Long Branch Baptist Church
Halfway, Virginia; est. 1786
Tuesday, June 12, 2007
Enter to Worship
Prelude David Witt
Meditation Psalm 30:1 – 5
Invocation Michael Hollinger
*Opening Hymn #705
“It is Well with My Soul”
Welcome & Announcements
Morning Prayer [See Insert]
*Hymn #541
“The Joy of the Lord is My Strength”
*Responsive Lesson [See Right]
*Hymn #408
“How Firm a Foundation”
Offertory Mr. Witt
*Doxology
Praise God from whom all blessings flow / Praise Him all creatures here below
Praise him above, ye heavenly host / Praise Father, Son and Holy Ghost. Amen.
*Scripture Nehemiah 8:9 – 12
Sermon
“My Sediments Exactly”
Invitation Hymn #737
“Like A River Glorious”
*Benediction
*Congregational Response
May the grace of Christ our Savior / And the Father’s boundless love
With the Holy Spirit’s favor / Rest upon us from above. Amen.
* Congregation, please stand.
Depart To Serve
RESPONSIVE LESSON
My child, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, or lose heart when you are punished by him;
For the Lord disciplines those whom he loves, and chastises every child whom he accepts.
For even when we came into Macedonia, our bodies had no rest, but we were afflicted in every way—disputes without and fears within.
But God, who consoles the downcast, consoled us.
Titus told us of your longing, your mourning, your zeal for me, so that I rejoiced still more.
For even if I made you sorry with my letter, I do not regret it.
(though I did regret it, for I see that I grieved you with that letter, though only briefly).
Now I rejoice, not because you were grieved, but because your grief led to repentance;
For you felt a godly grief, so that you were not harmed in any way by us.
For godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation and brings no regret, but worldly grief produces death.
For see what earnestness this godly grief has produced in you, what eagerness to clear yourselves, what indignation, what alarm, what longing, what zeal, what punishment!
At every point you have proved yourselves guiltless in the matter.
So although I wrote to you, it was not on account of the one who did the wrong, nor on account of the one who was wronged, but in order that your zeal for us might be made known to you before God.
In this we find comfort. Our heart goes out all the more to you, as he remembers the obedience of all of you, and how you welcomed him with fear and trembling. I rejoice, because I have complete confidence in you.
Heb 12:5-6; 2 Cor 7:5-13, 16
Title: My Sediments Exactly
Text: Neh 8:9-12
MP: We must be in the Word of the Lord regularly to renew our joy.
FCF:
Outline:
- Johnstown
- Ignorance
- Sorrow
- Joy
- James Eads dredging the Mississippi
I think it’s safe to say that whoever came up with the expression “Ignorance is bliss,” didn’t grow up in Pennsylvania around 1889.
A bit to the southwest of Altoona, the South Fork dam held back a lake called Lake Conemaugh. The rich and wealthy of the day – everybody from Andrew Mellon to Andrew Carnegie – used to escape the hustle and bustle of Pittsburgh by going to their private club – the South Fork Hunting and Fishing Club. It was a nice enough lake – about 2 miles long and a mile across, 60 feet deep. At the far end of the River, there was an earthen dam that was more than 70 years old.
When that dam was constructed, they had actually done their job quite well. The engineers even created a spillway over to the right hand side for flood control, so that when the rains came, water would go around the dam instead of over top. The dam was thick, but the engineers knew how powerfully corrosive water can be. If water went over the top of the dam, it would begin to erode, eat it away, and the dam would fail. That’s why it was so imperative that the spillway be kept functional.
But if I know one thing about my condition and the human condition in general, it’s this. In the spectacular, I’m ready. I don’t easily fall into obvious and splashy sins by choice. Regular maintenance is my problem. It’s the little things. I have never cheated on Susan and don’t intend to start. But do you know how easy it is just let that relationship wither? To take her for granted? And don’t even get me started on my relationship with the Lord. No, regular maintenance is much harder to keep up with. It’s far easier to do the massive spring cleaning than it is to do the daily chores.
And so it was at the South Fork Hunting and Fishing Club. It was such a small job – but it kept not getting done. Slowly, over the course of many years, that spillway just kept getting silted up – every year, a little layer of dirt, a few leaves, and eventually, the spillway was as high as the dam.
Then, the spectacular happened. It started raining on May 28th. For two days, they got several inches of rain. And then, on the 31st, it came down in buckets. The U.S. Army Corp of Engineers later estimated up to 10 inches of rain fell in just 24 hours. Once that happened, it was just a matter of physics. The water overtopped the dam and began eating away from both sides. It only took a little bit, and then, the dam completely gave way. Two miles by 1 mile by 60 feet of water came barreling down the valley. At every bridge, the water could pile up, gather more debris, and then come rushing down with even mightier force.
