So Nehemiah responds, verse four, "When I heard these things, I sat down and wept. For some days, days, I mourned and fasted and prayed before the God of heaven." Nehemiah hears the news and he's deeply distressed. He weeps, he mourns, he fasts, he prays, not just, "Oh, that's a bummer. God help Jerusalem." He goes on with his day. Days. He weeps over the brokenness of his family. His heart just sinks hearing the news of what's happening. See Jerusalem represents the spiritual identity of who the Israelite people were because God dwelled there and yet it's in shambles. Not only is it messed up without the protection of the wall and the gate and the city being built up, they're vulnerable to attack. And I can imagine Nehemiah saying, "We're going to get in captivity again. It's only going to be a matter of time before some army marches by and goes, 'That looks pretty sad. We can take that over in an hour.'" And Nehemiah's like, "God, don't let this happen again. We just lived through this. The generation of being scattered and under the control of other people and oppression and not being able to worship, not being able to praise you, not being able to live the life that you have called us to God under the oppressive control, it's going to happen again.”

So what does Nehemiah do? He goes before God. He prays. This is his prayer. "Lord, the God of heaven, the great and awesome God who keeps his coven of love with those who love him and keep his commandments. 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. I have acted most wickedly towards you. We have not obeyed the commands, decrees, and laws you gave your servant Moses. Remember the instruction you gave your servant Moses saying, 'If you are unfaithful, I will scatter you among the nations. But if you return to me and obey my commands, even then, if your exiled people are at the farthest horizons, the edge of the earth, I will gather them from there and bring them to the place I have chosen as a dwelling for my name. They are your servants and your people whom you redeemed by your great strength and your mighty hand. 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.'" Nehemiah has this incredible heartfelt confession for the sins of Israel, acknowledging that their disobedience to God has led them to their current plight. He reminds God of his promise though, reminds God of his promise to gather his people if they return to him. He then asked God for a favor as he prepares to approach King Cyrus with a request to go back and to rebuild Jerusalem. This is the heart of Nehemiah. And this is going to set the tone for this entire study and this entire book because this introductory chapter highlights his deep concern that Nehemiah has for his family, his people. And at the same time, this incredible foundational faith and reliance on prayer is the very first step in addressing this crisis. See, I believe Nehemiah shows us that there's power of prayer in times of crisis.

I don't know if you guys have ever been in a place like that where literally all you can do is pray to God. There's no decision you can make. There's no person you can call. There's nobody that can fix it. There's nobody that can rescue you. There's nobody that can redeem you from the situation that you are in. Not your spouse, not your parents, not your best friend, not any political figure, no lawyer or attorney, no, no, nobody can fix what is happening or where you're at in life. And the only thing you can do is turn to prayer. And I want us to see here that this wasn't a last result of Nehemiah. Nehemiah didn't go, "Well, I guess the only thing I can do is pray. Nothing else I can do." I think sometimes we live like that, right? We try everything we can to fix it. And if that doesn't work, well, I guess I might as well call on God. Might as well bring the big man into the conversation. Nehemiah sees prayer as the first power move in this situation. Prayer should be our first action, not our last act of result. His immediate reaction to the distressing news, he turns to God in prayer. This focus and dependence on God of going first to prayer is who Nehemiah is. That's who this man of God is. The character of Nehemiah. This is actually the first of nine core prayers we're going to read about in this entire book. That this wasn't the first time that Nehemiah just turned to prayer and then he got the green light and he packed his bag and hopped on the camel and headed to Jerusalem and then he got there and he said, "All right, God, I got that from here. Thanks, man. Appreciate the ticket to Jerusalem. I'll take it from here.”

Nehemiah continually goes back to God as his first offense, his first defense against what's going on in the situation. Nehemiah is a man of prayer. And his prayer includes four key elements that I see for us. You guys may have heard this before, but his prayer includes adoration. It includes confession. It includes thanksgiving. It includes supplication. This deep reliance on God and his mercy and guidance. What is this? You probably may have heard praying the acts, A-C-T-S. A, adoration. This involves praising God's nature, who he is, which actually in turn boosts our confidence in prayer. He prays, "Great and awesome God. You are our God who keeps covenant. You are God who is loving. You are God who is near to the heart of your people." He then goes into confession. This requires us acknowledging our sins with humility and this fosters an intimacy with God. I confess the sins of Israel. I confess the sins of myself. I confess the sins of my father's family who have acted wickedly and have not obeyed. Nehemiah's prayer includes thanksgiving. And this involves recalling how God has moved. Recalling God's past faithfulness, which in turn provides hope for our future. God, if you did this before, I know you can do this again. God, I remember when you did this back here. And when I thought there was no way out, you provided a way out. God, I know you can do it again. Nehemiah prays and he says, "Remember Moses. How God, you moved and saved us from Egypt. You are a great and you are an awesome God and I know you can do this again." Nehemiah's prayer includes supplication. And this is where we present our request to God, viewing obstacles in light of his power. Do you notice here, the last part of the prayer is when we actually ask God for something. This is a model of prayer we see in scripture that kind of puts us in our place, right? We struggle in life because we want to become God's ourself, right? We want to be in control. We want to be the one making the calls. We want to be the one handling everything. And when we pray like Nehemiah prayed with the axe, it puts us in our place, which is not first, but last. God is first. He is mighty. He asked God, "Bring your people back." And then he asked for favor for himself. Give me favor. Give me success. Grant me with the hope to be ability to return home as I go before the king.

Nehemiah was a cupbearer and so he knew the king pretty well. A cupbearer would have to taste all food and drink before the king ate it to make sure it was safe and it wasn't poisoned. And the king wouldn't get killed. That's how you would assassinate a king. You would poison the food as a quick way to take him out. They didn't have any other means of taking out leaders and so they would do that. And so a cupbearer would be one that would put his life on the line every time he'd take a bite of food. He never knew that that might be his last bite of food. And so the king at some point understands that this cupbearer is putting his life on the line and begins to develop a relationship with this king. And yet he still knew that the king was king and going before a king and making a request, it wasn't guaranteed that you were going to have this granted. I'd say 60-70% of the time you were killed because the king didn't like what you asked for and they would just, he would take you out. And Nehemiah is probably thinking, "Well, I'm on the line anytime eating dinner every time with this king. I might as well make my request to him because if I got taken out, I get taken out. But at least I went down swinging, right?" And so Nehemiah goes to the king and he's like, "Hey, can I go back? My people are hurting. The city is a mess. I want to help fix and restore what God blessed us with. Can I go back?”

Prayer is a vital means for finding guidance, expressing concerns, and seeking God's intervention in our lives. Nehemiah has this deep faith that God's response is evident in his prayer. Nehemiah has faith that this is going to happen even before it happens, even before he prays. He believes that God is a God who is faithful. God is a one who can respond and that God is one who is hearing us. Sometimes when we pray, we just feel like nobody's listening. I've been there. Even as a pastor, sometimes I pray for things and it's just, "God, are you there? Do you hear?" But Nehemiah has this faith that is unbelievable, knowing that it's going to happen no matter what circumstances we find ourselves in. God is faithful, right? Crisis or blessing, God's faithful. Hard or great times, God is faithful. When we are struggling or success, God is faithful. And this is a true core character of who God is, that God is faithful to his promises and covenant. Nehemiah references this in his prayer. If the people return to him, that he is faithful to return them to their home, to take them to their rightful place on earth that God promised to them years and years and years and years before this. I can only imagine how hard captivity must have been for Nehemiah, considering where scholars think his age was. He was born into captivity. Nehemiah wasn't one that was taken from Jerusalem back to Babylon during the Babylonian Empire, but he was actually born into captivity. So his whole life, this is all that he knows. He's heard the stories. He's heard the faithfulness of God, but he's never experienced it. And yet he has this faithful foundation in him, which I think is a testament to when we begin to learn and grow in who God is, he instills within us a faithfulness that can only come from him. A faithfulness that can only be found in God, that it can't come from knowledge. It can't come from experience. Nehemiah didn't have any experience, but it was a supernatural foundational faith that was placed in Nehemiah for this moment, for this time. They believe that this, even though exile seemed like forever, was not going to be forever. They were holding onto this hope that God is a faithful God. They remembered how God had moved and they knew that God was going to move again. This emphasizes a significance on holding onto God's promises and trusting in his faithfulness. How good are we at that? How good are we to hold onto the faithfulness of God when it seems like it's all falling apart around us?

