The sermon by Scott Brown, titled 'A Hundred Years of Reforming, Summary of Nehemiah,' explores the book of Nehemiah as a narrative of revival and reformation among the people of God. Nehemiah's role as a cupbearer to King Artaxerxes provides him with a unique opportunity to request the king's permission to rebuild Jerusalem. The sermon highlights Nehemiah's deep compassion for his people, his intimate relationship with God through prayer, and his leadership in mobilizing the people to rebuild the city's walls. The sermon draws parallels between Nehemiah's story and the personal journey of sanctification, emphasizing the need for continual spiritual renewal and the restoration of true worship. It also discusses the historical context of the post-exilic era and the collaborative efforts of key figures like Zerubbabel, Jeshua, and Ezra in the broader narrative of returning from Babylonian captivity. The sermon concludes with questions for reflection, challenging listeners to consider their own spiritual readiness, prayer life, family involvement, perseverance in hardship, financial support for God's work, and focus on worship.

Nehemiah chapter 2 verses 1 through 6. And it came to pass in the month of Nisan, in the 20th year of King Artaxerxes, when wine was before him, that I took the wine and gave it to the king. Now I had never been sad in his presence before. Therefore the king said to me, why is your face sad, since you are not sick? This is nothing but sorrow of heart.

So I became dreadfully afraid. And I said to the king, may the king live forever. Why should my face not be sad when the city, the place of my father's tombs lies waste and its gates are burned with fire? Then the king said to me, what do you request? So I prayed to the God of heaven and I said to the king if it pleases the king if your servant has found favor in your side I ask that you send me to Judah to the city of my father's tombs that I may rebuild it then I said to the king the queen also sitting beside him how long will your will your journey be and when will you return?

So please the King to send me and I set him a time. Let us pray. Lord God in heaven, please meet with us today. Lord, we desperately need your presence, Lord, for the preaching of the cross. Lord, it's foolishness to those who are perishing, but it is the power of God to those who are being saved by it.

Lord, I pray that you would comfort us and convict those who need it, Lord. Make us joyful people, thankful people like some have prayed. Lord, that our joy may come from you, that our strength would be found in you, that our righteousness in you alone. Meet with us today, Lord. It's in Christ that we pray, amen.

I love that scene in Nehemiah, too, that we just read where a man is standing before a king and the king says, what do you request? What do you want? And that's a question that I pray that we're all asking our King today, Lord, what do you want? What do you want from us? And here in this marvelous testimony of a revival that took place, you have a King who grants the request of the one standing before him.

What a blessing it is. What a kind God we have. In that sense, it's a picture really of God, the Father, who has sinners standing before him, and he says, what do you request? And when they ask in faith, they receive. And that's exactly what happened here with Nehemiah, and the phrase that the king uses that he granted his request, and he sent him on the mission that God had put in Nehemiah's own heart.

So what we have here as we sum up Nehemiah is a 19-year snapshot of a revival that took place in a man's heart and it spun out into the people of God who had returned from captivity who were now living in Jerusalem. And I just have marveled that this is a 19-year snapshot. I know many of you have turned to the Lord maybe 19, 20, 30 years ago, and God has been reviving you, he's been reforming you, and maybe you're in your 40s or your 50s now and you're a little bit like Nehemiah, and you've seen God work, You saw God light a fire in your heart 19 years ago. And now you're looking back and you can see what happened, what God has done as a result of His awakening you. And because God did awaken Nehemiah.

And you remember what happened with Nehemiah? He was serving the king as the cupbearer in Shushan, and he heard a report from his brother and from some of the others who were in Jerusalem, who had been to Jerusalem, they reported that the people of God were distressed, that the gates of the city were burned with fire and the walls were broken down, and the people were really without hope. And it broke his heart and so he prayed and he sought help from the king to go back and restore those people. And What happened when he sought help from a king, the walls were built, families were reformed, worship was reformed, and the work of the ministry of the priest was set in order again. And there were marvelous things that happened.

These things took place over a 19-year period that we have read about in the last seven months. We took 19 years of the history of a revival, and we jammed through it in seven months to try to understand what that revival means for us. What do we learn from the Lord for how we ought to walk with Him as well in the time of our revival, in our times since we've turned to the Lord Jesus Christ to serve him. And this concentrated instruction, seven months of instruction on a 19-year revival is what we've had. And God has brought us through the steps of this awakening, and there are things that we must learn from it.

