A country preacher sold a mule to a friend, and told him the mule was trained to go when the rider said "Praise the Lord," and to stop when the rider said, "Amen." The buyer mounted the beast and commanded, "Praise the Lord," and the mule shot off like a rocket. The startled rider panicked. "Whoa!" he screamed. The mule was headed straight for a cliff, "Whoa! Whoa! Whoa!" At the last second he remembered the minister’s instructions. "Amen!" he shouted, and the mule screeched to a halt right at the edge of the cliff. As the new owner peered over the precipice, he wiped his brow and sighed, "Praise the Lord."...
As Christians we have developed a language all our own. The trouble is that sometimes we know what we’re saying and nobody else does. The other danger is that sometimes we don’t fully understand the impact of the words that we are saying. Today is our first official Sunday together. Some people would say it is a time of renewal. That today represents a new beginning. Understanding of course that good things have happened here in the past. But rather than merely asking for a new beginning my prayer would be that there is a revival that has already started here at Madison Baptist and that it will continue until we see God move in ways that only He can.
As I was talking to God about what the first sermon series should be on He said Nehemiah. There are a lot of things that are interesting about picking the book of Nehemiah to preach from for our first series together. The first is that this is the book that Norm first preached on 33 years ago. I didn’t know that when I planned this but I think it indicates that this book contains a message that God has for the people who meet in this place.
Nehemiah is the story of a people coming out of exile they had spent their time wandering around a bit. I believe that all of us can relate to that right now. As a church Madison has wandered a bit during the past couple of years wondering what the future would hold as Norm announced his intent to retire and then ultimately his retirement. I can tell you personally that Linda and I have wandered a bit for the past few years as we served faithfully in a church but in the background God was beginning to call us here. As individuals many of us are wandering as our nation is in a period of insecurity, not just financially but also spiritually. As our world and circumstances change many people begin to question where is God. But God is where He has always been. He is on His throne in complete control. This time of trouble will pass, God will see His people through, it did not surprise Him and the next one won’t either.
During this time of change, I don’t think that it is any coincidence that God has led us to look at the book of Nehemiah, it is the story of a people coming out of exile. Now some of you may have read Nehemiah in preparation for this series and you may be a little surprised to that we’re actually starting in the book of Ezra, but I think it is difficult to tell the story of Nehemiah without looking at the story of Ezra. You see Ezra was the priest and Nehemiah was the general. One laid the foundation of the temple and the other rebuilt the walls of the city. God worked in both men together to achieve what he needed to get done. So if you want to tell the story of one then you have to tell the story of both of them together. When you look at them the books of Ezra and Nehemiah are a call to revival. Think about how far down the people were, they had lost everything, even the walls of their city were torn down, the temple was destroyed, they were sent into exile. This tactic was done so that the nation would never reform, that never again would their be a people who called themselves the nation of Israel. As far down as these people were, God was going to call them back, He was going to restore them to their place and the worship of and a relationship with Him. The message for us is that no matter how far down we may be, no matter how far away it may feel like God is, if He can restore these people, He can restore us.
We tend to think that revival is a time of evangelism, when people come to know Christ for the first time, and sometimes that what it is, but that is not always what it is. Revival is an not simply an outbreak of evangelism but a reawakening of the heart of God’s people to pursue the heart of God. See the root word of revival is revive, to bring something back. A revival is not just about people outside the church it is about turning the hearts of the people inside the church back to God.
At the center of this recorded revival, and perhaps any revival, was a return to the worship of God. The center of worship for Israel had been the temple, the temple housed the ark of the covenant, the temple is where sacrifices were made, the temple was the center of worship and it had been wiped out. As God calls His people back, the first thing they did was to lay the foundation of the temple and build an altar so that they could worship God all over again.
So what about us? I’ve only been here a short time, but from what I’ve observed Madison is a church that knows how to worship God on a Sunday Morning, and I’m sure that many of you do through out the week. But for the Jews worship was more than something they did when they all got together. For the Jews the temple was the place that they went to worship and the temple was the center of their lives. They put the temple in the middle of their community, and they put it on a hill so that when they looked up during the day there was the temple at the center of their lives. It was supposed to call them to worship.
It sounds great, but it didn’t work they still rebelled, they still sinned, why? Because the temple is not what was supposed to be at the center of their lives, God was. So what is worship, worship is not singing. Singing can be worship, but worship is not limited to singing. I found this definition of worship – reverent love and devotion. Notice it is “reverent love” this goes beyond love as we normally think about it, those of you who are married or have been in love, think about how focused on the other person you were when you first met, then add to that devotion, that is what worship is.
Worshiping the Lord is about putting all of our focus on God, and doing it with all of our devotion, in other words worship is being so focused on God that we can’t think about anything else. In fact I want you to write this down, the result of worship is that we put our focus on the things of God rather than our own agenda. You know when you’re in trouble? When God moves in a powerful way around you or around your friends and family and all you get out of it is something to complain about. God moves in such a way that everyone else is praising God and you’re saying “Yeah, but.” When God moves in our midst we should be in such awe of Him that whatever it is we think we have to fear fades into the background.