God was right there in the presence with Nehemiah, even as he was enslaved in Susa. And he believed God was a faithful God and was going to restore the people. Nehemiah's prayer also reflects an understanding that God's desires for his people is to live in obedience with him. We too are called to holiness and obedience. This was a core piece of Nehemiah's prayer. And I think it's something that we kind of like to just step over a little bit, because this is a hard part of the prayer, right? God, rescue me. God, save me. God, give me favor. You're a great God. I love you, God. Thank you for everything you do. You're hearing me, God. I know you're listening. You're right there. And I'm sorry for what I did. Sometimes we like to skirt this one, because this is when we have to get vulnerable, right? This is when we have to admit that we haven't done it all right, that we've messed up, that there's a responsibility on our part that we haven't lived up to what the calling is for God in our life, which is holiness and obedience. Scripture tells us to be holy as God is holy. But I think we kind of like to put that one over here and just look at it every now and then when we're feeling really good about ourselves, right? Like, man, I'm killing it right now. I'm in God's word. I'm worshiping. I'm praying real good. Oh, yeah, God, I'm being holy, man. And then those times when we're struggling, we're not in God's word. We're not praying. We're not having the faith. And we look over, yeah, you know, that calling to be holy, that's for that guy over there, and that's not for me. But Nehemiah understood this, that the broken state of Jerusalem was directly tied to the people's past disobedience. There's a whole buildup to this.

This wasn't a situation where the Israeli people like messed up one day and God wakes up and he's a vengeful God and just like, "You're cursed." We see from the fall in the garden in Genesis, time and time again, God going, "Come to me. I love you. I want you to be with me." They live for a little bit, they mess up, start wandering off. God goes, "Come on, guys. Come on back. I love you. I want you to live like this. This is how you're supposed to care for one another. This is the love that I have for you. I want you to be seen in your community." And they do it, and it's great. And all of a sudden, they just start wandering over. Bring them back. It's just time and time again, you read in the scripture and God finally gets to the point where he's like, "I just, there's nothing I can do." You got to learn. As a parent, gotten there, right? Guys, don't do that. Don't touch the stove. Don't touch the stove. Don't, don't. That's hot. Stay away. Don't do that. Be careful. I tried to tell you. God does it in such a more loving and caring way than I would as a parent, right? But God's like, "You guys haven't lived in the way that I asked you to." And yet what? In that place of captivity, God moves the heart of a king, of a heart that's far from God to step into a moment of restoration. And we have to remember that yes, as loving and caring and gracious as God is, you can't have that loving, caring grace, mercy without justice, without God holding his people accountable to their actions. His righteousness cannot overlook sin. We must address it in accordance with his holy nature. And Nehemiah's focus here on repentance, he understands the key and holiness is to how we receive God's blessing and favor in our life. We like to live life this way, right? God, if you do this, then I'll do this. God, if you just get me out of this situation, you fix this thing in my life, I'll know you're real and then I'm in church every single Sunday till I see you in heaven. Promise. God can move that way, but that's not truly how it works. God desires our heart and obedience first, and then we're able to step into this relationship with him. That is phenomenal. Repentance opens us up to the holiness of God. Nehemiah demonstrated that God's compassion opens us to restoring those who genuinely repent and seek his grace. God is a faithful God that when we say, "I'm sorry," when we own up to what we've done, God acts and God moves in ways, in greater ways than we could ever experience or dream or imagine. But the obedience is required of us to step into that holiness. We're going to get more into Nehemiah and the rebuilding of the wall and his story and his struggles and his victory and his shortcomings in these weeks, but God stirs in Nehemiah to go back and to build Jerusalem. I mean, it was only in Nehemiah's obedience himself and seeking God's righteousness is Nehemiah's true calling revealed. He wasn't called to just be a cupbearer forever. God had a greater purpose in calling for him, and I truly believe that God has a greater purpose in calling for us as well.

But this leads us to three questions I want us to take away from today. The first of which is, how do you typically respond to challenges or crises in your life? Nehemiah's immediate action was prayer and seeking God's guidance. How might you incorporate prayer and dependence on God in your response when facing difficult or important decisions?

Two, how can you strengthen your trust in God's promises and his faithfulness? Nehemiah was rock solid locked in on God's promises and his covenant. There was nothing that was going to shake that from him. That was a foundational truth to who Nehemiah was. What steps might you be able to take to deepen your understanding and trust in God's promises for your life? And how can you remind yourself daily on how to live in the holiness that God has called you to?

And then the final question, which is going to lead us into a time of communion this morning, that what areas in your life or community do you need to acknowledge and repent from sin? None of us are perfect in this room. Not myself, not Pastor Andre. None of us have arrived to this place of perfection so that's where we get to be the guys up front talking or the gals up here. No, we're all figuring it out. We're all walking this path. We're all having to daily surrender who we are and what our natural selfish tendencies are to the will and the obedience of God's holiness. Nehemiah prays this incredible prayer asking for forgiveness for himself, but also for his family, his parents, generations before. When are we praying that prayer? I don't know, maybe sometimes it's easier to pray for other people for their forgiveness. "Ah, you know that guy? Oh, Jesus, he needs your forgiveness, Lord." We're sitting there and God's going, "What about you, pal?" Where do we need to surrender?

Because it's in that surrender we find the purpose and calling for God's plan for our life. Not our plan. Not what we want to do, but God's plan, right? What breaks your heart for God? What do you hear about and it just, your heart sinks? Maybe it's, we had Pastor Vivek up here, missionary to India. They're leaving, I think, next week. Got their tickets, they're headed back to India. But they're walking into a world that they have no idea what's going to happen. It's getting hostile in India for Christians. But Vivek is stepping forward in faith of the calling that God has for him. What breaks your heart for God's kingdom?

Summer of Psalms - Part 11

Psalm 119:1-8 - Laws that Lead to Life

SERMON TRANSCRIPT

We are wrapping up our series and Psalms today. Not forever. As we've said before, this Psalm, we have so many Psalms to cover, and so we're going to return summer after summer to cover more Psalms. But it's been an encouraging series. We hope it's been an encouraging series for you. Pastor Chris and I, we love, and Lauren, love teaching this series and Psalms because it addresses very relatable human tensions, very real emotions. It helps redirect us to God throughout our day-to-day lives. And so on that thought of emotions and tensions, I just want to ask you guys, by a show of hands, how many of you in this past week had a moment where you were just, you were struggling? Anybody had a, yeah, any moments? Somebody had some really good, okay, yeah, most hands. Good for you, if you had a great week and nothing ever went wrong, I'm so happy for you, praise God.

More specifically, let me refine this question. How many of you in this past week, when trying to live like Jesus, struggled to do that? Anyone raise their hands? Yeah, mine would be like both of them up here. Just the life of frustration and trying to love people who are difficult to love at times. All of us just struggle to perfectly live like Jesus. Being like Jesus, living the way that God wants us to is hard, it's impossibly hard. We cannot do it apart from the grace and the guidance of the Holy Spirit of God within us. The amazing thing is that, as you know, God has given us more than just the Holy Spirit to guide us in our lives, He's also given us His holy word, the Bible. And we all know and experience being a Christian doesn't mean that life is any easier, still means that we go through challenges, go through difficulties and struggles, but it does mean that we have Jesus to walk with us through all those things, and it also means that we have God's word to guide us, and His word tells us how to walk in the best way possible.

I think sometimes we take, and I speak for myself first and foremost, we take for granted the Bible and the power that it has. We have it at the ready. Most of us probably have more than one Bible. We have different versions. We have it on our phone at the tip of our fingers. We can have different translations and we have large print, small print. You have Jesus' words in red. You get any Bible that you want with any different option, calfskin, pleather, all the many different kinds of Bibles out there. And sometimes we just need to be reminded of the power of God's word, and the necessity for us to be in his word often and regularly. And so today is gonna be just that, a reminder of the power of God's word and encouragement in the spiritual practice of reading it, reading scripture. Why do we need to do this? Well, because we have a life problem of sin, every one of us in this room, whether you raise your hand or not, we all deal with sin, and the best and only successful way to live a life that honors God and doesn't give in to sin is to follow God's word, His law. Somewhere along the way in life, law developed a negative connotation in the world. Probably because we're human, we don't like being told that we can't do something. Most of us are prone to go do something. Someone says, "Don't do it." You're like, "Well, I'm gonna go do that because you just told me not to, and I want to, and I can." But God's law is not just about what we cannot do, it's also about what we should do. It guides and instructs us in how to live a life that doesn't lead to death as sin does. But it tells us how to live a life that leads to eternal life with God. God's law is not just about what we cannot do, it's what we should do, and it guides and instructs us. And I'm not saying that we, the Bible tells us how to earn our way to heaven. That's not what we're saying, and that's what the Pharisees thought, and Jesus scolded them and made sure that all the disciples knew. That's not what I'm saying, that's not what Jesus came to teach. But we're reminded that God has given us an amazing playbook here of how to live life and with his help, of course, through his spirit and by his grace.

