The Vision Thing
Nehemiah 1
For weeks you heard a lot about vision. Then after some meetings, you didn’t hear about it. Now, for a couple of weeks you have seen these strange signs around the church. You are hopefully wondering what they mean. Well, today I hope to help you understand.
Some of you were in the meetings where we “worked out” the vision and you understand it better now. Some of you still do not understand vision.
>>>>That is OK. George H.W. Bush, (Daddy Bush) admitted that he struggled with what he called “the vision thing”.
That just proves one thing…You can get pretty far in life without understanding “the vision thing.”
But get this… You will not get very far in life or career or anything else without having “the vision thing.” George may not have UNDERSTOOD the vision thing…but he HAD a vision.
For the next several weeks you are going to hear MORE about vision… and particularly the vision of Gourdvine. You are going to be indoctrinated and brainwashed. Those are usually bad words… but they just mean you are going to be flooded with a deluge of information about what the vision IS, and how it will work.
Today will be the first in a series of sermons about vision in general and OUR vision in particular.
When I think of vision, I think of Nehemiah.
My sermons for the next few weeks are going to follow the book of Nehemiah.
>>>>Let me introduce you to Nehemiah.
In 597BC Jerusalem, the capital city of the Jewish people, surrendered to Nebuchadnezzar who packed the King and a few thousand Judean nobles and craftsmen off to Babylon as “hostages” to assure that the rest of Judah’s people would behave themselves. They did not and in 586 BC Babylon sent a second attack on Jerusalem. This time they completely destroyed the city’s walls, the citadel and the temple and carted off a second load of the Judean upper class. A few years later there was a third exile. In all, Babylon made off with about 30,000 of Judah’s best and brightest.
Their exile to Babylon was not like the exile to Egypt. They were not slaves and even retained their own Jewish community and faith. They had become prosperous land owners and businessmen.
Fast forward about 50 years. A new world power, Persia, is on the scene and they defeat the mighty Babylonians. Having no need for them, or any desire to use them, the Jews were allowed to return to Jerusalem. About 50,000 did.
Many did not because there was nothing to return to in Jerusalem. The economy was shot all to pieces. Their land and homes had been taken over by those of the lower classes who were left behind. The gates and walls were destroyed so there was no security and safety for their families. There was nothing that made Jerusalem attractive to some of the Jews. Those who did return were those who had not become prosperous in Babylon and they saw the return to Jerusalem as a new start and a chance to do better. Or they were those patriotic Jews who believed there was no place on earth like Jerusalem and were dedicated to its rebuilding.
One of those who stayed in Babylon was a man named Nehemiah. He had risen to a very high position in the Persian court. He was the cupbearer. He was the one who was in charge of the preparation and tasting of the King’s food and drink. He was a very trusted “right-hand man”.
He had no thought of Jerusalem. He thought only of his life in Susa. He was climbing the corporate ladder and had designs on an even better position. His roots were in Babylon, not Judah. His future was in Babylon, not in Judah. He did not even know anyone who lived in Judah.
Then one day, things changed.
>>>>“He was born in the summer of his twenty-seventh year, coming home to a place he’d never been before.”
That was how John Denver described his feeling as he saw the Rocky Mountains for the first time. How do you come home to a place you have never been before? I don’t know but it happened to Nehemiah.
Why was Nehemiah so broken by the plight of people he did not know and a place he had never been? ONE WORD… VISION. God wanted to give Nehemiah a vision for what God wanted to do. To have the vision, he had to have passion and a burden.
A vision without passion, is like a glove without a hand
like H2O without the 2
like an elephant without a trunk
>>>>Passion is the fuel that drives Vision.
God gave Nehemiah both.
I want you to notice something with me. Nehemiah gets the news of Judah’s plight in the month of Chislev. It is in the month of Nisan (not the car company) that Nehemiah confides in the King that he is broken hearted over Judah’s condition. Chislev would be the ninth month of the calendar and Nisan would be the first. That means it was 4 or 5 month between the time Nehemiah heard about Judah’s condition and the time the king noticed Nehemiah’s depression.
Why do I point that out. It is very important and makes my first point… Vision is a clear mental picture of a preferable future.
A man who is homeless and starving has a vision of him in a house eating a hot meal.
A man in prison has a vision of being released and returned to freedom.
A drug addict in a treatment center has a vision of living a normal life, with a job and home and family and NO DRUGS.
Vision is a clear mental picture of a better future.
But… to want a better future… you must first become dissatisfied with your present situation.
The gymnast on the gold medal platform does not dream of a better future… but the one who came in 4th does.
The man who lives in a mansion and has everything he needs does not need to dream of a better future… but the man who is living under a bridge does.
YOU DO NOT DREAM OF A BETTER FUTURE UNTIL YOU FIRST BECOME DISSATISFIED WITH YOUR PRESENT!!!!
Nehemiah was not dissatisfied with his present… he was the cupbearer for the king. He had it made. He was very satisfied. That is why he stayed and did not return with the others.
God had to first make Nehemiah dissatisfied.
You might think that a preacher wants to hear his flock talking about how good things are and how happy they are.
Well, we do like to hear that. We like to get pats on the back and have people tell us we are doing a good job.
EVERYBODY DOES!!!
But our job is to make people unhappy and dissatisfied.
I’ll bet you never thought you would hear the preacher say he wanted to make the church unhappy and dissatisfied.
