June 12 2015
Still no recording. Out tech Guy was out sick.
“Be self-controlled and alert. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. Resist him, stand firm in the faith, because you know that your brothers throughout the world are undergoing the same kind of sufferings.
And the God of all grace, who called you to His eternal glory in Christ, after you have suffered a little while, will Himself restore you and make you strong, firm and steadfast. To Him be the power for ever and ever, Amen.”
1 Peter 5:8-11
Last week, we held a service of consecration in which we rededicated ourselves, and this building and ministry to the glory of God. The service probably had many elements that were new to you. I hope they caused you to pause and reflect, and, maybe rededicate yourselves personally as well to the work of Christ.
We based our service on the writings of Nehemiah. Nehemiah was a special person. He held, what we might consider a really cushy job as cup bearer to the King of Persia. He was Jewish, but he had not chosen to return to Jerusalem with the other exiles once they were given the go ahead.
I said his job was cushy. Let me explain it to you. Basically, he not only ate with the king, but he ate before the king to make sure that the food was safe to eat. Just imagine having a royal feast set down before you! Ah, that smells good! You grab a knife and fork and dig in before anybody else because you are supposed to! MM-mm! (This is really good!) And the king is keeping his eye on you to make sure you are having a good time! I could enjoy being well paid for such a job!
That’s what Nehemiah got to do. He was the one who served the king after he had taste tested the food himself, not only to ensure that it was palatable, but also safe. Now, I’m sure you can see that there is one slight drawback to a job like this. If the food was poisoned, your job was over, and, your life was probably over too, but, in the meantime, you were fed and treated very well. The king would want to treat you very kindly so that he would stay on your good side too. He needed to be able to trust you so he could believe you wouldn’t slip the poison in after you had enjoyed yourself. It was an interesting relationship, no doubt, with mutual benefits for both. Certainly, that life would be preferred to living in a burned out ghost town with no conveniences like Jerusalem had become.
Well, as we learned last week, Nehemiah had a change of heart when he learned about all the hardship that the Jewish people were enduring who had chosen to return to the homeland. He offered himself in, what we have to see, truly was a sacrifice, a drastic change in his lifestyle, to go back to Jerusalem and help encourage and organize the people to begin to rebuild. And he enforced that sacrifice by not taking advantage of the people he was governing to live like a king, as other governors before him had done.
He also endured the pain and suffering of much opposition and ridicule from some of the enemies of his people, but, eventually, he was successful. The wall was built and the people had a huge celebration and rededication service to mark the event.
Nehemiah also had the people listen to the reading of the law, or what we would think of as the first five books of the Bible. Do you realize that for some, this may have been the first time they had ever heard it all the way through? When the people heard the priest, Ezra read about How God had chosen Abraham, their ancestor and how they had become slaves in Egypt, but God set them free and how God had given them rules to live by, they were moved to tears when they realized how far short they had fallen as God’s chosen people.
As a result, Nehemiah was able to get them to pledge to do better than their forefathers had done. He convinced them to agree in writing to honor the Sabbath, keep their marriages pure and take care of the temple and priests and Levites through their tithes, offerings and other sacrifices. They signed a relational covenant! And theirs inspired ours.
Emotion was high in those days! Everybody felt very strongly that they would do better this time. They had learned their lesson. They believed that God did indeed mean what He said when he said he would punish those who were disobedient. They didn’t want to live through another exile. They wanted to be the people of God!! And, in the moment, they really meant it!
So, how did they do? Well, sadly, in Nehemiah 13, twelve years later, we find out. Soon after finishing the work in 444 BC, Nehemiah had returned to his cushy job for the king, but he must have had that same question in his own mind because he got permission to leave once again, to go back to Jerusalem in 432 BC to check things out for himself.
He found Tobiah, one of the men who had actually been taunting the Jewish people as they built the wall, living in a room in the temple! He found people treating the Sabbath just as any other day of the week with open markets all over the place. Instead of being careful in marriage, the people were marrying those who followed foreign gods, as their predecessors, and as Solomon himself had done and the children couldn’t even speak the Hebrew language so that they could learn about God. Why, even one of the priests, himself had a foreigner for a wife, which was a big “No-No”, at the time and Nehemiah had to force him to leave the priesthood altogether! How had everything fallen apart so quickly?
