Well, the Ten Commandments have certainly been in the news, haven’t they? The big thing down in Alabama, taking out the monument of the Ten Commandments and so some people are all excited and interested about the Ten Commandments and would like to put them back. But, you know, the removal of that monument is just a symptom of the deeper disease. The disease will not be healed by the return of that monument. It might make us all feel better, but the disease is the same. Americans aren’t interested, by and large, in what God has to say. But Americans aren’t the only ones who aren’t interested in what God has to say. For centuries, for millennia, people have been disinterested in what God has to say. Even the people to whom those Ten Commandments were given in an awesome display of thunder and lightning and smoke and trumpet blasts, rejected those Commandments over and over and over again. The rejection of God’s Word, the rejection of God’s principles, His plans, His Commandments, is really just a symptom of a deeper disease which is the rejection of God Himself. "We will not have You rule over us. We will do our own thing." As The Humanist Manifesto says, "There is no god who will save us. We must save ourselves."
In what is a wonderful summary of Israel’s history, here in chapter 9 of Nehemiah, there is one particularly telling statement. Speaking of the forefathers of the people of Nehemiah’s time, they said, "They were disobedient and they rebelled against You. They put Your Law behind their backs." "Put it behind me. I don’t want to see it. I don’t want to read it. I certainly don’t want to obey it. It bothers me. It makes me nervous. And so, I’ll put it behind my back." And, because of that decision, the once proud kingdom of Israel (it used to be a major power in the Middle East) was reduced over the centuries to a small group of slaves living under the control of a foreign empire. Look at what they say at the end of this chapter. "But see, we are slaves today, slaves in the land You gave our forefathers so they could eat its fruit and other good things it produces. Because of our sins, its abundant harvest goes to the kings you have placed over us. They rule over our bodies and our cattle as they please. We are in great distress." That was the state of the once proud nation of Israel -with their armies of millions, their cities of splendor, their fantastically powerful worship of God, their trading, their economic power – all gone.
Nehemiah was more than a wall-builder. We’ve seen over the last few weeks how Nehemiah came to build a wall, a wall that was nothing but rubble; a wall that had to go up in the face of tremendous opposition. Nehemiah was more than just a builder of walls. Nehemiah was a man who was passionate about returning God’s people to God. He was passionate to right what had gone so terribly wrong for the benefit of those people who were slaves to a foreign king and whose money went to him. For a nation or a person or a group who are heading, and oftentimes unknowingly, into the terrible danger of deprioritizing God, which is exactly what landed the Israelites in the state they were in, the decisions into which Nehemiah led these Jews are very, very instructive to us.
We talk a lot about revival in this country. "Oh, Lord, send a revival!" Well, chapter 8 of Nehemiah is what a revival looks like. We would like to have a revival that was whiz-bang, fast, flash, power, everybody a super-Christian tomorrow morning. Well, that’s not how it works. Let’s see the steps, the decisions that these people made. And notice, these people that made these they were led by Nehemiah, yes. He laid a foundation. But, you’ll notice that it’s the people who have grabbed a hold of this idea and are taking it. First decision they made: they committed to rediscovering the truth that they have lost.
We’ve seen in the last couple of weeks, the Jews of Nehemiah’s day were living in poverty. They were defenseless vassals of a foreign nation. They had even had to ask permission to rebuild that wall. They couldn’t just build it. "Hey, let’s rebuild the wall." "Hey, okay!." They had to get permission from Artaxerxes and even financial help from him to rebuild the wall. But on October 2, 445 b.c., that small group of people looked up where they used to see sky and now saw a wall. Twenty-five, thirty feet high (no one ever gives the height), a thick, strong, gated wall that they had built. And only 6 days after that, on what was the New Year’s Day of the Jewish nation on October 8th, 445 b.c. look what it says. Verse 1 of chapter 8, when the seventh month came and the Israelites had settled in their town, after everything was cool, "All the people," verse 1, "assembled together as one man in the square before the Water Gate." And look at this, "They told Ezra the scribe to bring out the book of the Law of Moses which the Lord had commanded for Israel." You notice that? They all gathered together in this square and said, "We’re gonna have church! Where’s the preacher? Get your Bible and get out here!" That’s a little unusual. "All the people assembled as one man" – you see, this was a grass roots movement. This was not what we commonly call ’top down.’ Nehemiah had laid a foundation, but it was the people who said, "We’ve had enough of living like we’ve been living for the last multiple decades." "They told Ezra." And what did they tell him to do? They told him to get the Book and get out there.