When that wall of water hit Johnstown more than four square miles was simply engulfed and added to the mix. More than 2200 people in its way were killed – One in three so badly torn apart that their bodies couldn’t be identified. It wasn’t until the third day that the Red Cross could even make it in. And when they did, it was the worst natural disaster to have hit the United States to that point.
None of us sets out to be a murder or pedophile or some heinous villain. But we all have the regular task of dealing with the sin in our lives. In most cases, we can hold back the truly cataclysmic outbreaks. But without regular maintenance, we’re all just heading for disaster. When sin enters our lives, it may or may not be the things in our lives that suffer, but absent the Word of God to regularly keep us cleaned out, if nothing else our joy is bound to be stopped up.
For the last few weeks, I’ve been touching around a few phrases in this story in Nehemiah, but I haven’t really touched on the story itself. As far as Bible study goes, that’s been a failing. You see, there are two ways to read any text – devotionally as I’ve been doing for the last few sermons, or study in which we look at the piece as a whole. This morning, as we end our series in this passage, I’d like to actually do some study rather than devotion. And if we do, I think we’ll see a pattern emerge in how we deal with sin and keep our joy running pure and clean as a mountain stream. This morning, as we read through the passage for the last time, I’d like you to identify two reactions to the Word of God.
But before we do that, we need to know the context in which this passage has been placed. I haven’t been paying much attention to that, because, frankly, the historical setting is fairly basic. You’ll probably remember from Sunday School, that Moses led the Hebrews to Canaan, then Israel became a kingdom, and eventually, that Kingdom was split in two and conquered by the Babylonians. When we read Daniel, we talked about the reactions people had to being conquered by the Babylonians. Well – time has moved on. Everybody was in Exile, until finally the King gives this guy Nehemiah permission to rebuild Jerusalem. It isn’t easy, but he finally gets the job done. There’s only one problem – after 70 years without a Temple, without a King, without the Torah, the people really don’t know what it means it be a Jew.
For 70 years, they’d been eating whatever they wanted; they’d been unconcerned about how they treated one another; and if there wife or their brother or their sister was doing something clearly outside of the will of God, they just said, “Hey – live and let live.” That’s not my problem. They’re living in the Land – the most important thing a Jew can do – but they weren’t acting like it, they weren’t reading their Bibles.
Ignorance
And, if you don’t read your Bible, stuff just starts to build up. Attitudes, Bad Decisions, sin: all of the things that keep us from understanding the beautiful plans God has for our lives just start to accrete: nothing spectacular – just the everyday life that falls short of the glory of God. It’s like the plaque on your teeth – if you don’t brush, you get cavities and bad breath. Absent a brush with the Word, our lives begin to stink.
It usually isn’t out of malice or bad intent – it’s just a natural consequence of being in ignorance. The reason why people say, ‘Ignorance is bliss,’ is because you really just don’t pay attention. You don’t know what you’re missing out on. You don’t know that your sin is holding you back from the riches that you deserve as God’s chosen heir.
The real problem with ignorance is that things still build up. And eventually, Truth catches up. The question is: what will you do when that happens? How will you handle it?
Nehemiah knew that Truth was going to catch up with Israel eventually. Frankly, he figured it was better to know sooner so that they could deal with the Truth. And so, he asks the priest to read the Law. In fact, the people had changed so much that they didn’t even understand the language that was being used.
I’m not talking about metaphorically – like they couldn’t understand concepts like purity or compassion or holiness – I’m saying, they didn’t understand the words. It’s a little bit like trying to read something out of the King James, where our words have changed. Actually, it was probably even worse than that – more like trying to read Luther’s translation of the Scriptures – the words just didn’t make sense.
Now, in our day, we have the words. But, if we don’t read them, if we don’t know them, tell me, is it really any difference? As Mark Twain once said, “The man who will not read goods books has no advantage over the one who cannot read.”
Sorrow
So, why is it then that we don’t read? Well, if we’re honest, we may not always like what we find.
When they started reading, the first reaction was natural – to weep. They saw what their lives had become, and they cried. They had sorrow and remorse for what the daily toil of living had taken on their souls. They were convicted by the Word. They just needed to read, and it was all there. But that doesn’t mean they liked it. And, if I’m honest, I don’t always like what says either.
We may find things like, “Cherish the wife your of youth,” when we’d rather being salivating over the picture on the Internet. Or, maybe we just want to let her watch the kids a little longer.
Or, we might read things like, “Love your enemies.” Sounds nice in principle, but do we really want to be praying for Osama? The Iraqis? Politicians on the wrong side of the fence?
Or, we may even tremble with Hosea [10:2], when we ready of the glory of the Lord departing from the Temple, because of the idolatry of setting up any desire – no matter how right it might seem or how good it might feel – because of setting up an idol over what Christ recommends. Did you know it’s possible to value a Church over Christ? Think about it and you’ll know what I mean.