What went wrong? Well, I can’t say for sure, but I believe, knowing people as we all do, what went wrong may have been something like this. The people relied on an emotional commitment. They had experienced an event, rather than committed to a daily walk with their God. Satan knew that the people had had a glorious time, worshiping God and making all sorts of commitments to Him. Satan, bided his time. He waited for the emotional fervor to fade, as he knew it would, it always does. He maintained his prowl, his vigilance. He could afford to do so.
Soon, all that emotional stuff would just be a fond memory. He watched as the people went back to their routine lives, lives that had never built in a personal need for a quiet time, time to read God’s Word, time for prayer, for being still and knowing that God is God. Satan knew that they had had a moment, and to him, that was okay, because he also knew that they were choosing not to feed their souls. He could wait while they slowly starved themselves and then, he would simply move in and resume his position as overseer.
We’ve all been there. We’ve all made New Year’s resolutions, started new weight loss programs, new exercise routines. “This time,” we tell ourselves, “This time it will work! This approach suits me really well! I like this new approach to reading the Bible! I can handle this one! I’m going to do it this time!” However, without that same resolve to make ourselves do, every day, we soon fall behind and, often stop trying altogether. The emotion is gone and the commitment isn’t as fun or easy without the emotion. Or, we say, “Well, I’ve been doing really good for a week, one day off won’t hurt.” Soon, the one day becomes many days and soon, we’ve lost the fervor altogether because emotions were never intended to keep us committed, they were always only intended for the moment. That’s why they can’t be trusted!
The whole scene reminds me also of the spiritual fervor and events surrounding the attack on our World Trade Center. Suddenly the churches were filled with people praying for safety, praying for God’s help, turning to the Lord and recommitting to serving him better. Soon though, the politicians responded, the war in Iraq was launched. No more attacks on US soil, all seemed well, and church attendance dropped off again, back to where it was before.
Satan knows how much we rely on our emotions and our emotional experiences to keep our commitments. When Disney tells us to, “Trust our hearts,” satan smiles. He knows what God says about the human heart. In Jeremiah 17:9, God says, “The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure.” Satan knows, that for the most part, humans don’t believe that. He knows how we don’t like discipline. He knows how we struggle to follow Christ because he makes it hard and he knows how easily we can fail at it.
I say this as a caution. I know that we had a wonderful service last week. We, as a congregation have voted to do the hard work of the vitality pathway. It isn’t easy and it is hard to keep pressing on. Some of it is uncomfortable and some of it is downright scary. We’re dealing with change. We’re dealing with letting go. We’re dealing with new beginnings. We need to stay close to God always!
Have you seen those films of the wildebeest herds that are running along and there is always a lion or tiger off in the distance, just waiting to make his move? Does he head toward the center of the pack? No, he targets the weakling. Satan is the same way with us. Now think about it, how does a wildebeest become weak? Is there any likeness to how we become weak? Perhaps illness causes the animal to stop eating and drinking. But in our case, we just stop eating and drinking! We seem to think that we can survive from mountain top experience to mountain top experience on the fumes of our emotional fervor. We are sadly mistaken.
The mountain tops are nice, but our Christian walk is daily. To get from one mountain top to the next we have to go through the valley. To survive that trek we need daily nourishment. Our most important food is the bread of life, God’s Word! It is daily choosing to set aside time to be in His word and commune with Him, to take in that spiritual nourishment that feeds our souls to keep us strong against Satan’s schemes. This is why the beatitude says, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness.” God wants us to have a good appetite for what he offers us in Christ!
But you can’t just start reading God’s Word either. Where you start is with faith in Jesus. Reading the Bible may lead you to faith. That’s great. Faith comes by hearing, hearing the real message in what you are reading or listening to! When you hear and believe the gospel message that Jesus is the only way, the only truth and the only life there is to live, when you put your faith and trust in him and let him fill you with His Spirit so that you are born again, then you are found in Christ. Now your hunger and thirst for the bread of life really comes alive!