Paul said to the Corinthians, these things were written for an example that you might learn how not to be idolaters. And so these things are written to us. They're for us and for our own times. We noticed as we ended the last section of Nehemiah that Nehemiah actually ends where the book of Ezra begins, and that is a restoration of the worship of God. At the beginning of the book of Ezra, you find they rebuilt the altar first.

That's the very first thing that must happen if you want to revive your life, you've got to rebuild the altar, and then you rebuild the temple, and then you rebuild the people of God with the Word of God, and then you rebuild the walls of God. That's what you see in this testimony of Ezra and Nehemiah. What's the message of this book? How God restores what has fallen into disorder. How does God repair a people who are returning from ruin.

They returned from ruin. They returned from the ruin of the Babylonian captivity. They had been slaves in Babylon for 70 years, and God called them back to restore what had fallen into disorder. And that's, it's a picture of our lives, it's a picture of sanctification. There are things that fall into disorder in our lives, and what we see in this 117-year snapshot from the beginning of Ezra to the end of Nehemiah, 117 years, is that God is constantly putting His people in order.

And it's a critical thing for us to understand. I mean, I, you know, I'll just give you a personal illustration of disorder and order. I've often felt, particularly I felt yesterday, that my life is a little bit like my garage because yesterday we cleaned out our garage and set many things back in order. You know, the problem with my garage is that it's constantly falling into disorder. And you know, things aren't put away.

You know, somebody, usually me, walks through, puts something in the wrong place. Things are neglected. Things aren't cleaned. And I find that we walk around them, you know, sometimes for days, sometimes weeks, sometimes months. I shudder to think maybe even a year, and the disorder in my garage is not cleaned out.

My wife is so marvelous because she's not content to walk around the disorder as well as much as I am. But what happens in your garage is what happens in your life, and that is that it needs to be constantly set in order because it does go out of order because of our wrong priorities, because we're not diligent, because we don't put things in their proper place and we don't prioritize those things properly. And as a result, our lives turn into what turns into my garage, and that is a place of disorder. And that's exactly what we find here in the book of Nehemiah and in Ezra, that God is constantly putting His people in order. He's patient.

He's long-suffering. He does it over long time horizons. In this case in Ezra and Nehemiah, it's a 117 year time horizon. We often don't think about our lives rightly. We just think in terms of the moments of time rather than how God is working over the long span of time.

Now there are some things that I believe we must know about Ezra and Nehemiah, particularly Nehemiah. And if you see the outline that you have in front of you, you'll have the first item, what to know about Nehemiah. There are particular matters of knowledge of history that we need to know as we exit the book of Nehemiah, and I'm sure you've picked these up, but I want to remind us one last time before we go into the Gospel of John in our next study. And the second is, what do we do? How do we apply this?

And I…my plan this morning is to ask seven questions that help us to capture at least some of the applications that are really necessary for us to consider in Nehemiah and Ezra. Now, the first thing that we need to know in terms of just basic knowledge is that Ezra in Nehemiah tells the story of the exiles who returned from the Babylonian captivity. This is the closing scene of the Old Testament period. This is the period of the post-exilic church, post after the exile, and you've heard about the post-exilic prophets. Well, these are prophets that spoke after the exile, and those would be Haggai and Zechariah and Malachi.

And you also read a narrative of this period in the book of Esther, because Esther takes place in this same time zone. And during this post-exilic era, you need to know the era, and this is not in the days of the creation, it's not in the days of Abraham, nor Moses, nor in the time of David, nor in the time of the pre-Babylonian captivity prophets, this is the time of the post-exilic era after the exile. You need to understand where this fits in redemptive history. When the book of Nehemiah closes, when Malachi utters his final prophecy to the people of God, there's 400 years of silence, and then John the Baptist, and then the Lord Jesus Christ. So that's where we are in the history of redemption.

Second thing we need to understand is that during this period after the exile there were three waves of exiles that came back and the first wave Was with Zerubbabel and Jeshua And we all know what Zerubbabel did. He was cleaning up the rubbable. And Zerubbabel, who was, who is both a spiritual and an administrative leader, and Yeshua, who is a priest, both working together to restore the people of God. And what did they do in the first wave they first rebuilt the altar because that's the very first thing you Must do if you're going to revive your life and reform your life and turn to Jesus Christ Secondly they began to build the temple they began to build they were experienced tremendous opposition and they they quit for 16 years and then God sent two prophets Haggai and Zechariah and the people were revived and they went and they finished the temple and they continued the worship of God for a period of time and then after 80 years of after the first returnees Ezra is moved by God in Babylon and he and he is also sent he is sent by King Artaxerxes to come and rebuild the people in this second wave.