This is a warning here at Madison. This week many of you have come to me with your idea’s and dreams for the ministries here. All of them were great and it is a wonderful thing when the people of God dream dreams of God things. This has been a good week in that regard and my prayer is that those ideas and dreams will continue to flow. But I want you to understand that we can’t do every idea. We’re going to look at everything, we’re going to do some things and what we’re going to do we’re going to do well. If you have an idea or a dream and we don’t do it now, don’t be offended, it doesn’t mean it was bad, it means that we felt led to do something else for now. Get behind what it is that God calls us to do with your focus on him. That is the path to success not just for you but for Madison Baptist Church.
Look at our passage, these people are coming back to the land that they were promised by God in a way that only God could do. They had decrees from the most powerful king in the world at the time saying they could be there. Most importantly they knew they were seeing the fulfillment of a promise of God. Their return and success had been prophesied decades before. Isaiah 44:28, “Who says of Cyrus, ‘He is My shepherd, and he shall perform all my pleasure, saying to Jerusalem, ‘you shall be built,’ And to the temple, ‘Your foundation shall be laid.’” How big is God? He is big enough that even as He was sending His people into exile, He already knew how He was going to bring them out of it. He already knew when He was going to bring them out of it. God’s love is so big that even as His children turned their back on Him, He was planning how to restore them to the land of promise that He gave them.
Ezra 3:1-3 records part of that fulfillment, “And when the seventh month had come, and the children of Israel were in the cities, the people gathered together as one man of Jerusalem. The Jeshua the son of Jozadak and his brethren the priests, and Zerubbable the son of Shealtiel and his brother, arose and built the altar of God of Israel, to offer burnt offerings on it, as it is written in the Law of Moses the man of God. Through fear had come upon them because of the people of those countries offered burnt offerings on it to the LORD both the morning and evening burnt offerings.”
If God is that big, then why were the people afraid? . They forgot just how big God is and that the first person that we should worry about offending is God. Forget what everybody else thinks, and forget momma, if God isn’t happy, no body is happy. I believe that at times we are guilty of either focusing on the love of God too much or the fear of Hell. God is a God who moves in the real world right now. But we seem to relegate Him to moving in the future or being a big, divine teddy bear.
See I think we have paid too much attention to stories like when Elijah went to hide in a cave, God came by in the wind, and fire and the storm, but God talked to him as a still small voice, God just whispers to His people. Well that is true sometimes, but I think we need to remember that when Job got rebellious when God finally had enough of Job demanding an answer that God did speak out of the storm, and when God spoke Job couldn’t be quite fast enough. If the people had remembered to fear the Lord, then they wouldn’t have been afraid of anyone else, because if they put God on His throne in their minds, then they would have realized that it didn’t matter if people didn’t want them to come back, what God wants to happen happens. They were afraid of the people around them because they had forgotten to be afraid of God. When we forget to fear the Lord we fear everything else. Why are some people afraid of change, because they don’t fear God enough. We must respect Him enough to realize that since He is in charge then we have nothing to fear except for Him.
For the children of Israel forgetting to fear the Lord was a costly thing. See when we ask the question why were they sent into exile the answer we think of is sin. The sin of Israel that resulted in exile was not, drunkenness, fornication, or greed, it was idol worship. Think about it. Look at the life of David, dude was slime, murder, adultery, womanizing, he wasn’t the greatest husband in the world, David was a bad guy, but He feared the Lord, when Israel forgot to fear the Lord, He sent them into exile. Look at what God defined as idol worship, “Destruction is certain for my rebellious children,’ says the Lord, ‘You make plans that are contrary to my will. You weave a web of plans that are not from my Spirit, this piling up your sins.” What was God so upset about, that the people of Israel were putting their agendas ahead of God.
Focusing on our agenda rather than the movement of God is idolatry. What does that look like here? It’s when we look at the task ahead of us as a church with fear rather than faith. We see that there are fewer people here then before and wonder how strong we are as a church. We see that just a few years ago First Baptist Church closed and some people wonder if we are next. But what we need to be focused on is what God wants to do through us to reach people for Him. God wants to grow this church and He has a plan. We need to seek Him, find what He wants and then do it. If we do that there is nothing to fear, because we won’t have a problem of fear, we’ll have a problem of where to put all of the people. There’s a simple rule that’s true for every church in the world, regardless of size. You’re either growing or your dying. Let’s focus on how we can reach people for God.
The people of Israel forgot to fear the Lord, they forgot to focus on His path so they were sent into exile, even as God called them back they still didn’t understand who God is so they still were afraid. Why were they afraid? It’s real simple, they were afraid because they had forgotten to fear the LORD. If we forget to fear the Lord we will fear everybody else. It is time as a church to remember that we have been called to be a people who love each other, and serve together to bring honor to God, a place where there is room for only one agenda, whatever it is that God wants.