Now, Ezra’s an interesting guy. Ezra had been in Jerusalem for 13 years. He had been sent there for the purpose of teaching the people the truth, the Law. But, this is the first statement in Scripture in those 13 years where he actually read the Word of God to them. He doesn’t do it in the book of Ezra. In the book of Ezra, he basically tears his clothes and sits down appalled at their sinfulness. But this is the first time. And they told him, "Ezra, get out here. Get off your robes. Get out of your ash pile. Stand up in front of us and tell us the truth. Read us the Word." They chose the right source, not necessarily Ezra, but the Word. And so he did it. Verse 2 says, "He got up before the assembly which was made up of men and women and all who were able to understand." So, I figuring that maybe they had a children’s church for the rest of them, maybe from 8 years old or 10 years old on up. Even the teenagers were there and I don’t think their parents dragged them. They were ready to hear it.
Verse 5 gives me goosebumps. "Ezra opened the book. All the people could see him because he was standing above them and as he opened it, all the people stood up." All the people stood up. Standing up is a sign of respect. When I was a kid, we were taught, that when a woman came into the room you stood up. And if the chair you just vacated was the last one, then that’s where she got to sit and you stayed standing up. But, it’s respect. And they all stood up as a clear response of their hearts. Their hearts were so desirous that they could not stay down. They stood up as one man to hear the reading of God’s Word. And they stood there, it says, a long time. They stood there from daybreak to noon. Verse 3, "He read it aloud from daybreak till noon." They stood there for 6 hours. It was a response of the heart. And they listened to it, and as they listened to it being read and as they listened to it being explained to them by these other people whose names I didn’t list. Look at verse 9, as they were listening in, "Then Nehemiah, the governor, Ezra, the priests and scribes and the Levites who instructed the people said to them, ’This day is sacred to the Lord your God. Do not mourn or weep,’ because (for) all the people had been weeping as they listened to the Words of the Lord." Remember, they hadn’t heard the Law for hundreds of years. They were living there in Jerusalem and the temple had been rebuilt, and maybe there were sacrifices going on. But, in terms of instruction about the way to walk and the way to live, they’d heard nothing. And when they heard it, of course, the discrepancy between the way they were living and the way God had called them to live was just huge. And they wept over the distance that they had come because they had been deprived and had deprived themselves of the Word of the Lord.
Sometimes people just rise up. Sometimes people are just sick of it. I remember standing in Prague in the early 90s, standing in a square where in 1989 there had been a mass gathering of hundreds of thousands of Czechs (at that time they were Czechoslovakians), who had in response to the crumbling of the Soviet Union and the fact that the Russians were no longer going to be able to grind them down with the boot of military force, gathered in that square and said, "We don’t want to be communists anymore. We want to be a democracy. We want to have free enterprise. We want to be free." These people in Jerusalem were saying, "We don’t want to be slaves to ignorance. We want to know the truth so we can be changed by it." They responded with their hearts. They acted on this desire by seeking out the Word of God.
You know what, you are here this morning because you want to know the truth and I honor you for that. And you children who are here this morning, teenagers, your parents brought you to church because they value the truth for you. They want you to know what God says. We can put all the monuments of the Ten Commandments in all the civic buildings in the nation and it won’t be a better state than if the parents of America would do what you’re doing this morning, bringing your children to learn the Word of God so they may walk in it and be free of the tyranny and slavery of sin.