And so the psalm that we're gonna cover today that teaches and shares in that truth is Psalm 119. It is the longest psalm. Don't worry, we're not going through all of it. We would be here all day if I would just sit and read all of that chapter. We are only gonna cover a bit of it. I am, you may know this already by many of my references in my preaching, but I'm a bit of a nerd. And if you would allow me, yeah, Pastor Chris reminds me kindly often that I'm a little bit of a nerd. And I would like to nerd out just a little bit on this Psalm 119 and share with you some of the very cool things. Okay, so if you're there in your Bible, you can turn there, you don't have to, but it might help to see the visual. There are 22 sections in this chapter, just in this chapter, and each section is one of the Hebrew letters. And so it starts with, it's going through the Hebrew alphabet. So it starts with "alef," which is our version of "a." And so you have every 22 sections, 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet. And within those sections, this is where it gets really cool, each verse starts with that letter. So in our "a" section, our "alef" section, every verse would start in the Hebrew with "alef." And now it doesn't translate that way into English. So you're looking at your Bible and you say, "Andre, it doesn't do that at all." It does not work in the English. And that's a bummer for us because that's part of the beauty of this Psalm is someone in the Hebrew culture would see this and read this and it would just start to click. It would be like us having a song in our ABCs in English and everything in the, you just follow and describe who God is and what God, what he does and it would be an easy way for us to remember and just be like, oh, the ABCs of theology and of who God is and let's go through that.

So that's what Psalm 119 is and it's beautiful. I don't know if there's a song that exists like that in English, any songwriters out there. If you're watching online, please, this is your invitation, please write a cool theology song that takes every letter and describes God. We have a book that we read, our daughter, I'm excited to read it to our latest addition to our family, that it's not the whole alphabet, but it goes through and highlights different characteristics of God. All to say that this psalm, okay, is one of the most carefully constructed psalms. The intentionality is not just in the message, but how that message is packaged. And each line of Psalm 119 offers a deeper and different perspective of God's law. I don't know if you've ever had the chance to look at a diamond. Anything that I recall right now about diamonds is from years ago when I bought my wife an engagement ring. But I vaguely remember, you're looking for cut and clarity, and the jeweler, you know, you either get that little cool monocle eyepiece to look really closely, or there's a big magnifying glass and they hold the jewel under it so you can see it, and they start to just show you this diamond, and you get to see it from the top, and you say, "Hey," and you look at it from this angle, you can see the beauty of it, and then they'll start to rotate it, and you're like from the side, and you see the light hit it, and just as they rotate that diamond or that jewel, you're just like, "This is beautiful," and the more they rotate it, the more you appreciate its beauty.

Well, Psalm 119 rotates God's law so we can see God's law from various angles and better understand the beauty of God's truth. And today we're gonna cover just one of those angles, this first section, Aleph, the first eight verses. So if you guys would read along with me. Verse one, it says, "Blessed are those "whose ways are blameless, "who walk according to the law of the Lord. "Blessed are those who keep his statutes "and seek him with all their heart. "They do no wrong but follow his ways. "You have laid down precepts "that are to be fully obeyed. "Oh, that my ways were steadfast in obeying your decrees. "Then I would not be put to shame "when I consider all your commands. "I will praise you with an upright heart "as I learn your righteous laws. "I will obey your decrees. "Do not utterly forsake me." Again, the goal of this psalm is to enable God's people to admire His word so strongly that they will work and pray hard to have it shape their character and their conduct. And already in the first eight verses, we see God's law held to such high esteem and a profound desire to follow that law because the people understand that it leads to life and it's a blessing to have this law available to them. The ESV commentary says, "The written word of God "stands as one of the greatest, most precious "of all of God's gifts to his people.

Psalm 119 celebrates the wisdom, truthfulness, clarity, grace, direction, and power of this written revelation of God. Folks, what you have available to you, what you have in the seat in front of you or in your hands is a gift. And it's not to be taken for granted. And this gift has power to transform who we are and what we do. And that's the interaction with this Psalm. is the more that we learn about who God is and what he does, it would change who we are and what we do. And so we see in verse one that people are blessed for walking according to the law of the Lord. This is Psalm 119, draws from a lot of other Psalms. And so if you are familiar with Psalm one, the very first line of the book of Psalms, this is reiterating that. Blessed are those who walk according to the way of God. "The people are blessed whose ways are blameless." This isn't, we read this and we may think, so God wants us to be perfect? Well, no, he doesn't have that expectation 'cause he knows we can't be. This isn't emphasizing perfection as much as it is focusing on a person who has the highest integrity and lives with complete honesty. And the psalmist is saying, that's who we should wanna be. People in this world with the utmost integrity and who live the most honest lives. In verses two and three, we see God's blessing on those again who follow his statutes and seek him with all their hearts. God's desire is that he be the biggest priority in his people's lives. He's saying that in his infinite wisdom, he knows what it will take for a person to walk in the way of life, not in sin and in death. He knows that He must be the priority in our hearts. And if God isn't the priority, if we are giving all of ourselves to anything else other than God, then it's a recipe for disaster. It means that sin will be guiding us away eventually. It may not seem that drastic at the beginning. Think of the, I've never been, I've sailed once in my life, but I've heard for long distance sales that just one degree off on that compass which means miles and miles far away, you're gonna be hundreds of miles from your destination. And that's that way with sin.

Even just for a moment, if we let anything other than God guide us through life, if that sustains, if that's kept up, sooner or later, we are gonna be so far away from God. So God wants to be the priority in our lives. And he says this throughout scripture. I mean, the first commandment, "shall have no other gods before me." And so in this first section we see, again, the psalmist just rotating God's word and saying, "Look at this. "Look how amazing this is. "Look how beautiful God's law is." And now the psalmist changes who the psalmist directed to. In the first three verses, it was being said to an audience, it's a song to be sung, stating who God is. But now in the last four verses, or the five, yeah, change their attention to be directed to God. Verse four says, "You, God, have laid down precepts "that are to be fully obeyed." I like this line a lot. I feel I'm gonna integrate this in my life. We don't use precepts a lot. I don't know if I've ever heard someone in their common speech say precepts, but I'm thinking as the youth pastor, when the youth get a little rowdy, I might just quote this and be like, "Look, youth, I have precepts that need to be fully obeyed. Better get in line. They're gonna be like, "What are precepts? "I don't know what you're talking about." The point is that we see that there is a desire as well as an expectation from God for his people to be completely obedient to him. It's not just a suggestion. It's not saying, "Hey, if you feel like it, "my people, you should try to maybe follow me." It's one of the options that you have. No, he's saying this is, this is it. This is the best way, this is the law, and I expect you to obey it.

In verse five, this verse speaks to the loyalty in obeying God. We have to be consistent. We have to be devoted to God and his law. The word that is used is steadfast. Whenever you see steadfast in the Bible, Think of it as a hyperlink to Exodus when God is speaking to Moses and describing himself to Moses, saying this is who I am. And we talked about this in an earlier Psalm, this hesed, steadfast. God is perfectly steadfast to us. He wants us to be steadfast to him. But the Psalmist here is recognizing that we, despite our best efforts, humanity cannot be perfectly steadfast to God. We will fail in our commitment at some point. Just ask Israel time and time again, falling away from God. Even David, you know, the renowned psalmist, the renowned best king in Israel's history, he had moments of terrible sin, falling away from God. But the goal here is that each follower of Yahweh would share in their eager yearning to be like God and obey his commandments. And then together, as a people, as a community, there's accountability and there's more opportunity for course correction. The Hebrew word in this verse at the very end, obeying your decrees, evokes images of boundaries, healthy boundaries. The Hebrew word brings to mind like someone taking a rock and etching something in, or like taking a stick and drawing a line in the sand. And so you can think of it as God drawing the boundary and saying, this is, be on this side, people. this is where I want you, don't go over there.

And that is a theme that is all throughout scripture. I mean, that's all the way back in Genesis, in the garden. God's saying, hey, I want you here, I have great life set up for you here, just don't do this. I had a professor once describe boundaries, because we often think of boundaries as restricting. Again, going back to that negative connotation of the law. And we don't like boundaries sometimes. But I had a professor describe boundaries, or the views of the law, and some people think of God's law and following it like a tightrope. And you just have to do your best. It's very hard, there's a single straight line, and if you fall, you're done. Or to maybe like a two-lane road. And this analogy kinda doesn't work. When I heard it, I was like, I get what you're saying, so I'm gonna convey what he said. If you don't like it, I'll pass that along. But like a two-lane road, and there's the yellow divider line, and he's saying the safest place to be would be straddling that line. If you got the metal guards on either side, the safest place, theoretically if there's no traffic, is right on the middle. But really, God's law is more like, instead of that yellow line saying you can only be here, it's more like the metal rails on the side, just keeping you in the safe place, in the place that is living wisely. Or maybe also, like he mentions a river. And you don't have to be exactly in the middle of the river. Just the banks are the things that keep you in the water where you're supposed to be. And so whichever one you like, and if you don't like any of them, that's okay. But those analogies of God's law, there's wide berth to follow him, and we should view it not so much as restricting as life-giving. God's law is not restricting, but it gives life and it leads to life.