Notice something about the people of God, yes they were afraid of everyone else, but they built it anyway. How did they get it done? They did it together. “The people gathered together as one man to Jerusalem.” Agenda’s a dangerous, because they create division, when God moves in His people, He brings them together. The people were afraid, but they knew what God wanted to do, and from deep down underneath all of that fear, underneath the brokenness of exile they found a faith that caused them to come together and begin to realize a God sized dream. Let’s make Madison a church that is so united and so infected with the worship of God that when people walk in the door they want to keep coming back, not because of the music or the preaching but because the spirit of love is so prevalent in this place, that they want to be a part of it. A place where our love for each other is so strong that people see it and want what we have, how about being a place where when someone stumbles our concern is for them rather than what we can say about them. That is a vision a place where we are united not just to win people to Jesus to do it through showing His love and grace to the world.
How does this happen? They worshipped God and not the Law. Notice this, it is a very important distinction, they “Built the altar of the God of Israel, to offer burnt offerings on it, as it is written in the Law of Moses the man of God.” Notice they worshipped God according to the Law, not the law itself. You ever no somebody who felt it was ok to rip somebody, but as long as they used the language of God it was ok? “God, I really hate this person so please punish them for the crime of existing, amen. Lord why don’t you answer my prayer, really punish them.” Next statement, “I don’t feel the presence of the Lord.” Listen you can pray as hard as you want, you can quote scripture if you want, but it you are praying something contrary to the will of God, He isn’t going to say yes, unless it is to punish you.
When Jeremiah was prophesying and warning the people of their coming exile and calling them to repent, there were people going around and in the name of the Lord claiming that God was going to deliver them. You can use all the language of God you want, but if you want it to be right, it better be in line with His agenda, because that is the one that is going to happen. Realizing that God is in charge and we are not is the start of humility and for God’s people, the path to growth begins with humility. When we humble ourselves no matter where we are God can begin to work in us, and God is so big, He can do amazing things for us.
Look at what God has promised, this is the essence of the new covenant. Ezekiel 36:25, “I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean, I will cleanse you from all your impurities and from all your idols.” God promises to make us clean.” God promises to make us clean. Whatever it is that you need to give to God He will take away and make you clean, it may be a critical spirit, it may be that person that you have hated for years, those things are wrong, but God will take it away and replace it with love. Maybe it’s something deeper, maybe you’ve been critical because you don’t want anybody to look at your life and see what you’ve done, so you’re critical of everyone else thinking then they won’t look at you, whatever you’ve done when you give it to God He makes it clean so that no one can say anything, remember if you fear the Lord, nothing else matters. Maybe you’re not critical at all, maybe you’ve wondered away from God in other area’s, there is sin and guilt in your life, there is pain, when you give it to God, He makes us clean. God takes away our sin, our guilt, our shame, He took all that stuff to the cross with Him and He won the right to leave it there for us.
Look at the next verse, “I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.” This is an amazing promise. God promises to give us a heart that follows His heart. What I mean by that is a heart that can feel what He feels. I was talking to a girl recently right after she accepted Christ she said to me, “I feel happy all over does that make sense.” Oh yeah, I hope we all remember and know that feeling, when you’ve made a commitment to God and feel His presence so closely that you can’t explain it. Something happens to us over time though, I won’t say it is all due to our agenda’s sometimes it is just the business of life, but we lose that feeling, and pretty soon even when God moves powerfully around us, we don’t even flinch, we don’t feel anything, our heart has become stone, it is so hard that we not only lose the wonder of God but the joy of our relationship with Him, but when that happens and we turn to Him and say God, I want to feel you again, He takes our heart of stone, and gives us a heart of flesh, a heart that can feel Him again.
Then He gives us the third promise, “And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws.” God will make us live a holy life. We can never be good enough to live the way that God wants us to live, we can never in our own strength be holy, be pure like He is. But the good news is that we don’t have to be, first God takes away our sin and our hurt and makes us clean, then if our heart is our or becomes hard when we turn to Him He will take away our heart of stone. After He gets those two things established in our lives then He says, I will make you holy. We get so caught up in following the rules or worrying about if everyone else is following the rules, we judge each other so hard, and yet that the third thing on the list. Listen if you’re here and you’ve let a fear of not being good enough stop you from accepting Christ as God. You would be a follower of Christ, but you just don’t know if you’re good enough, you don’t have to be, God will give you strength in His time and with His power. The God who knew that He would use Cyrus to bring His people out of exile before Cyrus was even born, knows how He can give you the strength to live your life today. All you have to do is ask for His help. You don’t need to worry about what anyone else thinks or says, God is the only one who matters and He wants to bring you out of your exile and into life with Him today. He wants to take away your heart of stone and let you feel what He feels. He wants to take away your past and make it clean.