When we are in Christ, however, satan isn’t just dealing with a religious person relying on emotions to keep them going to church. When we are a Spirit filled Christian, then satan is dealing with the One who has already won the victory over him. If we are in Christ, we step into that victory as well and we do not need our emotions to compel us to be with God because we long to be with Him as often as we can. If you find nourishing your soul a drag, could it be that, perhaps you are not filled with the Spirit. I can guarantee you that, if you are filled with the spirit, the Spirit longs to commune with the rest of the trinity. Spirit longs to be in the Word that He Himself created! Prayer is His food just as you may enjoy feasting with your family!
For those of you who did read through the book of Nehemiah, did you happen to notice in chapter 3, when the wall was beginning to be built, that Nehemiah had the people work on the wall near their own homes? Now, why do you suppose that might be? For one thing, of course, it’s just the human tendency to work harder when it’s your own interest involved. Working on the wall near your own home would mean that your own home would be safer. That same principle can apply here. If you are developing your spiritual life, the first person to benefit is YOU! You are making your part of this church, your part of this body more secure. You are making the area around YOU safer because you are better rooted in Him.
Did you also, perhaps notice the sacrifice of those in chapter 11 who chose to give up the more comfortable life of living in the villages, which were clear of debris and probably much nicer to live in? They were inspired by the Spirit to sacrifice all that comfort and change to staying in Jerusalem to keep the work that had been done secure. We are all called to some kind of sacrifice, not just our money, but ourselves to keep this ministry going. We can’t just let it be done by the few or by others. All of us need to step up. We need to be willing, not just in the emotional moment, but when the emotion fades. The commitment still needs to be there to keep gaps in our wall from appearing.
May he not find breaks in our wall. Instead, may he find us remaining vigilant! May he not find a weak straggling Christian among us that satan would devour, because we are all eating at the feast prepared for us in God’s Word! May God find us faithful at our posts and may satan not find a place to make a foot hold to come in and damage what God has begun. I’m calling all of you to action. Be of good courage! Be committed, not just with an emotional “YES!”, but with your feet on the floor and God’s word in your hand, with His praise on your lips and Christ leading all of us along the way to victory!
Still no recording. Out tech Guy was out sick.
“Be self-controlled and alert. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. Resist him, stand firm in the faith, because you know that your brothers throughout the world are undergoing the same kind of sufferings.
And the God of all grace, who called you to His eternal glory in Christ, after you have suffered a little while, will Himself restore you and make you strong, firm and steadfast. To Him be the power for ever and ever, Amen.”
1 Peter 5:8-11
Last week, we held a service of consecration in which we rededicated ourselves, and this building and ministry to the glory of God. The service probably had many elements that were new to you. I hope they caused you to pause and reflect, and, maybe rededicate yourselves personally as well to the work of Christ.
We based our service on the writings of Nehemiah. Nehemiah was a special person. He held, what we might consider a really cushy job as cup bearer to the King of Persia. He was Jewish, but he had not chosen to return to Jerusalem with the other exiles once they were given the go ahead.
I said his job was cushy. Let me explain it to you. Basically, he not only ate with the king, but he ate before the king to make sure that the food was safe to eat. Just imagine having a royal feast set down before you! Ah, that smells good! You grab a knife and fork and dig in before anybody else because you are supposed to! MM-mm! (This is really good!) And the king is keeping his eye on you to make sure you are having a good time! I could enjoy being well paid for such a job!
That’s what Nehemiah got to do. He was the one who served the king after he had taste tested the food himself, not only to ensure that it was palatable, but also safe. Now, I’m sure you can see that there is one slight drawback to a job like this. If the food was poisoned, your job was over, and, your life was probably over too, but, in the meantime, you were fed and treated very well. The king would want to treat you very kindly so that he would stay on your good side too. He needed to be able to trust you so he could believe you wouldn’t slip the poison in after you had enjoyed yourself. It was an interesting relationship, no doubt, with mutual benefits for both. Certainly, that life would be preferred to living in a burned out ghost town with no conveniences like Jerusalem had become.