Verse six says, "Then I would not be put to shame "when I consider all your commands." And this verse alludes to the vastness of God's law. It covers so much. It covers all we need for life. I think sometimes we start to put the Bible in compartments of our life. We just say, well, the Bible addresses this area, and so this area, I'm gonna go to the Bible, and I'm gonna look for wisdom, but for this area over here, I don't need to talk about the Bible. I don't need to reference it, I don't need to go to it. I know this much over here. But God is saying, no, my law covers every part of life, everything that you will do, I have wisdom and I have insight for you. There's a recognition that God's ways are best and we must come to that same conclusion.

In verse seven, the psalmist conveys the anticipation of learning. I will praise you with an upright heart as I learn your righteous laws. The psalmist is instructing us to learn. Learning is so important. In our household, with my parents and with our daughter and my extended, like my sister, my brother-in-law, and their kids, we've gotten to this habit at family meals of doing trivia after dinner. And so I'll just pull up a trivia website. And even the kids are getting into it. I have to look up kids trivia because they don't know random stuff of history. But what are all the colors of the rainbow? And what's the largest mammal? And it's really fun. And we are trying to-- not only is it fun, but we're trying to instill this desire to learn. We don't know everything. We do know some really random stuff, and that's really fun. But we don't know everything. And this can be a fun way to learn. And it's good because those little ones, there's age differences, and some of them are in school already. And so they're getting questions like that. And then the little ones are like, I haven't answered any questions. And it's like, it's OK. Just learn. Just listen. Pick up on that. And the next time around when we ask, you might know that one. But learning is so important. OK, before we get away from learning and trivia, do you guys want a quick trivia fact? Okay. In the last ... I'm like 99% that this is true, by the way, so if you fact-check me ... (Laughter) If I'm off, you'll see where I might be off. In the last 100 years - this has to do with the Olympics, so we're still on theme, with the Olympics ending today - in the last 100 years, in the 100-meter race, typically known as the fastest human on Earth, whoever can win the 100-meter race, in the Olympics, with all the increase of technology, of training, of health, diet, the better track that they run on, the better shoes that they have, how much faster do you think we are than 100 years ago? I say we, I did not run this race, not we. How much faster do you think humans have run than 100 years ago? Any guesses? Any thoughts? Ten seconds? Okay, ten seconds faster than 100 years ago. Any other guesses? I can't hear, but maybe you guys are thinking yourselves. You guys ready for this? A hundred years ago, so today, the world record, not today, because I think it's Usain Bolt, 0.81 seconds faster than a hundred years ago. It's crazy. That blew my mind when I learned that, which I'm pretty sure I learned, and I'm pretty sure that's true. If it's not, it's less than a second, though. If I'm off, it's still less than a second. That's crazy. OK, so you learn something new every day. We'll get away from the Olympics.

The more we learn, back to God, who God is, the more we learn about who we are meant to be. The more we learn about who, what God does, the more we learn about what we should be doing. The Psalmist is saying, continue to learn. It's a lifelong process. And then the chapter ends with an acknowledgement that there is a wide gap between the wicked and Yahweh, and we should have this desire to remain as close to God as possible. So we've just went through the first section of Psalm 119, the olive section, and it's a beautiful section of Psalms that is praising God in his word, his law, and I wanna take some time to just end our sermon by reflecting on our relationship to God's law and to him. So I have a couple questions, and the first question is this. What are you learning about God? Getting back to that verse seven, we should be lifelong learners of God. There are rabbis who dedicate their whole life to memorizing and studying the Torah. And some of them have dedicated their whole lives to just a section of the Torah. And after 50 years of studying day after day, they are still learning something new about God.

We need to be curious about the God that we serve and worship. People who are naturally curious love learning. That's not all of us. Some of us just like trivia. Be like, "Oh, I just want to learn more random facts." I was reading a book by author Vander Bloeman recently, and he pointed out that you can always ask a curious person, "Hey, what are you learning?" And it'll always be something new. Just because they are just going to keep learning random things. And the next time you see them, you can say, "Hey, what are you learning?" And they're going to give you a random thing, and they're going to give you a lot of it. Because they got into it, and they went down that rabbit hole or YouTube video or whatever it is, they can't help it, they want to know more, and we need to be like that with God. We should be eager to learn more about God. And I think on top of that, we should maybe be open, we might start off awkward, but I think it'd be okay to just ask each other, hey, what are you learning about God recently? What have you learned about him? And we don't have to be worried about any shame of, well, it's not some great theological new breakthrough that I've learned about God. No, we're not gonna learn that. I could just be, man, I've just been learning more about his grace. I've been learning more about his love through what I've been going through, my situation in life and reflecting on how God's loving me. I'm learning more about that. But we should be encouraged to learn more about our king and our savior. So what are you learning about God?

Secondly, what or who is guiding you? As you think about your life and how you're living your life and you reflect back on this last week or this last month, something is guiding you in life. It could be yourself. It could be traditions, family traditions, work culture. It could be the latest book or podcast on leadership or family life. It could be another religion. Whatever it is, something is guiding you through life. You are giving your attention, you are giving your thought, your heart, "What do I do?" And you're going to something to say, "What is it? "I'm going to follow that." You know this. I'm going to say it again. It should be God. God not only should be the one that guides you, but He wants to guide you. He is there saying, "Let me do this for you." And He's given us His word as the biggest gift to say, "Look, here's this for you. "Let me help you in life." The NIV commentary says that the Lord's instruction, His law permeates Psalm 119. Almost every verse of this massive psalm, the longest chapter in the Bible, mentions the law or one of its synonyms. So that should tell us that, look, this is how much I value what I have to say. This is God saying, this is how much I value what I have to say. Oh, I'm drawing from my daughter. It's in every verse of this psalm. That's how important it is. God wants to be your guide. He knows what you need. But again, the problem is our human tendency, our sin nature. We think we know how to live this life all by ourselves. We don't think we need the instruction manual. As a kid, I love LEGOs. I think I've mentioned this before. And it was easy. There is no-- it's for kids. There's not even words in those instruction manuals. It's pictures. And just as you continue to follow the pictures, your LEGOs look more like the box. And you're like, this is awesome. I love it. And then, so I love LEGOs, I love building it, and I follow the instructions to a T. Because if you were off, your end product wouldn't look like the box. Well, somewhere in my 20s, not with LEGOs anymore, unfortunately, but more with IKEA furniture and things like that, I just got this confidence. I don't know where, but I was like, I don't need the instruction manual. Forget that. There's legs, there's a top, and there's a couple other things. And I'm just going to put it together. And that worked out 50% of the time. And then other times, I was left with a copy table that didn't stand up or shelves that didn't stay on. Didn't go well. And then now in my 30s, I've come back to following the instructions. I don't have energy to rebuild things three times anymore. And so I've come back to following page by page, following the instructions. Usually I will read the instructions because now there's words. But sometimes I don't and I get in trouble. But I think this is true of some of us in life, that maybe we're born or along the way We get this confidence that we can do this life on our own. I get that there's instructions, but I think I got it now. I got the gist, and I'm just going to go forward, and I'm going to do my thing.

But we can't do it all by ourselves. We just really can't. And if we think we can, then that's the enemy lying to us, giving us this false confidence, just like he did to Adam, and he was saying, "Do you really need God? Do you really need God to live this life?" But by the grace of God and because of the sacrifice of Christ made on the cross, we can have salvation, we can experience the transforming work of the Spirit within us, and by the grace of His Word, we can better understand the way in which God is leading us and guiding us. So what, who or what is guiding you? And if it's anything other than God, have some course correction in your life. Turn to Him, open up this Word, get to know what you you should be doing. And lastly, the last question, do you believe and live by the power of God's word? I wanna share some statistics with you. A recent study in America was done, actually just this last year, so this is 2023, and it says the following. 159 people agree that the Bible has an impact on how they interact with others. That's good. 159 million people think that the Bible It has an impact and influences how they treat other people. 146 million agree that the Bible has influence on how they treat people who are of a different race. Another good thing, Bible addresses that. 130 million, we're getting smaller, I don't know if you noticed this, 130 million agree that the Bible has influence for their support for refugees and people displaced by wars and conflicts. Again, something else addressed in the Bible, but we see that trend now, the number getting smaller of what the Bible has influence over. The last one I wanna share is this. Only 47 million are regularly engaged with scripture. Regularly, they define regularly, they have the series of questions for this survey and had to do with frequency, impact, and the centrality of God's word in their lives. But the study commented, it says, "Apparently people are using the Bible "as a guidebook for life as about the same level "as they did in previous years, Yet, for millions of people, the Bible is not leading to greater connection with God or more loving behavior towards others. So here's the point. Somewhere along the way, and this is backed up by studies, there's a disconnect in people's minds. That the Bible has some place in life, but not in a place that it should affect all of my life. It might offer some good advice, It might be something to reference when I'm in a really tough situation, but the rest of it, people are feeling pretty confident that they can do by themselves. They don't think of the Bible. They don't understand that the Bible is the ultimate truth. It's God's divine word, and it can change us from the inside out. When we read Psalm 119, just that first section, It was overflowing with the belief and the conviction that the law of God truly transforms the heart and life of a person.

