Nehemiah: A Great Restorer Great Lives of the Bible In May 1935 Griffith J. Griffith s vision of building an observatory for LA residents and visitors to enjoy became a reality. But after 90 million visitors and 70 years, the observatory was in dire need of restoration. From 2002 to 2006, the Griffith observatory was completely rebuilt: it was lifted off it s foundation, made earthquake ready, restored to it s original grandeur and a basement facility was added that more than doubled the overall size of the building. Despite the restoration of the outside building to its original glory, the rebuilding and renovation made the observatory far safer, larger, more effective and more enjoyable than ever before. Just like public and private sources spent over 93 million dollars to renovate the Griffith Observatory, God spent an immeasurable amount of time, energy, and worth on rebuilding and restoring our lives. Today we re going to look at the amazing truth that repentance and new birth is just the beginning/intro/prelude of the great work God does in our lives! INTRO: Edwin & Jazmin Zane In the month of Nisan in the twentieth 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; 2 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, 3 but I said to the king, "May the king live forever! Why should my face not look sad when the city where my fathers are buried lies in ruins, and its gates have been destroyed by fire?" 4 The king said to me, "What is it you want?" Then I prayed to the God of heaven, 5 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 fathers are buried so that I can rebuild it." 6 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. 7 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? 8 And may I have a letter to Asaph, keeper of the king's forest, 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 upon me, the king granted my requests. - Nehemiah 2:1-8 NIV Setting: Solomon s great temple in Jerusalem is rebuilt and temple worship is restored. But the rest of the city is in ruins. Nehemiah hears about this and decides to do something about it. He approaches the King of Persia and asks that he, thousands of Israelites, and a vast supply of resources be given for the rebuilding of the great city Jerusalem, including the walls, gates, guard towers and key structures. 1
The life and works of Nehemiah could easily be overlooked and minimized to the untrained eye. But for the seasoned seeker of God and follower of Christ, Nehemiah gives us a great picture of God s ongoing work of rebuilding into our lives. Jack Hayford, in his book Rebuilding the Real You, quotes, The Book of Nehemiah was written about four and a half centuries before the birth and life of Jesus Christ, and yet the Holy Spirit, who is timeless, was making sure that we would have a vibrant portrayal of His work in human lives. I want to encourage you today that there s hope for the personal restoration for everyone, regardless of our past, God wants to and in fact is rebuilding and renovating and restoring our lives by His Spirit! Share story of Colleen (Palmer) The Holy Spirit (3 rd person of the Trinity) is described by Jesus (2 nd person of the Trinity) as The Helper. What does the Holy Spirit help with? Answer: Everything we could ever need in life. But more specifically, the Holy Spirit transforms us by the power of God He lives in us to rebuild and restore us to God s intended plan and purpose for our lives. Nehemiah is a true parable and metaphor of this truth: we can experience rebirth by the Holy Spirit and worship yet have so many areas broken down or burned in our souls. Once we re reborn, God begins the work of rebuilding us into the dignified, royal, self-controlled rulers he intended from the time of the garden of Eden! Do we need restoration? Every person has experienced some kind of personal damage or destruction: a broken heart, a wounded soul, disconnected relationships, debilitating health, shattered dreams, devastated finances, or a crushed career. Have you sensed the dilemma yourself? Are you born again, yet parts of your personality are a contradiction to the power of God you worship? Have you asked yourself: Why can t I shut depressive thoughts out of my mind? Why can t I shake my fears? Why can t I defend myself against temptation? Why do I feel worthless? We may not be totally broken down, burned or busted, but we all need some divine restoration work in our lives, hearts and souls! The starting place is to see both the need and the goal. Nehemiah gives us fresh hope that we can experience full restoration in Christ. And not when we die and go to heaven here, now, on this side of eternity! He wants to share his Kingdom, power and glory with us for us to experience it as his children! Nehemiah 2:17 Then I said to them, "You see the trouble (distress) 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." 2