In the second wave of rebuilding, it was a rebuilding of the Word of God. And you remember, you remember Ezra in Ezra 7 verse 10. What was Ezra all about? He was skilled in the law of Moses and he set his heart to study and to do and to teach the Word of God in Israel. That's what he did.

And he came back to rebuild the people in the Word of God. That's the second wave with Ezra. The third wave takes place with Nehemiah. And Nehemiah is brokenhearted at the hearing of the status of his people in Jerusalem and he prays and he cries out that God would give him favor in the eyes of a king and that's that's really such a marvelous beginning of any reformation when you pray before a king and say, Help me, help me to restore what's been broken down. And that's exactly what he did.

So the third wave takes place in the days of Nehemiah. And this book Nehemiah is this 19 year phase of this 117 year Reformation that began with the sending of Zerubbabel and Yeshua to begin the rebuilding process. So you need to understand the flow of this history. And you also need to understand that Ezra and Nehemiah have always been considered to be one book. In the Hebrew Bible, in the Septuagint, and then later on in the Latin Vulgate, Ezra and Nehemiah were one book.

It's really one 117 year story of the people who returned from exile. So we should think about it in its entirety. When we ended Ezra, we summarized Ezra. Now we're going to focus hard on just Nehemiah, on this 19 year period of revival. You know, it really caused me to think back in the last 19 years of my own life and what's happened, and various awakenings that have happened in me and our family and the people that I know.

And God has done marvelous things. And in many ways it looks a little bit like this revival. There were so many blessings, but there were also many hardships along the way, and that's what we find here. So you need to understand the history of this whole matter. Now, after understanding sort of how everything fits historically, it's really important to understand the flow of the story, and I'm just gonna try to tell the story.

I hope you have your Bibles open because I'm gonna drop us into a little bit in chapter one, a little bit in chapter two, and I'm going to try to weave the story. And then I want to come at the very end of that, and I want to ask us seven questions to try to apply the things that we've encountered through this book. So, of course, the storyline for Nehemiah opens up in chapter 1 and how God poured a heart of compassion into a man by the name of Nehemiah. It broke his heart to see the brokenness of his people or to hear about it. And God was working in Nehemiah, a work of love, a work of compassion for his people, because his brother and some other of the brethren came and gave a Report and and when he when he heard these words he sat down and he wept and Here's a man who has Love for a broken people and he he wants to come to their aid.

And he says to the Lord in verse six, please let your ear be attentive and your eyes open that you may hear the prayer of your servant which I pray before you now day and night for the children of Israel, your servants." You can see Nehemiah's intimacy with God. He talks to God, he says, Lord, would you bend your ear? Would you hear what I have to say?" He has a very personal relationship with God. And love, love, praise. Love, cares.

If you're prayerless, it's typically that you're loveless. If you're prayerless, it's typically that you're loveless. If you're prayerless, it's typically that you're careless. And, you know, as we read these words and see this upwelling of care, I think we should ask, Lord, help us to love, help us to care more. Why don't we do the things that we do?

It really comes down to love. Why don't we evangelize like we should? We don't love these people. That's the heart of the problem. We don't need more training, usually.

We need more loving. And so Nehemiah was moved upon by God. God moved his heart, and in many ways He's a picture of Isaiah who, when he saw his own sin, he said, Lord, here am I. Lord, here am I. Send me.

And he was in anguish over the people of God. And he said, Lord, send me. And I think one of the things that we learn here is that the person who is moved by God is the person who is used by God. And if we would be useful, we would first need to be moved by God. And Nehemiah is movable by the Lord.

And I want to talk about that more deeply when we get into the applications here. But Nehemiah was movable by God. And then when we come into chapter 2, you know, Nehemiah has been praying. He's now arrived in Jerusalem, and He goes on his famous night ride and he surveys the walls of Jerusalem and the gates and he sees what's been broken down. He does it quietly.

He does it without any fanfare or announcement. He's not posting this on Facebook. He's a man with his face before God and before God alone and he's living as a man before God and God alone. He surveys the damage with his own eyes And he was there taking this survey, and he was taking stock of the damage. And he's helpful to teach us to take stock of the damage that's taken place in our lives as a result of the works of the devil.

