If today’s blog is different, its because it is. These are my notes from today’s gathering.
A sermon series from http://www.myvillagechurch.com
God is not taken off guard on our bad days. Normally our actions in these moments, days, and seasons, is to act as if God has forgotten us. What this often reveals about our hearts, is not Gods insufficientcy, but our low view of his sufficienty.
V1-3
Background of the story
The capitol city of Israel is Jerusalem. The story revolves around a group of exiled remnant jews who have been living 900 miles away from their home, pushed out by invading forces. Generations pass and another invading force takes over the previous invading force and allows the people to go back home. This leads us up to the events of the book of Haggai, the events in Nehemiah take place about ninety years after that. Nehemiah has gained some favor and level of power within the invading forces, and is in a place of authority in a house of royalty. He peeks into Jerusalem to check out how the remnant of Israel are doing, and finds out that his country men and their city is in shambles.
The key to understanding Nehemiah is to gauge his reaction as a mirror of Christ up against our reaction today when we live, breath, and see the distress of our cities.
V4-6
Nehemiah hears of the state of his city. God burdens the right people at the right time and place to accomplish his purposes, and here he burdens Nehemiah for his city. Nehemiah responds by weeping, praying and fasting for his people.
Point one. He goes to God before he goes to work. Nehemiah is about to do work, he will be moved to action, but not before he goes to God first. The question for us then is ” Who or what do you turn to first in distress? ” Whatever or whomever you turn to is what you trust most. On a super small level, its like waking up and checking your phone to see who commented on your status from last night before praying to God. What you do first reveals what you trust most. So how do you deal in the moment to moment, where do you go first?
V6b-10
Secondly we see Nehemiah take the blame vs us who normally give blame. In the very first instance of sin in the bible we see Adam blame God for giving him the woman that caused him to sin. Nehemiah doesn’t blame the remnant for their state, he owns and takes responsibility for the sins against them and the sins they’ve committed. He doesn’t sit in his “ivory tower” and look down own them, which is what we always do, instead Nehemiah was burdened for them and moved to action. Do you own or blame? It was on them (the remnant), but Nehemiah puts himself right in the middle of their mess. The coward blames, when we blame we are cowards, the Godly man is burdened and moves to action.
V8-11
Point three. He confesses the greatness of God over the greatness of the problem. He reminds them of the word of God, that no matter how far off we go, God will bring us back. He doesn’t whine or complain about the greatness of the problem, but instead proclaims the greatness of God. We forget the greatness of God in the face of great problems. May we long to trust God this way.
Nehemiah is not the goal or the benchmark of faithfulness, and he is a good example and a challenge to us to grow and change, but in this book we are not the Nehemiah. We are the broken beat up and unable to remain faithful people stuck in a dying city.
Nehemiah is the compass who points us to Christ.
The Christ who was outside of our brokeness in a house of royalty, he looks down on us and puts himself in the middle of our situation, owns our sins that is not his own, and petitions the Father on their behalf, and begins the work to redeem a city and save a people.
May we be saved and the burdened for our cities like Nehemiah, and like him, may we get involved and point people to their true and only hope in Christ.
Theist the Bearded 