The inhabitants of Jerusalem, the people of God, were living in distress and disgrace. Kind of like a tent city people and families living with no roofs tarps for roofs and tents for houses. Distress & disgrace two things that keep our lives in a perpetual state of ruin. Do you see the words trouble, ruins, burned and disgrace? That sums up humanity s fallen condition. Some call it depraved, some call it disgraced, some call it degenerated. But it s how we find ourselves after sin entered. The broken walls, gates and guard towers of Jerusalem at that time represent the burned, bruised, broken state of our unrenewed souls. Trouble + ruins + burned = disgrace (fallen) humanity It is a disgraceful & distressing to the cause and mission of Christ when God s children live in shame of the past, ruin from life s challenges and burned by relationships gone bad. Trouble + ruins + burned + Spirit-led rebuilding = dignity within humanity I m going to give you a few steps experiencing God restoring his kingdom in your life: Step 1: Partner with the Holy Spirit to rebuild your life It s one thing to have the temple rebuilt. It s another thing to rebuild the entire city so it can be lived in and enjoyed. So it is with our lives. It s one thing to experience rebirth but it s quite another to be restored by the Spirit and grace of God. Yet this is the process we Christians are in the middle of right now partnering with the Holy Spirit to rebuild and restore every part of our soul, every thought of our mind, every motivation of our heart. The net result is that whatever our past, however gifted our capacity at survival, virtually all of us badly need the Holy Spirit s restoring work in our lives. Jack Hayford, Rebuilding the Real You Too many people want God to do all the work or they try to do all the work. Our job is to partner with God. For God s restoration work to occur we need to be sensitized to our sin. This is the Holy Spirit s job, but we need to see it. Joyce Meyer said, Nobody can get set free from a problem until they are willing to admit they have one. As we admit our sin and confess it, it releases the Holy Spirit to help us become unchained from the clutching power of that sin and bad habit. (Maybe share something from your life) Just like Nehemiah could not rest until his people were taken care of and the temple rebuilt, so the Holy spirit will not rest until he sees transformation in your life. So partner with Him. Step 2: Take control of the gates of your life 3
Eliashib the high priest and his fellow priests went to work and rebuilt the Sheep Gate. Nehemiah 3:1 In the almost completed Jerusalem wall, there are ten gates mentioned by name. If these were breached, they would fail to rebuild the wall, so special care was made to make sure the gates were secure. Nehemiah knew whoever controls the gates, controls the city. One of the first steps of personal restoration is to rebuild the gates of our lives. City Gates control over what comes in and out. This metaphorically represents what comes in and out of our soul through our heart, thoughts, hearing, sight, mouth (speech) and taste. We re all God s sheep. The problem with sheep is that they ll injest just about anything stuff that s bad for them! We sheep of God have mouthgates, eye-gates, ear-gates, heart gates to control what goes in and out. Gates help bring quality control and security. Proverbs says, Above all else guard your hearts. This literally means above all guarding, guard your heart. More than guarding your schedule, your finances, your career, your relationships, above all guarding - guard your heart. A heart unguarded takes us down paths we don t want to go, leads to self-deception, and hinders transformation. For transformation to occur you have to watch and guard what goes into your heart, what your eyes see, ears hear etc. Also, They rebuilt and restored and renovated the city of Jerusalem by each family taking responsibility for a section of the wall and a main gate. We need each other in order to complete who God wants us to become. Don t withdraw. Don t isolate. If you do, you risk slowing the process of transformation. Get in a small group. Open up your life and transformation will happen. It takes the spiritual family of God to restore a person to Christ in all His kingdom, power and glory! Step 3: Work out what God works into your life...continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, 13 for it is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose. Philippians 2:12-13 Do you see the phrase: for it is God who works in you? We re not trying to do this thing alone. The Christian life is impossible without God s Spirit working in us. But since He is at work in us, we can work it out! Look at this: So we rebuilt the wall till all of it reached half its height, for the people worked with all their heart. (The people of God were working out their salvation in partnership with God, rebuilding their soul, restoring their heart and mind and emotions) But when Sanballat, Tobiah, the Arabs, the Ammonites and the men of Ashdod heard that the repairs to Jerusalem's 4