So the question is, do you believe that? And do you live like that every day? And I say this with myself feeling convicted. If we did, we would read our Bible with that hunger and that thirst to say, how can I change more? How can I be more like God? Let me open this up and see what God has to say. and trust that through his spirit and his word, I will be transformed to be more like him. So, in closing, Psalm 119, we'll probably return to Psalm 119 in years to come in the summers, and as the worship team makes their way back up, I wanna say this, so be curious, be a lifelong learner of the God that you serve. Just continue to learn. That may mean opening your Bible and reading something randomly, but however it is, ask questions to people, Chris, myself, others around you. Be a lifelong learner of God. And then let God guide you, seek His guidance. Don't do this life on your own or by any other standard, but follow Him with everything that you have. And do so because you have the conviction and the belief that his word is necessary to live a life that is God-honoring. Because you believe that scripture is a part of that transforming work. Oftentimes, when Pastor Chris and I meet with people who ask, you know, I wanna know God more. The very first, have you read your Bible? When was the last time you opened up your Bible? This is gonna be the best way to get to know God. Same when they ask, what should I be doing in life? I wanna know what the Christian life is about. First thing, open this up, read this. And for those of us who have been walking with God for years, it doesn't change. It doesn't mean that we come to the end, like I read it, I read it through a couple times, so I think I'm good. And the rest I'll just hope that I remember what, no. Daily, often, open this up and enjoy and read the law, the word of God.

Let's go ahead and pray. God, we thank you so much for the gift of your word, a word that has power to change, to transform us to be more like you. God, I pray that you would cultivate in us a spirit of learning, just for us to accept that we don't know everything. For some of us, that's very hard. But I pray that you would grow in us this desire to wanna know more about you, know how to live this life in a way that honors you. And God, I pray that it would be fun, it would be enjoyable to learn and to be more like you. And God, we also just pray that we would live with conviction day by day that we need this. We need you, we need your word. And we pray for your guidance. We seek your guidance and direction, God, all of us, whether now, today, and this week, or in a different season of life, We face challenges, we face difficulties, and we don't know what to do, but we can take comfort and rest assured that you do. So please make your voice loud. May we be attuned to your spirit as you guide us step by step through life. God, we trust you, we need you, and we praise you. We pray this in your name, Amen.

Summer of Psalms - Part 10

Psalm 86 - Praise Him Anywhere

SERMON TRANSCRIPT

It's going to be an awesome, awesome day. And so thanks so much for being here, joining you. I'm Pastor Chris, part of the team here. And we are in our summer of Psalms, week 10. Can you believe it? You've been 10 weeks in Psalms with us. We got one more week next Sunday. We're gonna wrap things up and then we're gonna head into Nehemiah, which we're really excited about that one. It's gonna be a great book to study together. But summer of Psalms, we've been all over the place in the book of Psalms from the beginning to the end and all around in the middle. We tried, we've done this a couple different summers before We've made sure not to double dip. So this is all fresh stuff for you guys this summer. We're really looking forward to it. And this Psalm today is one that's really, really unique and interesting. And we're gonna be in Psalm 86 today. This is another Psalm of David. And what's really cool about this one is, I call it the Oreo cookie of Psalms. And it is sandwich. So you think of an Oreo cookie, you got your cookies on the outside, you got your cream in the middle. And so on the outside, the beginning and ending of this Psalm is actually prayer and petition to God. But in the midst of all of his prayer and petition for God to save him from what he's going through, he actually gives praise and honor to God. So the Oreo, the stuffing, the good stuff in the middle, is all praise to God. And so if you want an illustration this morning, go grab some cookies after church and you can praise God together. So it'd be a good time. No, Psalm if you have a Bible, feel free to turn there. We have them under the chairs where it's gonna be on screen. But Psalm 86 is in, I believe, it is the third book. So the Psalms is actually divided up into four different books, five books. And each book has kind of its own theme and structure within it. And this one is kind of out of place. This one is more of a prayer of praise to God where this isn't seen usually in this book, this section of Psalms. of Psalms. And so it's somewhat out of place, but I love because in, even in this, of where it's at and what the other theme is, there's a breakout of praise. And I think that's, there's a bit of a theme to that today as we read this together.

So Psalm 86, starting in verse 1, it says, "Hear me, Lord, and answer me, for I am poor and needy. Guard my life, for I am faithful to You. Save Your servant who trusts in You. You are my God. Have mercy on me, Lord, for I call to you all day long. Bring joy to your servant, Lord, for I put my trust in you. You, Lord, are forgiving and good, abounding in love all who call to you. Hear my prayer, Lord. Listen to my cry for mercy. When I was distressed, I called to you because you answer me." Here's the Oreo stuffing. Among the gods there is none like you, Lord. No deeds can compare with yours. All the nations you have made will come and worship before you, Lord. They bring glory to your name, for you are great and do marvelous deeds. You alone are God. Teach me your way, Lord, that I may rely on your faithfulness. Give me an undivided heart that I may fear your name. I will praise you, Lord my God, with all my heart. I will glorify your name forever for great is your love towards me and you have delivered me from the depths from the realm of the dead. Arrogant foes are attacking me, O God. Ruthless people are trying to kill me. They have no regard for you. But you, Lord, are a compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness. Turn to me and have mercy on me. Show your strength in behalf of your servant. Save me because I serve you. Just as my mother did. Give me a sign of your goodness that my enemies may see it and be put to shame. For you, Lord, have helped me and comforted me.”

There's three main sections in this Psalm 86. If you guys picked up on that. The first part of the Oreo cookie is in Psalm 86, verses one through seven. And David here is saying he's petitioning for God to hear him and to answer him. And then in verse eight, it shifts to this middle stuffing goodness of praise and thanksgiving to who God is. And then verse 14, we have the other side of the cookie that are petitioned for God to act. It's unique because there's only a few other times in the Bible do we find a psalm like this or a set of a writing that it is parallel in its beginning and ending with petitions in this middle section of almost a song like a hymn like praise and thanksgiving to be given to God. It's not truly known what David is going through at this time. It's very common for David to have foes coming after him, if you know any of his story, even before kingship and after kingship. Somebody seemed to always be coming after him. But there is this prayer that I think affirms for in us kind of a cyclical theme and nature of our lives, ourselves we see. that often praise comes even in the middle of our cries to God. That sometimes we struggle with this idea of sorrow and fear and angst in our lives. But David here shows us that we can still have praise even in the midst of that. This first section, verses 1 through 7, there's this central idea and image of King David asking for God to listen to him, to answer his prayers, to move on his behalf. And this pattern fluctuates between other prayers and petitions and his asking for God. Asking God to guard his life, to be gracious to him, to make him glad. And this last petition is not only to hear and save, but also cause joy to return to his heart. This beautiful idea of restoration, this image of new life in him. This Hebrew root, there's a Hebrew word in here for life or soul that I find interesting. It's called nep̄eš. And it's this idea that David isn't writing this psalm lightly. Sometimes we can read Psalms and say like, "Oh, save my life, Lord, or protect my soul, or restore to me new life." And it's just a simple prayer. But the reality here with the Hebrew word, an nep̄eš, means that David is fearing death. When he's asking for his life to be saved, for his soul to be protected, He is literally pleading with God to keep him alive. He's facing death, he's staring out, and he sees his enemy coming, knowing what's gonna happen. If God does not move, David will no longer live on earth.

There's a massive urgency here in the scripture. And yet at the same time, David is putting his full trust into God. He's declaring that God is the God above all gods. That God is Lord over all. God is victorious. And I find it interesting that He declares this even before He is saved. That should strike us a bit. Because I don't know that we're like that, right? I don't think that that's our natural bent here. But what a testament that David here is saying that even in the midst of what I'm going on, I am declaring God's victory. I'm declaring God's restoration. I'm declaring God's safety. Even in the midst of what is going on with him, he is giving praise and victory to God as if he has already been rescued. But where does this come from? This comes from who the character of God is. And David here being an Israelite remembers the first time that his people cried out to God. All the way back near the beginning of the Bible we read in Exodus chapter 2 verse 24 that God heard their cries and remember his covenant promise to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The Israelite people were in captive slavery to the Egyptians. They were being beaten, they were being killed, they were being used for slave labor to build whatever the king, Pharaoh, wanted to build. And they cried out to God and God heard their cries. So David, you're crying out to God going, "I know who you are, God. You are the same God that saved my ancestors in Egypt under complete slavery and oppressive control. You acted and moved in a miraculous way and you saved us. Please God, do this again.”

