"the First Steps In Rebuilding People"

Intro: 1st Steps in Rebuilding People Script: Neh. 8

Type: Expos./Series Where: GNBC 3-1-15

Intro: Dr. Paul W. Brand, the noted leprosy expert who was chief of the rehabilitation branch of the Leprosarium in Carville, Lousiana, had a frightening experience one night when he thought he had contracted leprosy. Dr. Brand arrived in London one night after an exhausting transatlantic ocean trip and long train ride from the English coast. He was getting ready for bed, had taken off his shoes, and as he pulled off a sock, discovered there was no feeling in his heel. To most anyone else this discovery would have meant very little, a momentary numbness. But Dr. Brand was world famous for his restorative surgery on lepers in India. The numbness in his heel terrified him. "He rose mechanically, found a pin, sat down again, and pricked the small area below his ankle. He felt no pain. He thrust the pin deeper, until a speck of blood showed. Still he felt nothing...He supposed, like other workers with leprosy, he had always half expected it...In the beginning probably not a day had gone by without the automatic searching of his body for the telltale patch, the numbed area of skin." All that night the great orthopedic surgeon tried to imagine his new life as a leper, an outcast, his medical staff’s confidence in their immunity shattered by his disaster. And the forced separation from his family. As night receded, he yielded to hope and in the morning, with clinical objectivity, "with steady fingers he bared the skin below his ankle, jabbed in the point--and yelled." Blessed was the sensation of pain! He realized that during the long train ride, sitting immobile, he had numbed a nerve. From then on, whenever Dr. Brand cut his finger, turned an ankle, even when he suffered from "agonizing nausea as his whole body reacted in violent self-protection from mushroom poisoning, he was to respond with fervent gratitude, ’Thank God for pain!’" (Dorothy Clarke Wilson, Ten Fingers for God, pp. 142-145.) Often broken people so numb that first step to healing is to feel pain. Nehemiah dealing with a nation of people who needed to be rebuilt and encouraged.

Prop: Neh. 8 we’ll notice 3 steps taken to Spiritually Rebuild lives of people of Israel.

BG: 1. So far entire book has focused on attempts to repair wall & bring security to Jerusalem.

2.Now change of direction and focus…from surviving to thriving. In order to thrive in life, must know God and follow basic principles He has laid out for us in His Word.

3. Person who see more of now is Ezra, not Nehemiah. Was religious leader.

Prop: Today we’ll notice 3 steps that were taken to spiritually rebuild the people of Israel.

I. Spiritual Renewal Comes When People Take Time to Read and Listen to the WOG.

A. Ezra Encouraged the People to Listen to the Reading of the WOG.

1. Nehemiah’s attention turns from Rebuilding the wall of Jerusalem to rebuilding God’s people spiritually.

a. Ezra, the scribe and priest who had led the people back from exile 13 yrs. before Nehemiah’s return calls together a great assembly to address the people with the WOG. In v. 3 we read that early in the morning on the 1st day of the 7th month he begins reading to this large public gathering from early in the morning until midday. For 6 hours, each day, from 6 am until 12 pm, the WOG was read to the people with explanation. Do you know why? Most of the people had forgotten and lost ability to read and speak Hebrew! (Think about in own lives here. Where are your families from? Do you still speak language?)

b. The people who had returned from exile, along with those who had never been deported, needed to have their shattered lives rebuilt, just as badly as Jerusalem’s walls needed to be rebuilt. As a nation they had been traumatized. Felt abandoned. Feeling alone. Feeling helpless, hopeless, maybe angry and frustrated. Needed to know God and what God’s Word said to them.

2. The Jewish people needed to renew their commitment to the Lord.

a. Chapters 8-10 are the core issue of the book though because they deal with the people’s spiritual condition before God. Even though they were no longer exposed to robbers or armies behind the security of new gates and walls they were required to deal with another issue. They needed a deeper spiritual life. Spiritual life only comes from the Lord and comes through His Word, prayer, confession, humbling oneself before God and deliberately turning from our wicked ways (CIM). Here too, they needed leadership. This spiritual leadership also came from Nehemiah, though he was a governmental not a religious leader, he convened the people on the Feast of Trumpets (Num. 19:1-6) for a holy convocation. Nehemiah chapter eight records one of the most joyful and spectacular celebrations of the work of God in the O.T. [