Frankly, I see any of these things, and my first reaction is one of sorrow, one of weeping. I like being charge, I like not having my boat rocked. But if it means settling for anything less than what God intended, is it worth it?
If a church is going to settle for anything less than being the pure, holy light that God called it to be, is it worth it? No. God has too much in store for us to settle for anything less than being imitators of Christ. No music, no fellowship, no anything is worth the surpassing riches of knowing Christ and being what he wants us to be.
Joy
Short of this book, we’ll never know what that perfection really is. But when we start to apply what we read in this book, we begin overflowing with life and joy and peace. Just look what happens when we do:
When church puts away the sins of the past and is cleaned up made ready as the bride of Christ, he strengthens it, he grows it – he calls that church worthy of being his own.
When we pray for our enemies we learn to love and to be loved. The petty conflicts that divide us and turn us sour against one another melt away.
When we love our wives or our husbands, we are literally pre-figuring what heaven will be like. Where we know even as we are known.
The job of the Word is simple: It reminds us of the way things are meant to be. Churches grow, people love, and God is honored. Anything less is sorrowful. Anything like it is joy.
It’s really pretty simple – just set aside a time each day where you’ll read, and read until you understand it. Then, do it. It isn’t rocket science.
And this is our joy. Not some head-in-the sand hope that if we just don’t see the messiness, if we just ignore how far we’ve fallen short, that maybe it won’t matter. Joy comes not from not knowing but from being what the Word of God says we should be. Pure and Holy, acceptable unto Him. Living sacrifices that are our natural act of worship!
We can be channels of blessing, if only we are willing to be transformed by the Word of God.
James Eads
In the 1800’s, the fledgling city of New Orleans was facing an environmental disaster even worse than Katrina – but only a few people even knew it. Steamboat operators and merchant ships of all kinds would wind their way down the mighty Mississippi to unload their goods, but the further south they’d get, the shallower the river became. As early as 1852, the U.S. Congress knew how important it was to keep the Mississippi clear, so they began paying $75,000 a year – back then – to keep the channel open. Every so often, someone would dredge, but the river would silt back up soon after they dug. The Mighty Mississippi just had that much dirt. Eventually, scientists realized the full danger. If the silt would make it just close enough to the surface, the entire river would stop and change course – down the Alatchafalaya River. New Orleans would cease to be on the river – just on a very long bayou. Without the commerce, without the fresh water, New Orleans would sink: not only commercially, but even physically. Without the floods, New Orleans was sinking nearly 3 inches every 100 years. Without floods to replenish the soil, it would have sunk into the ground further than Holland. Key to keeping New Orleans alive and above water was to keep those channels open. But how to do it?
This was the situation when Col. James Buchanan Eads came to Congress in 1873. During the Civil War, he had built over 100 ironclads for the United States. After that, he built the first major bridge across the Mississippi at Saint Louis. He was an engineer with a reputation for getting things done. But his scheme was so crazy that even a man of his reputation was questioned.
His idea was simple. Rather than trying to dredging the River or building levees that would only make it worse, he proposed building jetties into the river. These were like little dams that didn’t stop water so much as to direct it. He would deliberately put obstacles into the course of the river – with all the navigational pain that it entailed – in order to let the River clean itself.
The Congress was skeptical, but then he made them a deal. He offered to pay for it all up front out his own wealth. Congress just had to give him permission. And, if he succeeded, Congress would pay him $10 million dollars.
It was a gamble, but it paid off.
By putting barriers and constraints on this mighty river, the water was able to dredge its own channel by itself. By simply redirecting the water into cleaning itself, renewing itself every day, the channel stayed clear and open. On July 8, 1879, the Army Corp of Engineers measured the channel. It had stayed clear to a depth of 28 feet. Buchanan had succeeded and became an even wealthier man.
Our lives are lot like the Mississippi. We are full of life and roll along. But in the day to day hurry and bustle, we build up sin. Silently at first, but over time it’s noticed. The little accretions of pride and sloth and lust and gluttony – they all block us from the overwhelming riches of being God’s chosen children.
If you just try dredge out that sin, you’ll only get so far. Only by allowing your life to be redirected by the Word of God will you be renewed each day. Sometimes, it’s painful. Other times, it seems illogical. But the very things that seem like obstacles to our joy are actually only renewing us so that we can stay lively and fresh.
But only happens if we will submit ourselves to this book. Just a few minutes a day, seeing how we need to be transformed to conform closer to his image. We can have channels of blessing flowing like the mighty Mississippi, if only we’ll submit to his Word. Would you pray with me?
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http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/eads/filmmore/index.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Buchanan_Eads
http://www.mvn.usace.army.mil/PAO/history/MISSRNAV/federal.asp
http://en.structurae.de/persons/data/index.cfm?ID=d000008
http://www.answers.com/topic/james-buchanan-eads