The flesh and the various things that we've done in our own lives, compromises that we've made. It's really important that you survey the walls, that you take a nighttime ride around your walls and document the damage. And then as Nehemiah does, he begins to take action. And in chapter three, we see this remarkable picture of the action. I love this chapter because It's just so full of energy and activity.

And what we find here is that God put it in the hearts of these people to rise up and build and build they did. And they started building, rebuilding an impossible broken down wall. And they made remarkable progress, but they organized themselves by families and the families were were repairing the part of the wall in front of their house and all kinds of people were doing this construction work. You know, perfumers were rebuilding the wall. Perfumers usually aren't construction workers, right?

There were goldsmiths who were building the wall. There was a man who only had daughters and there his daughters were out there and they were moving rocks and making things happen. It's such a dramatic picture of the mobilization of the family. Very much like what you see in the ministry of the tabernacle where Moses arranges all the service and work of the tabernacle around families and he places a certain number of families to the north and They take care of a particular number of duties in the temple and then some to the east some to the west some to the south but it's these families are all mobilized for the work of God. And that's exactly what Nehemiah does.

He mobilizes the Old Testament church really according to these families, and it should help us to recognize how critical it is that you have your entire family engaged, you know, in this work of God. We also know that there were some who didn't want to do the work. We read that some of the nobles did not put their shoulder to the work. They didn't put their shoulder to the work, but there were so many that worked and they finished this wall in 52 days. And then after they begin to make really good progress on the wall, then they receive lots of opposition.

There's so much resistance, slander, turmoil, all kinds of obstacles are put in the way by those who hate to rebuild the worship of God. Who were the ones who were doing this? The Samaritans. The ones who did not want the authority of God in worship. The ones who wanted to mix the worship of God with the ways of this world.

They wanted a little bit of the Easter Bunny and a little bit of Santa Claus in their worship. That's what they wanted. They wanted mixtures of things that don't mix in the worship of God. And so Nehemiah is opposed and the enemies of God are mocking him. Chapter 4, chapter 5, chapter 6 all profile this difficulty that they experienced and while the enemies of God whooped up a storm to try to stop the work, Nehemiah stormed the gates of heaven and he cried out to God.

And he says to them, do not be afraid of them. This is in verse 14, chapter 4. Do not be afraid of them. Remember the Lord, great and awesome. Fight for your brethren, your sons, your daughters, your wives, and your houses.

And there we learn how a godly man deals with opposition in these chapters here. Then in chapter five, internal turmoil breaks loose. You know, if the devil can't convince you to give up because of external turmoil slander and all kinds of things like that He will cause internal Disruption dissatisfaction, opposition, broken relationships, attacks, brother against brother. And that's exactly what we see happening in chapter 5. The devil is always wanting to break up the work of God.

And if he can't do it from the outside, he'll do it from the inside. Hey, the seeds of the destruction of a church are always laden. And they will take hold if people do not repent and humble themselves and love their brethren." So we see this, that sin raises its head while you're rebuilding. You should expect that. While your life is being rebuilt, it shouldn't surprise you that there'll be times of internal conflict.

And we see, you know, Nehemiah responds beautifully in this whole matter. He works to cause everyone to face their sin and to turn from it and to restore what was broken in those relationships because there was a great cry. Nehemiah was filled with indignation and he really was calling people out of their self-centeredness and back to loving one another. So that's what we find in that chapter. And then in chapter 6, the activity, the external enemies escalate.

Chapter 4, external enemies are throwing, you know, their bombs of disruption. Then there are internal enemies in this 52-day time that are throwing their bombs in. And now there are more external attacks from the outside in chapter six. And this time the enemies try to take a little bit more diplomatic approach. And they say, why don't you come out and just negotiate with us in the valley of Ono?

And of course, and they ask four times, please come, please come, please come, please come four times. And Nehemiah said, oh no, I'm not going to the valley of Ohno. And he says, why should I stop such a great work? And it's a picture of when there are these outside attacks, what's the very best thing you can do? Turn to God, minister to the people that God has given you, and focus on those.

Trust God with those He has given you, and don't get distracted by those who want to slander you and really actually destroy you, Because most likely they were trying to lure Nehemiah out there to kill him or to harm the work in some way. So they tried to lure him out into the wilderness. And then the wall is completed in 52 days. It was miraculous. And, you know, in those 52 days there were so many trials, there were so many roadblocks in the way.