But think about it… people who are satisfied and happy have no desire to change anything. They just want to wrap the situation up and put a bow on it and keep it forever.
People who are satisfied and happy NEVER HAVE A VISION FOR A PREFERABLE FUTURE.
They just become keepers of the status quo.
When you hired me, you did so because you believed I would make things better. Since I have been here, I have tried to make some things better, and I believe they are.
But I love to hear people talking about the problems we have. Like… no one to keep the nursery, like only a couple of youth, like no young families, like a few people having to do all the work and getting burned out.
Do I want our church to be like that? NO!!
Do I want people to be unhappy about those situations? YES!!!
Why do I want people dissatisfied? SO THEY WILL DREAM OF A BETTER FUTURE.
SO THEY WILL BE READY AND WILLING TO MAKE THE TYPES OF CHANGES THAT IT TAKES TO CHANGE THE SITUATION WE HAVE INTO THE FUTURE WE DREAM ABOUT.
Just as surely as necessity is the mother of invention… dissatisfaction is the ground from which vision springs.
It took four months for Nehemiah to become dissatisfied with the situation in Judah… to the point that he was willing to make some changes… serious changes… sacrificial changes.
He became so dissatisfied that he was willing to give up his cushy life in Susa, his opulent lifestyle, his security and everything that went with the great job.
He was a kind man who was saddened when he first heard. But though he was sad, he was not so sad that he was ready to give up his lifestyle. It took four months for him to reach that point.
Over the next few weeks you will hear about the Vision of the church and how that vision will be fleshed out. We will be talking about CHANGES to every part of our church.
If the change is in a part of the church where you are dissatisfied… you’ll be glad for the change.
If it is in an area where you are satisfied… you may not welcome change.
My prayer is that God will give us a Holy dissatisfaction in the areas where He wants to work.
I pray our dissatisfaction will affect us the way it did Nehemiah… make us ready to step out of our comfort zone and be willing to take chances for the good of others.
So… I am praying for God to make our church dissatisfied… with the status quo.
But I don’t want to end on that note. That would be very depressing.
Nehemiah got dissatisfied and then he did something else.
HE PRAYED v. 4
Understand this… it is important for us to be dissatisfied with some things if we are going to have any desire to make them better.
However… it is not good to get WHOLLY dissatisfied. If we do that we will just get negative. We will just see the bad things and that will make us lose hope and desire.
Nehemiah got dissatisfied… but he was dissatisfied WITH HOPE!!!
Read chapter 1 and the first 8 verses are all filled with dissatisfaction. So are the first verses of chapter 2.
But stuck right in the middle of the dissatisfaction are verses 9-11.. which are filled with hope
Verse 8 says, I know, you are faithful to your word and have to punish those who do wrong.
BUT… v. 9… I know that you are faithful and can be trusted to be just as passionate in blessing those who are faithful.
Verse 10 says, and we have the hope of being your special people, we have a special relationship and we have great reason for hope.
IN THE MIDDLE OF NEHEMIAH’S DISSATISFACTION IS HOPE!!!
That is what our church needs… HOLY dissatisfaction… a dissatisfaction that comes from God to help us see what needs to be made better.
We don’t want WHOLLY dissatisfied… people who just see the problems and say “Well, it has always been that way at Gourdvine.”
We have people in this community who are members of this church and have LEFT because they saw certain problems and just believed that the church was incapable of changing. They just believed those problems would always be here. And so they left.
They were WHOLLY DISSATISFIED
We don’t want that.
Many of those who did not return with Nehemiah chose not to return because they believed the problems of Jerusalem… the broken down gates, the burned out areas, the rubble, the poor economy, etc… would always be there.
They were WHOLLY DISSATISFIED
But thank God there were people like Nehemiah who had a HOLY dissatisfaction… a dissatisfaction that had hope that things could and would be better.
They had HOLY DISSATISFACTION WITH HOPE
Praise the Lord… I don’t think any church can ever pray for anything greater than HOLY DISSATISFACTION WITH HOPE
Nehemiah had 1. HOLY dissatisfaction
2. HOPE
And the third thing we see in Nehemiah was PRAYER.
His HOLY dissatisfaction caused Nehemiah to ask God to give them a preferable future
His HOPE caused him to be willing to step out and work for change because he believed change was possible.
Nehemiah made his plans to return to Jerusalem and rebuild. He recruited as many to go with him as would go.
There were two reasons some chose not to go.
1. Some were not dissatisfied and dreamed of nothing better.
2. Some were dissatisfied, but had no hope that things would ever be any better.
We are about to embark on a great adventure. We are going to step out and trust God to do a great thing through us. We are going to follow God in starting some things, maybe stopping some things and in making some things better.
We have a hope that three years from now, our church is going to be bigger and better because of what God is going to do.
I know some of you are still wondering what all of this means. You still don’t see the vision.
When Nehemiah left Susa he had not told a single person what he planned to do (2:12) It is not until 2:18 that he tells them the vision and the plan.
Over the next couple of weeks we’re going to reveal and discover the vision.
Today, our need is three-fold…
HOLY DISSATISFACTION
HOPE
PRAYER
I’m going to invite all of you to come to the front… right here at the steps or the front pews… TO PRAY
Pray that God will give us HOLY dissatisfaction WITH HOPE
And we are going to need you to commit to much prayer as we move forward.