Then in verse 8, we have this shift without warning from this prayer petition, and they break out to a moment of praise. I love what it says. "Among the gods there is none like you, Lord. No deeds can compare to yours." It continues on in verse 9, talking about this echo of praise, but declaring that God made all the nations and they all will bow down before God the Creator. 10 again declares that God's deeds are great and God is God alone. This is a amazing picture of all the nations gathered together worshiping God. Verse 10 again declares that God's deeds are great and that God is God alone. that there's nothing that God does not deserve praise for. And that one day, all the nations will gather and they will worship God Almighty for who He is. This isn't the picture of life today, is it? No. When we look around the world, this isn't the case. People are fighting. From the beginning of time, people have hated other people. Nations have hated other nations. People and kings and rulers have tried to control other people. People have been in slavery. People have been killed. People have been beaten down. People have been manipulated, controlled, oppressed. But this picture here that David is talking about saying, this isn't always how it's going to be. God's doing something great here. God is bringing the nations together to being praised. This is just a beautiful image that I'm reminded of the words of Jesus from the Sermon on the Mount. The Sermon on the Mount is a giant teaching sermon from Jesus that he gives. He talks about all aspects of life. And one part specifically in there, he talks about how to pray. And he says to do this and don't do this and don't worry about that and don't think about that, but pray to God in this way. And it's commonly what we've known in the church as the Lord's Prayer. And it says in Matthew 16:10, "Your Kingdom, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven." Jesus is praying that the kingdom of heaven, God's perfect will, God's perfect grace and worship and love and unity would come to this earth. And to have all the nations gathered together, worshipping God. But we know this won't fully happen until heaven. But this doesn't stop the psalmist from praying for this incredible picture of true, united worship to take place here and now.

But the question is, how does this even begin to happen? David says in verse 11, "Teach me your way, Lord, that I may rely on your faithfulness. Give me an undivided heart that I may fear your name." It starts with us. It begins in our heart and in our lives to have an undivided heart and soul for Jesus. I love what another translation says. It says, "Lord, teach me your ways that I will live and obey your truth. Help me make worshiping your name the most important thing in my life. I love that That's where it starts It starts with us choosing to say Worshiping you God is the most important thing in my life And when we live our lives like this in this way of this prayer of David making worship the number one thing our lives look different, right? We will live as a transformed being. The old has gone, the new has come. That this new life we have in Jesus is where our worship comes from. An undivided heart solely focused on our Heavenly Father. And when we have this heart of worship or praise, there's a restoration of ourselves that happens. creating us, changing us, molding us into the image that God has for us, not ourselves, but the image that God has for each of our lives. He says, verse 12, 13, "I will praise you, Lord my God, with all my heart. I will glorify your name forever, for great is your love towards me. You have delivered me from the depths, from the realm of the dead. This is a prayer for restoration of our heart and of our soul, down to our deepest being. David here is saying, "Save us. Restore us. Make me whole. Bring my life to a completion that I will give everything I have and worship and praise to you.

You ever been in that place where you just felt, "Blah? Maybe you felt that this week. Maybe you woke up that this morning. I don't know. But you just feel that just like, "Ugh, ugh." There's not even words to express, it's just a groaning noise. This is where David's at. He's got the pressure of the world around him pushing on so hard. And he just feels like he's just going to crumble under it. And he cries out for God, "Save me. me." And at the same time, he says, "You are God. I believe that you can do this. I remember when you did it for my great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great grandpa when he was stuck in Egypt. He felt even worse than this, and yet you created a--you made a miracle happen. You parted the the Red Sea so that he could be restored to have life to give you praise and yet here I am in my life I know you can do this for me and I think there's something supernatural that happens in our lives When even when we're in the midst of that, "Ugh." That we give praise to God. I know there's times when life just seems so heavy. Where that literally, sometimes I can't even have words. And all I do is I just go and I put worship music on. Because I'm like, "God, my soul aches right now." And there's, I can't even pull the words together, but I know that this song resonates with who I am and what I'm going through. And I'm just gonna let this song speak for me for a little bit. I'm just gonna let the words of this worship from someone who wrote this song who has no idea who I am, but knowing it is a gift of grace from God. I'm just gonna let this pour over me, like cool water on a hot day. And sometimes in life, that's exactly what we have to do. Well, you're like, "Ah, well, Chris, I just, "I don't feel like it." Yeah, I don't think David felt like it either. And yet he chose to praise God. See, God just isn't this impersonal big guy in the sky or big man upstairs. He's a personal relational God that wants to know how our soul is doing. Actually, he already knows how our soul is doing. He just wants us to tell him. It's like if you have kids, you know when they're having a bad day as a parent. But sometimes you just want them to share what they're going through in that day. To just have a relationship with them. Why? Not for the sake of yourself. Not for the sake of, "Oh, I got all this time to kill. I just want to hear your story." No, because you love them. You care for them. It's the same way that God loves and cares for us.

Verse 14, as the other side of the Oreo cookie, again, David shifts back into from this praise to giving back to fear and worry about what's happening on, but has this different tone than the first half of the cookie, right? There's this tone of asking God to move and to act, but there's more faith behind it. And we get a little bit of a glimpse of what's going on here with the offer. There's some sort of group of people that don't like God, that despise God, and are coming after David. We still don't know why, but he's facing imminent death. All is not well in David's life right now. He's not posting on Instagram a happy picture from the past year going, "All is well out here." Like, he is stressing to the max. prayer and praise doesn't always work out the way that we want, right? God isn't just this magic genie where we can rub our hands together and pray and poof, He shows up and says, "What's your prayer for the day?" And we give it to Him and He goes, "Okay." And He turns around and He runs off and He does it. That's not who God is, right? God asks for us to act in obedience to the with Him and that our faith and belief in God must stand with praise even when our world is broken. It says in verse 15, "But you, Lord, are a compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness." If that's not an incredible image and picture of who God is, I don't know what other verse shares that with us. Compassionate, gracious, slow to anger, thank you, Jesus, abounding in love and faithfulness. I do find this verse a little strange at this moment. When reading this psalm, you would think at this point, David would be more focusing on praying for God to, "Hey God, people are coming. "I need you to do something, they're getting closer. "Okay God, now they're really closer. "They're getting closer now, what are you gonna do?" But David goes, "No, you're compassionate, "you're gracious, you're slow to anger, "abounding to love, faithful." David goes back to who he knows God is. Yes. Under the greatest pressure, under the greatest stress, David says, "You are an unchanging God." Because the reality is, God's the same. It's us in life that has ups and downs and twists and turns and things that change in our lives in an instant. God is the faithful, steady one in our lives. And sometimes we just need to press into that steadiness when our life seems to be spinning at a thousand miles an hour. And we don't feel like we can barely hold on to anything. We just gotta reach out and to hold on to dear life for God.

I think of this image of like barely having to reach on to hold on to something. You're being swept away, whether it's waves or wind or something, you're barely holding on. And you're so focused and worried about where your hands are holding on to something. And the whole time you don't realize is that you have a full safety harness, five point harness on. All the locking carabiners and strength of a rope in the world and God's holding on to that rope. And we think we're holding on there that we have to hold on for dear life. God's like, "I got you locked in, man. I got it taken care of. Just let go and let me." Is what God's asking us to do. This message is a message that only God can rescue us from our trouble. that there's no promise of the world. There's no other person in our lives. There's no political leader. Can I say that? There's no nothing else that can rescue us the way that God can. And David here, in the midst of it all hitting the fan, just puts all his chips in on God. on God and says, "You're my redeemer. "You're my rescuer." Verse 17 ends with, "Give me a sign of your goodness "that my enemies may see it and be put to shame "for you, Lord, have helped me and comforted me." I read that and I thought, oh, that's a little aggressive, put to shame? But what David here is saying, His rescue isn't about himself. David already knows that he's locked in with God. David here is actually asking for God not to necessarily rescue him, but asking that God's glory would shine through his rescue so that others may see and believe. That others would look in on his situation and go, man, his back was against the wall. There was nothing left. He was at the end of his rope. It was all but for sure gone. And God came through. And David wants even his enemies, the ones that are coming after him, to see this rescue from God, not to put them down or to embarrass them or to make them look foolish, but for them to be able to see in that moment that God rescued him, that they may turn and put their faith in Jesus Christ alone. It's more about God saving and helping David rather than us, 'cause mostly what we do in life, right? Most of us in life will go like, hey God, get me out of this jam, man. Like I will be, my butt is gonna be in church on Sunday. Promise you. If you get me out of this jam, God, I will love you. I will serve you. I'll become a pastor for the rest of my life, God. Just get me out of this situation, please. That's not how it works, right? God here is asking for us to step in faith and trust in Him in obedience. And then He moves.