But God was superintending it all. He was going to get that wall built, and the wall got built. And so then the city needed to be populated and so then they gathered together in that really dramatic scene in chapter 8 where the people say bring the book and they brought the book and they brought the book of the law, and Ezra and the Levites preached, you know, for hours and hours. Everyone was there, all the families were there, And they heard the Word of God. And it was such a remarkable scene there.

And when they heard the Word of God, they wept and they repented. And Nehemiah and Ezra said, Don't weep. The joy of the Lord is your strength. Go home to your houses. Eat of the fat.

Drink of the sweet. And if there's somebody that doesn't have any fat or sweet, go ahead and take it to them and be a blessing to them. You know, go to your neighbor and bless your neighbor if you have something and somebody doesn't have anything. And so that's what happens in chapter 8. And then right after that, it just touched off a whole season of confessing sin and fasting and praying and reminiscing and rejoicing.

And then in chapter 10, they enter into a covenant and they make promises. And They made two basic fundamental promises. They came before God and said, Lord, we will keep your law, and secondly, we will not enter into marriages with unbelievers. Those are the two primary things that they committed to. And in the midst of that was a covenant to really continue the restoration of worship.

And so they did that in chapter 10. And then the city was resettled, there was so much joy. There were two choirs walking, you know, opposite ways around the wall, singing, and they all met at the temple, praising God with all kinds of instruments, and the joy of Jerusalem could be heard from afar off. It was such a marvelous time. And they continued their rejoicing, and then Nehemiah departs for some period of time, maybe somewhere between two years and twelve years.

I rather think it was the longer period that he was gone, But whatever it was, he left and when he came back, he found that people had returned to their worldliness in very particular areas. Even though they had made a covenant to restore the support of the tithing for the Levites and the priests, they allowed Tobiah to move into the place where they stored the goods to pay the priests. And so Nehemiah begins a process of cleansing, and he takes all of Tobias' stuff and throws it out of that room. And they begin to—and he calls them back to support the work of the Levites and the priests, so that the work of the ministry could be done. Because, you know, they had all gone back to their fields.

They weren't doing the work of the service of God anymore, because there was no resources. The people weren't giving in order to support the work. And he discovers also that they've married pagan wives and their children were pagan, and Half the children could not even understand the Bible when it was read. They couldn't understand. And because their homes had become pagan homes, you know, in our terms today, they'd let Hollywood be the big voice in their homes.

And so their children spoke the language of Ashdod, not the language of heaven. And so Nehemiah is setting himself to cleanse of everything pagan that had crept in during the times when he was gone. And so, you know, he comes and he discontinues the practice of allowing the the the ammonites and the moabites coming into the assembly. You know, he throws Tobiah the ammonite out, he restores Sabbath-keeping because they had fallen back in to doing business on the Sabbath, and he deals with their inner marriages. All of these things are really shadows of life in Jesus Christ and repentance and faith and this continual cleaning of what has fallen into disrepair.

Because what happens with God's people is that there are things that fall into disrepair and disorder. And what we find in this 117-year picture of revival is that God is always sending prophets, He's always awakening His people so that they will put things back in order. Because the truth is, if you're like me, your life is a little bit like your garage, and it's always in need of setting things in order again. And so that's what we find. And if you could sum it all up, how did this happen?

It happened, the revival happened, because people had a sense of God. They had a sense of the glory and the beauty of God. They had a sense of the presence of God, that was the heart of their revival. And they were movable. They were a people who could be awakened, and they were awakened.

But even once they were awakened, the story wasn't over. Once God awakens you, he's not done with you yet. And he's long suffering and he cares for his people. And he's always calling his people back to repentance. And so there's the story.

It begins with the building of an altar, and it actually ends with the rebuilding of an altar at the very end of Nehemiah. And that really is always the heart of the matter. Now, I want to ask seven questions that relate to this whole narrative. And the first question is this, is your heart in position to be moved? Is your heart in a position to be moved?

We saw a man who was movable. His heart was breakable and he said, here am I, send me. And is your heart movable? Is it possible to, if you're not awake, to be awakened? It's so critical that we are wakeable, that we are movable.