Well, as we learned last week, Nehemiah had a change of heart when he learned about all the hardship that the Jewish people were enduring who had chosen to return to the homeland. He offered himself in, what we have to see, truly was a sacrifice, a drastic change in his lifestyle, to go back to Jerusalem and help encourage and organize the people to begin to rebuild. And he enforced that sacrifice by not taking advantage of the people he was governing to live like a king, as other governors before him had done.
He also endured the pain and suffering of much opposition and ridicule from some of the enemies of his people, but, eventually, he was successful. The wall was built and the people had a huge celebration and rededication service to mark the event.
Nehemiah also had the people listen to the reading of the law, or what we would think of as the first five books of the Bible. Do you realize that for some, this may have been the first time they had ever heard it all the way through? When the people heard the priest, Ezra read about How God had chosen Abraham, their ancestor and how they had become slaves in Egypt, but God set them free and how God had given them rules to live by, they were moved to tears when they realized how far short they had fallen as God’s chosen people.
As a result, Nehemiah was able to get them to pledge to do better than their forefathers had done. He convinced them to agree in writing to honor the Sabbath, keep their marriages pure and take care of the temple and priests and Levites through their tithes, offerings and other sacrifices. They signed a relational covenant! And theirs inspired ours.
Emotion was high in those days! Everybody felt very strongly that they would do better this time. They had learned their lesson. They believed that God did indeed mean what He said when he said he would punish those who were disobedient. They didn’t want to live through another exile. They wanted to be the people of God!! And, in the moment, they really meant it!
So, how did they do? Well, sadly, in Nehemiah 13, twelve years later, we find out. Soon after finishing the work in 444 BC, Nehemiah had returned to his cushy job for the king, but he must have had that same question in his own mind because he got permission to leave once again, to go back to Jerusalem in 432 BC to check things out for himself.
He found Tobiah, one of the men who had actually been taunting the Jewish people as they built the wall, living in a room in the temple! He found people treating the Sabbath just as any other day of the week with open markets all over the place. Instead of being careful in marriage, the people were marrying those who followed foreign gods, as their predecessors, and as Solomon himself had done and the children couldn’t even speak the Hebrew language so that they could learn about God. Why, even one of the priests, himself had a foreigner for a wife, which was a big “No-No”, at the time and Nehemiah had to force him to leave the priesthood altogether! How had everything fallen apart so quickly?
What went wrong? Well, I can’t say for sure, but I believe, knowing people as we all do, what went wrong may have been something like this. The people relied on an emotional commitment. They had experienced an event, rather than committed to a daily walk with their God. Satan knew that the people had had a glorious time, worshiping God and making all sorts of commitments to Him. Satan, bided his time. He waited for the emotional fervor to fade, as he knew it would, it always does. He maintained his prowl, his vigilance. He could afford to do so.
Soon, all that emotional stuff would just be a fond memory. He watched as the people went back to their routine lives, lives that had never built in a personal need for a quiet time, time to read God’s Word, time for prayer, for being still and knowing that God is God. Satan knew that they had had a moment, and to him, that was okay, because he also knew that they were choosing not to feed their souls. He could wait while they slowly starved themselves and then, he would simply move in and resume his position as overseer.
We’ve all been there. We’ve all made New Year’s resolutions, started new weight loss programs, new exercise routines. “This time,” we tell ourselves, “This time it will work! This approach suits me really well! I like this new approach to reading the Bible! I can handle this one! I’m going to do it this time!” However, without that same resolve to make ourselves do, every day, we soon fall behind and, often stop trying altogether. The emotion is gone and the commitment isn’t as fun or easy without the emotion. Or, we say, “Well, I’ve been doing really good for a week, one day off won’t hurt.” Soon, the one day becomes many days and soon, we’ve lost the fervor altogether because emotions were never intended to keep us committed, they were always only intended for the moment. That’s why they can’t be trusted!
The whole scene reminds me also of the spiritual fervor and events surrounding the attack on our World Trade Center. Suddenly the churches were filled with people praying for safety, praying for God’s help, turning to the Lord and recommitting to serving him better. Soon though, the politicians responded, the war in Iraq was launched. No more attacks on US soil, all seemed well, and church attendance dropped off again, back to where it was before.