As we close, I got three truths for us today from this. One, praise no matter the circumstances. We are to praise God. No matter what we're walking through, no matter what is happening in our lives, no matter what is coming at us, we are to praise God. This ain't easy. But when I see people who have followed Jesus for decades, this is their mindset. They've learned, they've gone through it. They have been to H-E Double Hockey Stick and back, and they still give God praise. It blows my mind. But there's this foundational truth they understand who God is, how much they were blessed by His love and His grace and His mercy in their lives, they go, "There would be no place I'd rather be." Praise is a language of the heart that speaks at all times. It's not dependent on circumstances or happenings in life. It is a soul language that that we are to give praise to God. And sometimes all we can do is believe that the joy is coming in the midst of it. David says that, he says what? Verse four, "Bring joy to your servant, Lord." Sometimes we just have to believe that the joy is coming so that we can even take another step forward. Greatest advice, second greatest advice I've ever been given in my life is in my marriage and in parenting and in just life in general is a statement that it won't always be like this. Good times and the bad times. The good times won't always be like this. It's just life. Reminds us to be present where we are. And on the flip side, the hard times, it won't always be like this. Hard times will come. Storms will come. Storms don't last forever though, right? Sometimes they last a long time. I look around this room and I see people who have gone through seasons of storms. But the storm never lasted forever. And David here is reminding us that we can praise God no matter our circumstances because it won't always be like this.

Number two, our praise is amplified in in community. Sure, can we praise God on our own? Absolutely. Can we pop on some headphones, crank it up in the car, listen to our worship music, read God's Word and our quiet time, our one-on-one time with God? Absolutely, yes. And this should be your rhythm in life. But a rhythm that you cannot miss out on is worship in community. This. See, this here takes our praise that is great on our own, but it comes in here and it cranks it up a thousand percent. Praise in community is a rhythm that is necessary for our life with God. Psalm 86, 9, David all the nations you have made will come and worship before you, Lord. They will bring glory to your name. Sometimes we need the church family to remind us why we praise, to remind us who God is, remind us of those who have gone before us and survived and got the t-shirt, those how to praise even in the midst of heavy life, lean on to others for their praise to echo in our hearts. Sometimes we need the praise of others to hold us up. Just like this picture of Moses with Aaron and her holding his arms up in the midst of the battle of Joshua and the Amalekites. When his arms were up the Israelites were winning but when they fell down they began to lose. And so this beautiful picture image of Aaron and her literally holding Moses's arms up so that the victory through God would happen in that battle is a picture and image for us of when we can't even raise our hands in worship. Sometimes we need people to come around us and just raise our hands for us knowing that joy is coming. This is how our praise is amplified in community. Sometimes coming to church isn't about you. Sometimes coming to church is for the person you're sitting next with, the person in the row behind you. The person who pulled into the parking lot and was about to leave but then saw you and got out of their car and came inside. Sometimes church ain't about us. Now does God speak to us and give us something when we're here? I believe it, absolutely. Absolutely, every Sunday, let's have open hearts, open minds, open souls. But sometimes coming to church and getting your butt out of bed in the morning, say it in the most lovingly way, it's not about you. Sometimes it's for the person here at church. I've had those Sundays, guys. I'm the one in charge, I'm probably not supposed to say that. I've had those Sundays where I wake up and I'm like, "God, I'm tired." And you know what happens? and I have a conversation that blows my mind. And God goes, "That's why you got out of bed this morning. "It's not about you, Chris. "It's about me.”

The final thing we see, this truth, is there will always be victory in Jesus. No matter what happens, we have victory in Jesus, either this side of heaven or the other. Christ has overcome. David knew that. David knew that. David understood that. David saw that. And so I honestly, I see his prayer at the end of 86 here, and I don't think he cares if he lives or he dies. He just wants people to see God. Wow. Why? Because he knows there's always victory in Jesus. Verse 5, "You, Lord, are forgiving and good, abounding in love to all who call to you." We know that all who call on the name of the Lord will be saved. It says right there in Romans 10, 13, "For everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved." So my question for you today is have you called on the name of the Lord? Have you truly, with your heart and your soul, called on the name of the Lord? And if you haven't, right now you can bow your head, you can pray, you can say, "Jesus, I need you. I'm sorry for trying to figure this all out on my own. I've messed up. I've sinned. I need your grace and your mercy and your love to come into my make me right, and I need your saving and redemption, and your perfect, perfect love for eternity. It's that simple. Doesn't have to be complex. And if you make that decision, if that's something you're doing today, or you've done recently, or you wanna have a little bit more conversation, see Pastor Andre or myself, please, he was the good looking guy up here earlier, please talk to him. Talk to myself. Talk to anybody who got a green name badge. They'll find us. I promise. We want you to know that. I love this psalm. It's just a powerful example of prayer and praise united together. That no matter what we're going through, no matter where we are, we can give praise to God. God has offered this incredible gift to each of us when he died on the cross. That the saving isn't not only for our enemies, but it's also saving from us and ourselves. Just because you've called on Jesus, you've prayed the prayer, doesn't mean it's life's daisies and roses and unicorns. There's still gonna be bad days. David, one of the people on earth who walked so closely with God, still had those days. We're going to have those days.

But the question becomes for us, how do we need to increase our praise? I think each of us probably has maybe an idea of what that might look like. Maybe it's coming to church when we don't feel like it. Maybe it's putting worship music on when we just feel like, "Buh." Maybe it's praying for our enemies. Maybe it's just trusting in God deeper, that God's got it under control, that we don't have to fix it. I like to fix it. I'm a fix-it guy. I fixed a chair, a reclining chair in a microwave yesterday. I feel like a boss. Only cut two of my fingers. Sometimes we just need to just trust in God and just let him fix it, rather than us try to make a bigger mess out of it, right? 'Cause that usually what happens, let's be honest. Just gotta trust in him. This isn't a natural flow for us, praise in tough times, right? We're reactionary. We don't take the right action of praising God. It's a habit a rhythm that has to be learned and Then it'll begin to more naturally flow from our lives Something you have to work on be reminded about kind of practice it just doesn't happen and to another question.

How will your praise be a witness to others I first wrote this, I was typing this out. I was like, how can your praise be a witness? I was like, no, there's too much space in there for maybe if not. We're called to be witnesses. And a big portion of our witnessing to others should be in how we give praise to God, no matter what's happening. So how will your praise be a witness to others in your life? Maybe it's your family. Maybe it's that neighbor that just, ooh, that neighbor. We all have them, right? Maybe not, I hope you don't. I've got a couple of those. How will we actively think about giving praise to God as a witness to others? David sets an incredible example for us. In this way of giving praise, even the midst of what's going on, he's pointing to Jesus. Say that's why I'm here. That's why I exist. This is my calling. This is my purpose. David says to give praise to you God, no matter what's going on around me. May we be a people that give praise no matter what.

Let's pray. Jesus, thank you, God, for your servant David, for his word and his example for us. Jesus, I pray that you would speak to our hearts today. God, you know who's heard this in this space. God, we know who's heard this online. Maybe listen to the podcast later this week, Jesus, that they would hear the words of your servant David and his praise that was given no matter what. Whether you rescued him or you didn't rescue him, he gave you praise. So, Jesus, I pray that we would be in the same heart, in the same mindset, same rhythm as David to give you the praise no no matter what's happening in life. God, we've... We're in the midst of some hard times. Different things happening in life. Grief, loss, struggle, financial burdens, loss of jobs, unknown future, pain, physical pain, hurt, emotional brokenness, relationships, disasters. God, I pray that that wouldn't stop our praise. I pray that our hearts would still eke and groan the praises of you, God. And that in that we may be a witness to those in our lives, maybe people we don't even know are watching us, might see us and go, "There's something different about them." They shouldn't be happy right now. They shouldn't be giving praise. They shouldn't be worshiping. They should have walked away from the church by now. They should be so angry at God and yet they're still there giving praise to you. God, may our praise be amplified in community worship. May we make it a priority to be here each and every Sunday, community groups, different events. God, to give you praise and glory in our community. God, help those around us to lift us up, to hold us up. That we know we won't be there forever, but then we may be able to share with others when they are going through similar situations, how you, God, saved us and pulled us through. Jesus, may we just be an incredible witness of praise and honor and glory to you, Jesus. We love you. We thank you. Everybody said, amen. Amen.

Summer of Psalms - Part 9

Psalm 67 - God's Blessings For All Nations

SERMON TRANSCRIPT

For those of you who have done missions work and served various people groups, you know what it's like to see God's work around the world. And for me, one of the greatest takeaways that I've taken from missions trips that I've been on, aside from just appreciating different cultures and a reminder of just how big the world is and how different people are, is you spend time with believers overseas and you see so clearly that God has a heart for everyone around the world. They may live life differently, their day to day may be different, they may go through different challenges and different struggles, but when you get the chance to praise God alongside them and serve God alongside them, it's amazing, and it really is a taste of a world where God's reign and lordship is perfectly recognized and desired, it's a taste of, it's a glimpse of heaven, being with people from all around the world, praising God. It's what scripture foreshadows over and over and over again, a time and a place where all voices, people of every tongue, are praising God for being Lord over all. And today we're gonna be in one of those scriptures that talks about that.