If our hearts are hard, if we're proud, If we're filled up with our own selves, we won't be movable. If we're running from sin, if we're cultivating sin, if our eyes are on things of impurity, our movability is destroyed. And so we must repent in turn so that we might be movable but you see a man who is movable what a blessing it was it touched off so much renewal it restored worship it really put families back in order. And it established a day of rest for the people of God and really delight, the delight that they had been deprived of because they were misusing the Sabbath day. So the first question is, is your heart in position to be moved?

You know, I was speaking at a conference in Florida three weeks ago on awakening, And all I could think about was us together and how needful all of us are to be even more awakened than we are right now. Because God has never finished with us. Don't trust your past awakening. Don't trust the reformations that you've had in your life. Don't put any stock in them at all.

Ask, am I movable now? Can God take me further than He took me ten years ago when he convicted me of this particular sin. Can God keep moving me when I reformed this certain part of my family five years ago? Can God do anything with me now? Am I movable now?

Or was I just movable back when I was sitting and I heard the preaching eight years ago, and everything changed when I heard it? But are you movable now? That's way more important than were you moved back then. And God is not finished with us yet. We haven't even begun.

And so is your heart in position to be moved? Secondly, second question. How's your prayer life? Do a serious reflective double-take on your patterns of prayer. Double take on your patterns of prayer.

And, you know, are you or are we a people who live before the face of God? You know, there are so many places in Nehemiah where he prays. Sometimes he prays really long prayers. One of the longest prayers, and I believe the longest prayer in the Bible is in chapter 9. Nehemiah prays all throughout redemptive history, crying out to God.

Other times he prays what we've called arrow prayers. He hears news and he cries out to God. He shoots up an arrow to heaven. He hears bad news of an attack. He shoots up a prayer to heaven.

He's always before the face of God. And when we come to the very last chapter, he prays, he prays at least three times. And every, after he does, after he takes every action, he lifts his eyes and he says, oh Lord, and then he throws the things of Tobiah out of the temple, he says, oh Lord, and then he restores the Sabbath and shuts the gates of the city for commerce and he says oh lord and Then he he confronts those who've entered in to wrong marriages and they entered into marriage for the wrong reasons And he says oh lord. Oh lord help me He's a man whose face is before God. And, you know, to me this is the greatest challenge, and it is the greatest desire of my life, is to have my face before God all the time and it's the greatest frustration because I get so distracted so often and I find myself in a conversation you know and I realize I'm just interacting with this in a human way rather than being before the face of God.

You know, we really need one another to be before the face of God. I need you to be before the face of God when you're talking to me, and you need me to be before the face of God when I'm talking to you. You need pastors whose eyes are always lifted up onto the hills from whence their help comes. You need pastors like that. And you need to be that to each other, too.

So that We're not just kind of shucking and jiving through life, but that we're a people who are before the face of God with one another. It's so important. How is your prayer life? Looking unto Jesus, you know, the author and the perfecter of our faith, live before the face of God, especially in the fellowship of the saints, especially with your family, especially when you're alone. That's when you should live before the face of God.

In other words, all the time. You know, we've been going through James, and we're headed to chapter five, where we read about Elijah. Elijah was a man with a nature like ours, and he prayed earnestly that it would not rain, and it did not rain on the land for three years. Praying that it wouldn't rain, and then praying that it would rain. There's so many things that we should be praying for.

We should be praying for rain. We should be praying for no rain. And, you know, our lives together ought to be completely filled with prayer. So the second question is, how's your prayer life? And the third question, is your family mobilized for tangible rebuilding operations?

That's chapter four. Here you have this great picture of whole families serving the rebuilding of the worship and the protection of God through the rebuilding of the walls of Jerusalem. And there you had perfumers and goldsmiths and woodworkers. You had every kind of person. God gives gifts to his people.

And God gives fathers and mothers as heads of families. And here's the question. Have you fathers and mothers given sufficient seriousness and planning and prayerfulness to the mobilization of your family for the glory of God in His church. Have you wrapped your whole family around the service and the worship of God and the building up of the body of Christ? That's what you see here.

And what I've found over the years of being a father is that when my family is not properly mobilized, It's always my fault. It's always my fault. I've gotten lazy. I've had flagging vision, hope, time to organize and plan and make things happen. It's always my fault.

If our family doesn't pray very much together, guess whose fault it always is? It's mine. And God in His structure of the family and really of everything has placed representative heads to serve Him. And He's given fathers to houses, He's given pastors to churches. And it's to those representative heads to do their duty to be with their faces before God so that their families are led and properly mobilized.