Satan knows how much we rely on our emotions and our emotional experiences to keep our commitments. When Disney tells us to, “Trust our hearts,” satan smiles. He knows what God says about the human heart. In Jeremiah 17:9, God says, “The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure.” Satan knows, that for the most part, humans don’t believe that. He knows how we don’t like discipline. He knows how we struggle to follow Christ because he makes it hard and he knows how easily we can fail at it.
I say this as a caution. I know that we had a wonderful service last week. We, as a congregation have voted to do the hard work of the vitality pathway. It isn’t easy and it is hard to keep pressing on. Some of it is uncomfortable and some of it is downright scary. We’re dealing with change. We’re dealing with letting go. We’re dealing with new beginnings. We need to stay close to God always!
Have you seen those films of the wildebeest herds that are running along and there is always a lion or tiger off in the distance, just waiting to make his move? Does he head toward the center of the pack? No, he targets the weakling. Satan is the same way with us. Now think about it, how does a wildebeest become weak? Is there any likeness to how we become weak? Perhaps illness causes the animal to stop eating and drinking. But in our case, we just stop eating and drinking! We seem to think that we can survive from mountain top experience to mountain top experience on the fumes of our emotional fervor. We are sadly mistaken.
The mountain tops are nice, but our Christian walk is daily. To get from one mountain top to the next we have to go through the valley. To survive that trek we need daily nourishment. Our most important food is the bread of life, God’s Word! It is daily choosing to set aside time to be in His word and commune with Him, to take in that spiritual nourishment that feeds our souls to keep us strong against Satan’s schemes. This is why the beatitude says, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness.” God wants us to have a good appetite for what he offers us in Christ!
But you can’t just start reading God’s Word either. Where you start is with faith in Jesus. Reading the Bible may lead you to faith. That’s great. Faith comes by hearing, hearing the real message in what you are reading or listening to! When you hear and believe the gospel message that Jesus is the only way, the only truth and the only life there is to live, when you put your faith and trust in him and let him fill you with His Spirit so that you are born again, then you are found in Christ. Now your hunger and thirst for the bread of life really comes alive!
When we are in Christ, however, satan isn’t just dealing with a religious person relying on emotions to keep them going to church. When we are a Spirit filled Christian, then satan is dealing with the One who has already won the victory over him. If we are in Christ, we step into that victory as well and we do not need our emotions to compel us to be with God because we long to be with Him as often as we can. If you find nourishing your soul a drag, could it be that, perhaps you are not filled with the Spirit. I can guarantee you that, if you are filled with the spirit, the Spirit longs to commune with the rest of the trinity. Spirit longs to be in the Word that He Himself created! Prayer is His food just as you may enjoy feasting with your family!
For those of you who did read through the book of Nehemiah, did you happen to notice in chapter 3, when the wall was beginning to be built, that Nehemiah had the people work on the wall near their own homes? Now, why do you suppose that might be? For one thing, of course, it’s just the human tendency to work harder when it’s your own interest involved. Working on the wall near your own home would mean that your own home would be safer. That same principle can apply here. If you are developing your spiritual life, the first person to benefit is YOU! You are making your part of this church, your part of this body more secure. You are making the area around YOU safer because you are better rooted in Him.
Did you also, perhaps notice the sacrifice of those in chapter 11 who chose to give up the more comfortable life of living in the villages, which were clear of debris and probably much nicer to live in? They were inspired by the Spirit to sacrifice all that comfort and change to staying in Jerusalem to keep the work that had been done secure. We are all called to some kind of sacrifice, not just our money, but ourselves to keep this ministry going. We can’t just let it be done by the few or by others. All of us need to step up. We need to be willing, not just in the emotional moment, but when the emotion fades. The commitment still needs to be there to keep gaps in our wall from appearing.
May he not find breaks in our wall. Instead, may he find us remaining vigilant! May he not find a weak straggling Christian among us that satan would devour, because we are all eating at the feast prepared for us in God’s Word! May God find us faithful at our posts and may satan not find a place to make a foot hold to come in and damage what God has begun. I’m calling all of you to action. Be of good courage! Be committed, not just with an emotional “YES!”, but with your feet on the floor and God’s word in your hand, with His praise on your lips and Christ leading all of us along the way to victory!
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