Rediscovering the truth of God’s Word can be painful. That’s the second part of this decision they made. The second decision that they made was to acknowledge their sinfulness. There’s something about the confrontation with the Word of God that is painful. The Bible says, in Hebrews, that the Word of God is quick, and powerful and sharper than a two-edged sword. It goes into our hearts and divides and points out areas that we are pursuing that aren’t appropriate, that aren’t right – behaviors that we are doing, attitudes that we have, words that we speak. And that kind of confrontation is painful because maybe we like what we’re doing. Or maybe we don’t like it, but we don’t like to acknowledge the fact that we are living outside of God’s plan. The person who wants to be revived, the person who wants to rediscover the truth, will at some point need to acknowledge their sinfulness. Chapter 9, verse 1, this is a few weeks later, "On the twenty-fourth day of the same month, [not quite three weeks] the Israelites gathered together, fasting and wearing sackcloth and having dust on their heads." You see, they hadn’t been allowed to before. They had been discouraged from mourning during the original reading because it was a day of joy, as they said, "This is a day sacred to our Lord. Do not grieve for the joy of the Lord is our strength." Verse 10 of chapter 8. There was a great excitement that the people had made this decision, that they were moved as one man, one person to pursue God. And that was reason for great joy. Now, in the pursuit of God and in the rediscovery of truth, there was this pain. When as they heard the words of the Law, they wept. "I’m not doing that," or "I am doing that." And God says, "Stop doing it." "I’ve been doing it for years. And my father did it and my grandfather before him." They acknowledged their sin. They confessed not only their own sin, but look at verse 2 (second half of the verse), "They stood in their places and confessed their sins and the wickedness of their fathers." You know what they were doing? They were seeking to distance themselves from their sinful heritage. They were saying, "You know what? Here’s what we were given. Here’s what came down from our fathers and our forefathers. And we’re saying to you right now, God, that we recognize that what we were taught was wrong." That’s not easy. Some of these generational sins and attitudes that come out year after year and generation after generation of hatred, of greed, of lust, of evil of all kinds. And what these people were doing, they were making a break with the past "We recognize that the way we were raised and the way our parents were raised was just wrong. And now that we know better, we confess these things as wrong." And for 3 hours they listened to the Law being read and then for 3 more hours, verse 3, "quarter of the day in confession and worshipping the Lord their God." I love that.
Sometimes in the Bible someone will be speaking and he will say, "the Lord your God." The children will say to their father, "the Lord your God." Did you hear what it says there? This is the Lord their God. There was an identification. There was an embracing of God, even though it was painful, even though it required them to admit that they’d wasted years of their lives. All of their lives, up to this point had been wasted. They were saying, "No more. The disobedience stops here." And the rest of this chapter is a review. It is their speaking their prayers of their sinful, hard-hearted history.
When we involve ourselves in confession, there are several things that are going to happen, none of them easy, but all of them vitally important. There’s going to be an acknowledgement of our fallenness. This is the way we are. Not as an excuse. "Well, this is the way we are. We can’t help it." But, "This is the way we are. This is how we are born. This is how we live. This is our natural state. We’re going to confess to You." It’s very important for us to be able to admit this, to overcome our pride. If we think for some reason, we can come to God on our own and bring all of our works and say, "Here I am, Lord. I’m going to bring these works to You and I know You’ll be satisfied with me," we’re right back to the beginning. We can never move toward Him. The first step toward God is an acknowledgement of my own fallenness, of my own need, of my own inability to ever come to God.
When we confess, we recognize God’s right to rule over us. We recognize that He is God and we are people. He is the Master, we are the servant. He is the Judge, we are the person in the dock. We are the defendant. We recognize God’s rule over us. But, beyond that, we also recognize that God’s ways are best for us and that His plans and commandments and purposes and principles are a sign, a proof of His wonderful, wonderful love. Because, what’s the alternative? The alternative is for God to tell us nothing, give us no insight into His character, into His purpose, so that we spend our whole lives offending Him. Then at the end of life find out that we’re in trouble and go to hell. That doesn’t sound very loving. But instead, God has just poured thousands of years, just thundered down to us, His greatness, His character, His love; sending His own Son to die in our place on the cross. What more could He say? In what other way could He say, "I love you." And a person who confesses, who agrees with God, is saying, "I know You love me. I agree that You love me. I agree that Your ways are best for me." What parent’s heart wouldn’t be thrilled with joy when his child would say, "I was wrong, Mom. I was wrong, Dad. I know you established these boundaries and rules for my good and I will walk in them." Kids, you’d have to scrape your parents off the floor. That’s what confession is. Confession is agreement. "The sacrifices of God," according to David (who knew a lot about sin), "are a broken spirit. A broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise." Saying, "God, You’re right. This activity is wrong. This behavior’s wrong. This attitude is wrong. This speech pattern is wrong."