So the question is, is your family mobilized for the rebuilding? And then the fourth question, is your family positioned to hear the Word of God and take action? I connect that to Nehemiah chapter 8 where all these families gather to hear the Word of God being read and explained. And you know, are you positioning your family so that it is, so that your family is positioned before the Word of God, so that your home is filled with the knowledge of God, so that the thoughts of your children, the things that they recite, the ways that they interact with the world are governed by God and His Word. Are their mouths filled with the stories and the images of Scripture?

Or are they speaking the language of Ashdod? Now, I know all of you have attempted more than you ever had before to fill your families with the Word of God. But my experience is that I'm not done with that yet, and I'm not even hitting where I really feel like I should be hitting and filling my own family with the Word of God. I let opportunities pass, and I find myself repenting of that. But how about you?

Do you let opportunities pass to fill your family with the Word of God? Have you scheduled your family life in such a way that it just can't happen very often? The truth is, using the rhythmic elements of life make it a lot easier using meals, using bedtimes, using various things that happen in the day where you're like Daniel and you pray three times a day, whatever it is. But is your family positioned to hear the Word of God and take action? Because those are the two things that you see in Nehemiah 8.

They didn't just hear the Word of God. They weren't just hearers only. They were doers and they snapped into action as a result. And, you know, are our family snapping into action from the Word of God that we read? I pray that we go to a whole other level of filling our homes with the Word of God.

I know I do. I know I do. And to be a people who are awakened by the preaching of the Word of God, that's what happened in chapter 8. To be awakened, to be at the edge of your seat. It's so important that you're at the edge of your seat.

Are you at the edge of your seat right now? You know, like I said earlier, I was at a conference on awakening three weeks ago. The afternoon was wearing on, a man was preaching, I was sitting in the back row and I was sitting next to a little girl, a little girl from Africa, a very funny little girl. And I've been playing with her, you know, but then, you know, as the preaching wore on, I started to nod out. And she nudged her daddy and she said, Mr.

Brown's asleep. Should I kick his foot? I had gone to sleep. I was asleep when I was supposed to be awake. Now, I know that happens to all of us from time to time.

Right now, I only see like a couple of eyes falling right now. It's not so bad. But it happens, doesn't it? But are you on the edge of your seat for the preaching? Are you on the edge of your seat when the Word of God is being read?

Are you on the edge of your seat when you're singing are the words precious? Are you are you soaking them in and drinking them in or are you just kind of waiting for it to end? Having your family positioned to hear the Word of God is something we really pray for. You know, in this church we try to center everything on the Word of God and particularly the thing we're preaching on on Sunday. You know, so we meet on…the men meet on Monday morning to discuss what we're going to preach the next week and we want them to go back into their homes having understood what was there and go back and teach their families.

And then on Tuesday or early Wednesday, one of the pastors is going to send out a letter explaining what that teaching is going to be on Sunday. And then we get together on Wednesday night and we're going to pray about what we're going to hear in the Word of God on Sunday. And then we're going to want this to be discussed in homes. And then we're going to come together on Sunday, and we're going to sing songs that are specifically chosen to focus on the message of Scripture, and then we're going to hear it preached, and then we're going to have lunch, and we're going to encourage everybody to talk about what was preached on at lunch. We're trying to focus everything on the Word of God.

How is God leading our church? Where is He leading us? He's leading us here, week by week. He's leading us by His Word, and that's really what we pray for more than anything else. You don't need, you know, the pastors of your church are not adequate.

We're not fortune tellers. We don't know all of your needs. We don't. But we do know when we stand here, we know this is true. We know we can trust in this and we can read these words and we can make applications from them.

But you know, is your family positioned to hear the Word of God and to take action. The fifth question, are you persevering in the midst of hardship, heartbreak, difficult times? That's chapters 4 through 6 because you know during these 52 days it was hard. It was a famine. The taxes were so high that people were having to sell their children into slavery to keep their property.

And some of the richer brothers were abusing the younger, and they had no, they did not have compassion on one another. And, but, you know, you think of this wonderful story, they rebuilt the walls in 52 days, but boy, I'm telling you, it was hard every single day. It was hard because they didn't have the food they needed. It was hard because they thought they were going to lose their properties. It was hard because the government, the Persian government, was taxing them to death.