walls had gone ahead and that the gaps were being closed, they were very angry. Nehemiah 4:6-7 Do you see what is going on here? As soon as the people were half way in the rebuilding process, and showed determination and heart, the enemy became very angry - A restored Christian is a threat to the enemy. Some of you are making progress you re half way. Expect opposition once you commit to the restoration process. I also want to encourage many of us here today that we re well on our way we re in process by the Spirit we re in hot pursuit of God s plan! Keep going don t give up! The only way to lose is to quit. Don t stop don t just settle for I m forgiven. Press forward to I m being rebuilt and restored at every area of my heart & soul! Too many voices today are telling Christians that they can t overcome sin, break bad habits, be freed from addictions or have their marriages & other relationships restored. Sanballat & Tobiah represent spiritual forces of this world (the enemy) who d want us to stay bruised, burned, broken, ruined or destroyed (but barely alive). The people of God did not experience hatred, oppression and opposition until they started rebuilding the city. If you want to worship Jesus, that s fine. Everyone has a right to their own beliefs. But when Christians press on to rule & reign in life as the Kings Kid, opposition/oppression will happen. Work out what God is working into you. As you study the Bible, pray, meet with other Christians, worship together keep working it out! Step 4: Fight and Build Simultaneously 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. Nehemiah 4:17-18 Look carefully. What were they holding as they rebuilt the temple?. A trowel and a sword. If we re going to partner with the Holy Spirit and rebuild God s character in our lives, we ll have to work with one hand and war with the other! We ll have to build and fight at the same time. Some Christians try to just hold a trowel explain Other Christians just try to hold a sword explain Both need to be held at the same time in order to rebuild and be restored. There will always be a battle or the threat of a fight. Pastor Dave, I m just so tired of fighting. What s the alternative? Give in to the pressure and stop fighting or stop building. 5
When the enemy comes against you take out the sword of the Word and fight the Word is you most effective weapon. It s the way we win! Those who get the word deep in their heart, believe it, confess it, and act on it see the greatest transformation in their lives. The enemy can t stand against the LIVING ACTIVE word of God. Use God s word (sword) to fight: Fear God has not given me a spirit of fear Temptation Greater is He who is in me, than he who is in the world Self control The fruit of the Spirit is self control Doubt and unbelief In hope against hope he believed Romans 4 Step 5: Don t let fear or anything else stop you But I said, "Should a man like me run away? Or should one like me go into the temple to save his life? I will not go!" I realized that God had not sent him, but that he had prophesied against me because Tobiah and Sanballat had hired him. He had been hired to intimidate me so that I would commit a sin by doing this, and then they would give me a bad name to discredit me. Nehemiah 6:11-13 One last technique or tactic that the enemy uses to keep us from cooperating with God in our personal rebuilding and restoration is fear and intimidation. Fear of what others think. Fear of failure. Fear of our own life or future or fortune being torn apart. Explain preach this! So the wall was completed on the twenty-fifth of Elul, in fifty-two days. When all our enemies heard about this, all the surrounding nations were afraid and lost their self-confidence, because they realized that this work had been done with the help of our God. Nehemiah 6:15-16 It s been said that it takes about 7 weeks to break bad habits and start new ones. This is how long it took for God s people to break free and build back their lives. What about you? Do you believe God wants to not just save you but restore you and transform you? Partner with the Holy Spirit, protect the gates in your life, work out what God has worked in, don t allow fear to stop you, and use the Word to fight don t give up! Victory weekend- recommend small groups, open up your life, By a Carpenter mankind was made, and only by that Carpenter can mankind be remade. Desiderius Erasmus 6