Those who study real revivals know that real revivals always have an element in them of confession, of brokenness. Real revivals are not people floating around on the ceiling with great joy. Real revivals start when the people of God confess their sins to God. Brokenness, though, is not the end. We’re not called to live our lives in a constant state of brokenness. I have studied this idea quite strenuously in the Bible. Brokenness is a means to an end, not the end itself. You were not called by God to spend the rest of your life whipping yourself with a rope. Brokenness is a means to an end. That end is this final decision: commitment to obedience.
"They committed themselves to obedience." Last week we talked a little bit about the difference between passion and emotion. That emotion is a short-lived thing. You feel a certain way. You go to the Cardinal’s game and you feel like they’re going to win and then in the third quarter and you know they’re going to lose. Or, you watch the Diamondbacks and you know they’re going to come back in the ninth inning and lose again. Emotion is short-lived. And emotion is based on the circumstances, what happened. Things are going good, you’re happy. Things are going bad, you’re sad. Passion, on the other hand, is long-term commitment. Emotion doesn’t always follow through on an action that they maybe have taken up. "Hey, let’s do this!" But then certain barriers come up and it’s, "Nah, let’s forget it." That’s emotion. But, passion follows through and takes action. Look at verse 28 of chapter 10, "The rest of the people, the priests, Levites, gatekeepers, singers, temple servants, all who separated themselves from the neighboring peoples for the sake of the Lord, together with their wives and all their sons and daughters who were able to understand, they now joined their brothers, the nobles, and they bind themselves with a curse and an oath to follow the Law of God even through Moses the servant of God and to obey carefully all the commands, regulations and decrees of the Law." See what they did? Passion always results in action. Passion always results in action. You’re going to do something. If you’re passionate about something, it will change what you do. If you don’t do anything about something you call a passion, it’s merely an emotion. Passion always acts. It always acts. They went and they developed, they chose, decided to engage in a unique lifestyle and unique associations. "They distanced themselves," it says, "from the neighboring peoples," verse 28, "for the sake of the Law of God." They rejected the association, close association like marriage with people who have chosen to continue in a resistant pattern to God. "We’re not going to get married to them anymore. We’re not going to give our daughters to their sons. We’re not going to be in an association." That doesn’t mean that they didn’t have anything to do with them, that they didn’t trade with them. But, it does mean that in terms of the deep relationships of life they disassociated themselves with people whose pursuit was sin and not the Law of God. They did that in verse 30, "We promise not to give our daughters in marriage to the people around us or take their daughters for our sons."
Every other decision that is recorded here is financial. Isn’t that interesting? Every other decision they made here was financial, had to do with their income and their possessions. The temple tax of a shekel or a third of a shekel, they said, "We’ll pay that." They said, "We’ll go out with our axes [they didn’t have chainsaws] into the woods, cut down the trees and we will make them into stove length and then we will split them and then we will bring that wood to the temple. We will sign up to do that. We will make the contribution of first fruits. We will give our tithe." Read it. It’s all here what they will do. There is a principle here, brothers and sisters, that we cannot miss: the security that is offered by possessions and money can be a direct challenge to the life of faith. I’m going to say that again: The security that is offered by possessions and money can be a direct challenge to the life of faith. Because here’s the deal: It’s in the basest of terms, "If I’ve got five hundred thousand dollars in a savings account and my house is paid off, who needs God? Who needs Him? I’ve got my security. It’s right here. I’ll show you online, BankOne online, there’s my account, there’s the money. I’m set. I’ve got my life. I don’t need anymore." And so, God says to you and to me, "I want to see where your security is, if your security is in your money and your possessions or if your security is in Me. And if it’s in your money and possessions you’re going to prove that to Me by holding on to that money and holding on to those possessions because that’s your security." "I can’t give away that. I can’t give away a tenth of my income. Man, look at all the things that I couldn’t do. Because money gives me the power to do things and if I give that money away, then I can’t do those things, so I’m keeping that money." That’s the principle. Of all the things, money and possessions can become our god very quickly because of the security, or the false security, that they offer.