So if you wanna turn in your Bibles with me to Psalm 67, I'm gonna go ahead and read this passage. You can follow along on the screen. It says, "May God be gracious to us and bless us "and make his face shine on us, "so that your ways may be known on earth, "your salvation among all nations. "May the peoples praise you, God. "May all the peoples praise you. "May the nations be glad and sing for joy. "For you rule the peoples with equity "and guide the nations of the earth. "May the peoples praise you, God. "May all the peoples praise you. "The land yields its harvest. "God, our God blesses us. "May God bless us still so that all the ends of the earth "will fear him." Theologians say that this psalm, no other psalm captures more clearly and simply the grand vision that God is the God of all people and nations, that he wants all of them to embrace him, and that he wants his own people to mediate that blessing to the nations. This psalm sums up what has been God's heart from the very beginning. From before creation began, God's desires that the entire world, all of humanity, know and love him. But as we know, sin entered the world and drove a wedge between humanity and God. And then a plan was formed. And instead of doing everything all by himself, he provides opportunity and prefers that his own people partner with him in carrying out this mission to rescue people for him. This morning, as we continue in this Psalm, I want us to have the image of concentric circles and God's blessing and love starting from this epicenter of him. And as time goes on and through the work of his people, his love spreads farther and farther and farther out. That's what he had in mind. When he invites his people to partner with him, that their influence and work would make waves in this world for his kingdom.

We see this plan and heart reiterated throughout scripture, specifically through various covenants that God makes with his people. God had a rescue plan and he wanted his people to know of his plan and to keep hope and to keep faith, knowing that it's gonna take time, but I am doing something and I'm saving my people. One of the first covenants was with Abraham in Genesis 12. He says, "I will make you into a great nation," speaking to Abraham, "I will bless you, "I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. "I will bless those who bless you, "and whoever curses you, I will curse, "and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you." speaking about his descendants of Israel, and even farther down to Jesus himself. Again, think of those concentric circles. He then continues that promise generations later with Israel at Sinai in Exodus 19, when he says that Israel is gonna make them a kingdom of priests. The nation of Israel itself as a whole will function as intermediaries, as examples of holy righteous living between God and the rest of the nations. And then in the New Testament, Paul will again repeat God's heart in Romans one when he says, through him we received grace and apostleship to call all the Gentiles to the obedience that comes from faith for his name's sake. So throughout scripture, we see God's heart is for all people to know him. And because we strive to have a heart like Yahweh, we also should have a heart to see all people come to know him. And this Psalm speaks to that heart. We see in verses one through two, the people asking for God's blessing. May God be gracious to us and bless us and make his face shine on us, so that your ways may be known on earth, your salvation among all nations. They are asking for God's blessing. The first part is taken almost word for word from Numbers, the book of Numbers, one of the oldest poems in the Bible, where God gives the priests of Israel a blessing to speak over the nation. And while it's short and beautiful, it can be easy to take for granted the complexity and profound meaning of this poem. This blessing back in Numbers is linked to regulations of purifying camp. We have to remember that at this time, Israel is in the desert, having escaped Egypt by God's power and is heading towards the promised land. And God is making them into a nation. They're new to this. They're like, we've never been a nation before. We've just been in slavery. And so God gives them guidelines and directions of how to be a people. And this blessing, this poem, reminds them of their purpose, to be a light to the world, that they are holy and separated for God. This blessing invokes God's protection on his people. shows that God's permanent purpose is to bless the earth.

There's a phrase here that I love, the Psalmist beautifully write, "Make his face shine on us." Today, in today's culture, we miss out on the context. If we were living where we had kings and we would have to ever make an appearance in front of a king, there was a lot of power that that king held. And if you were to walk into that room and the king would not look you in the face, it would mean that you don't have the king's favor. And you're facing some kind of punishment, possibly even death. But if the king were to lift his head and look at you, then you knew that the king's favor was upon you. And that you would even possibly have blessing. So the people are asking that God look at them, bless them, God, we want your favor. They're likening God to light, shining mercifully and powerfully on the people. 'Cause when God smiles on his people, they can be sure that he will be gracious to them. He will deliver them from their troubles. He will answer their prayers and he will save them from their sickness, from their enemies, and from their sin. So we pray that same prayer today. We sing that same song. We desire for God's face to shine on us and we ask for his blessing, not just for us, but for the entire world. Verses three through five, we see the people envisioning God's blessing over all the world. May the people praise you, God. May all the peoples praise you. May the nations be glad and sing for joy, for you rule the peoples with equity and guide the nations of the earth. May the peoples praise you, God. May all the peoples praise you. We see a peoples whose heart are aligned with God, desiring that all the world know who God is and to have saving faith in him.

What the psalmist right here is also what John sees in Revelations, describing what he sees from people from every tribe, nation, and tongue, praising God. And what unites everyone is their love for God and being under his reign, that God is their king. And we see the psalmist acknowledge that only God can rule justly. Only God can perfectly reign with complete fairness and guide the nations to peace and prosperity. Again, think of those concentric circles. God blesses his people. His people represent him and bring others to God. Others come to know him and are blessed by God. And they in turn represent God and bring more people to him. And more and more as more people are blessed by him and experience God's love and salvation and realize God's lone ability to rule perfectly, they are led to praise God. In Hebrew, when things are repeated, it means it's very important. And so we see in this little section here, may the peoples praise you, may all the peoples praise you, God. God is repeated because he is the only one who can do this. And may all the peoples praise you is repeated because that is the most important and primary response that we have to receiving God's love and being under his rule is to praise him. So we see them praise him for who he is and what he does. In the last couple of verses, we see the people recognize God's blessing. It says, "The land yields its harvest, God. "Our God blesses us. "May God bless us still "so that all the ends of the earth will fear him." There is evidence that God does bless his people, and it's abundant. Israel was an agricultural people and so the abundance of food being such a clear, it was such a clear sign of blessing. Think of the Promised Land, what they're heading to in Exodus and as Israel's, they know that it's a land flowing with milk and honey. Now growing up in the church, I literally thought that it was like lava, like there's honey is flowing in the land and milk is like there's rivers of milk. And then as some time it clicked, I was like, oh, it's just a land full of lots of cows and bees. It's just tons of cows and bees and it's amazing. and it's great and God is plentiful there.

We're reminded throughout scripture that God blesses his people in small and in vast ways. And on the most basic level, we know that he sustains the very world itself. It says in Acts 17, "Life and breath and everything, Yahweh holds it together." These last couple verses are also a promise of better things to come. One scholar writes, "This psalm encourages us to pray, 'Let God who brings much out of little and distributes it in love bring such blessing on us as to make us in our turn the blessing of the world.'" Again, those concentric circles. You got to realize that you are a part of that. Somewhere along the line, God reached you, and he wants to bless you, and he wants you in turn to bring other people to him so he can bless them. This is a part of God's plan, part of his rescue plan to save the world. And we have the chance to partner with God as he brings salvation. This is why missions are so important. We can partner with God here and abroad around the world. Jesus commands his followers, which includes you. And really it's a command, but it's also an invitation. He says, as Vivek mentioned in the Great Commission, Matthew 28, "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me." This is Jesus speaking. "Therefore, go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to obey everything that I've commanded you, and surely I am with you always, even to the end of the age." Repeated throughout Scripture over and over and over again is God's heart for the nations. And what we read this morning in Psalms was meant to be sung, was meant to be a blessing over Israel that serves as a reminder of who God is and what He does and therefore who we are and what we are to do.

So as we close today, I just have one question for you to consider this week. How is God inviting you to partner in His kingdom work around the world? How is God inviting you to partner in His kingdom work around the world? I'm going to give you a couple numbers here. There are 195 countries in the world. There are 17,281 people groups. 7,000 of them are unreached. There are also 7,000 languages spoken in the world, also not spoken, including sign language. God has a heart for all of them. To hear his truth, hopefully in their native tongue, and to be rescued from sin and death. So have those people in mind as you hear that invitation by Jesus and the great commission to join in Yahweh's rescue plan, how can you get involved? Are you able to give your time? Are you able to give your resources? Are you able to actually go abroad and serve and meet these people and bring Jesus to them? Great thing about living here in America is that they're here too. Are you able to just go outside in your neighborhood in the city and meet them and bring Jesus to them. And can you pray for them? Will you pray for them? How are you going to be a part of the outward movement of those concentrant circles of God's kingdom? God wants your participation in the glorious redemptive work that he's doing. And so will you join?

Would you guys pray with me? God, thank you for sending your son, for rescuing us. And for the fact that we have your scriptures to show us that that's been your plan all along. You've been working that plan and that plan is still ongoing to rescue people from their sin. And God, thank you for that invitation that we could join you in that by prayer, through resource, through giving our resources, whatever it may be. But I gotta pray that through your spirit you would speak to us, you would guide us in how we can work with you to spread your kingdom. to have other people know you. We wanna be a blessing to others. We've surely received your blessing and we wanna give you all the praise and in turn, we wanna turn around and bring people to you. So guide us through your spirit how to do that. In our day-to-day lives, who to partner with to do that all around the world. Thank you God for reaching us, for saving us. We love you God, we give this to you. Amen.