Isn’t it amazing what people do for money? How many of you will actually admit to watching the show Fear Factor? Okay, thank you, the rest of you – I know you watch it. These people eat worms for money. They eat congealed blood balls. They walk across from one building to another on a little board. They do the craziest things for that fifty thousand dollars and what it can gain for them. The system that God set up – of first fruits, of tithes, of temple tax – was set up so that God could say, "What’s your priority? What’s your god? Where do you find your security?" And it’s amazing what God asks us to do in that system. He challenges the Jews, He challenges us, to support, to give up a portion of their security to support the worship of the One that they cannot see or touch. Trade in some of your tangible security because you believe so strongly in this intangible Security Giver, named God. That’s the principle.
We talked about these people. They were poor. These people were poor and yet God called them to give, to radically reprioritize their lives. They were poor and when your poor, isn’t it interesting, money is even a bigger security for you when you’re dirt poor than when you’re loaded. When you’re dirt poor, that security may be the next meal. Radical reprioritization. "I know you’re poor." And the Jews were saying, "We know we’re poor but we’re going to do this because, frankly, we have put our eggs in the money basket and have found that they’re all broken on the ground. We’re living in poverty. We’ve chosen to go our own way and reject God’s way and we’re living in poverty. So, let’s do it God’s way and see if that changes things." Giving is one of the purest acts of faith that there is, the surrender of a tangible, temporarily valuable, commodity because God has called us to. He offers us nothing tangible in return, only the promise that He’ll take care of us. Pretty thin. Pretty thin, except when we remember Who it is that’s making the promise. To reprioritize, to support the work of God, the glory of God, the worship of God with our time, with our energy, with our financial resources.
Brothers and sisters, what is our response to the Word of God? We need to do more than just receive it. We need to ask ourselves a question. We need to ask ourselves, "Am I discovering and applying truth?" I put applying in there for a reason because discovery isn’t enough. There are a lot of people who know the Bible a lot better than you or I that got their Ph.D.s at college in the New Testament and the Old Testament. They know the Bible. They just don’t apply it because they don’t believe it. If you believe it, you will apply it. You will put it to practice because, "You know what? This is true. This is so true, I’m going to change my life because of it."
The second question we need to ask, "Are there sins that I need to confess? Are there things that I know about, that are there in my mind, that I’m coddling, that are part of the worldly value system. And I can’t make any excuses for them. They’re just wrong. I keep them around because I enjoy it or something. It’s got a nice short-term pay off. I just keep on doing them." Those need to be confessed. Agree with God, it’s wrong. Turn away from it.
And then, finally… and I love the Bible for doing this. Because whenever it gives us a negative, it always gives us a positive. "What kinds of steps of obedience can I take? What can I do?" And I know that some people get really down on doing. Well, doing is just an outward expression of what we are. What I do tells people what I am in here. Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks and out of the abundance of the heart the body acts. What positive steps? What can I do right now, today, this morning, to say to God, "You know what, Lord, because of what Your Word has said, I am going to…." Fill in the blank. This is the way people grow. This is the way people change
We are entering, in the history of Chandler Bible Church, an exciting time. Churches have history. They have periods of time. This church has been around seventeen years. I’ve seen a lot of things happen in those seventeen years. We’re entering an exciting time of evaluation, of growth, change, what’s needed and desirable. A team is coming together. We have some exciting possibilities for increasingly effective ministries. It starts when people go out and roll up the sleeves of their heart. Say, "You know what? If I spend my life chasing the worldly value system and it will end up leaving me with a handful of ashes. Or I could pursue the way to God. Joy giving, life changing, meaning giving life so that when I stand before God and He sets fire to the works of my life, they won’t burn up."