It was hard. Here's what we learn. It doesn't matter how hard it is, God can arrive revive his people in the midst of hardship. Don't wait for an economic spring for your revival. It's not money you need, it's not flexibility you need, it's God that we need.

In the midst of the inflexibility, the difficulty, and the hardship that we experience. You know, You had a city that was in ruins, you had financial strain that was remarkable, you had external opposition, slander, you had the burden of dejection, the internal disorder that was taking place among the people, you had the lure of moral compromise, you had resistance and lethargy that was just always at the doorstep of these people's lives. Everything that you face, they faced as well. But God sends trials, you know, for a purpose. You know, James speaks of it.

He says, count it all joy when you fall into various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience. But let patience have its perfect work, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing." You know, by trials, God brings up the scum of our sinfulness and our pride, our piosity. There's this fire that's put under us and the scum comes up, the murmuring, the distrust of God, our impatience, our worldliness, our carnality, all these things are exposed by trials. Trials are good for us. They're the best things that ever happened to us because God uses those trials.

It was Thomas Brooks in his little booklet, The Mute Christian. He says, trials are God's looking glass in which his people see their own faults, but God is refining his people with fire. And so We dare not fall in the discouraging day. You know, whatever is discouraging you, recognize God brought it to you. He brought it to you for His own glory.

He brought it to you to reveal pride, to reveal lack of faith, and to make you stronger and happier than you've ever been before. That's why God brings trials. Sixth question, are you supporting the work financially? That's chapter 13 and it's really implied all through this book because there were resources that were necessary to support the work of the ministry, the work of the priests, and the Levites. And here what had happened is that the people stopped giving mainly because the leaders stopped leading and they allowed Tobiah and his philosophy to enter in to the temple.

His philosophy was such a philosophy that gave license for the people to stop giving to the work. They stopped prioritizing the building of the work of God and for the maintenance of the work of the ministry. And I think you have local and you have global ministry that's implied here and The question is are you supporting the work financially at minimum? Are you tithing at minimum? Are you tithing?

That's a question I'm not here to debate whether tithing is a New Testament requirement I'm not sure but here's what I do know we know it's a godly pattern and we also know that God calls us to give generously, and that there are free will offerings above the tithe. It's a pattern for us. It should help it should help us think about our own giving But are you supporting the work? That's a question that you should ask and are you supporting it generously and are you providing as much as you can? For the spreading of the Word of God in the world.

You know, there's a lot we want to do. We want to do more internationally. We want to do more here. We want to do more all around the United States in church planting and missionary activity and evangelism. And it does take resources to do that.

And we're praying for more resources. And so, are you supporting the work financially? And then the seventh question, the seventh question and I think this is the heart and soul of everything. It's the last point, I think, because it's the most important point, and I really want to leave us with this point, this question. Is your heart focused on the center of everything?

And the center of everything is the restoration of the worship of God in your heart. That's the center of all awakening. It's the center of every good thing. Concentrate on the center. In order to concentrate on the center, one must do what Nehemiah did, cleanse from everything pagan.

He set himself to cleanse from everything pagan everything pagan that was disrupting the worship of God and Every single thing every pagan thing that Nehemiah attacks in chapter 13 is focused on the worship of God. You know, he first deals with the priesthood, then he deals with the celebration of the Sabbath, and then he deals with marriages, and then he deals with the reestablishment of the sacrificial system, which really is a picture of the gospel. When you have a church where God is not the center, where you have an economic life where God is not the center, and you don't delight in Him on the Sabbath, When you have a family where God is not the center, and when you have an altar where God is not the center, you have things that are pagan, that need to be cleansed. And Nehemiah comes to cleanse from everything pagan. This is at the end of a 19-year season of awakening that takes place.

And Nehemiah has been going at this a long time now. I don't know how old you were 19 years ago. Some of us were actually old 19 years ago. And many of us may have been awakened 10, 15, 20, 25 years ago. But God has never been finished with us, has he?

Because he loves us and he wants to cleanse us of everything pagan. And when we slip back, he wants to catch us back up again and to continue to take us forward. So these seven questions, is your heart in position to be moved? How is your prayer life? Is your family mobilized for tangible rebuilding?

Fourth, is your family positioned to hear the word of God and take action? Fifth, are you persevering in the midst of hardship, heartbreak, difficult times? Sixth, are you supporting the work financially? Seventh, are you focused on the center of everything? You know what we learned from the book of Nehemiah is that the work of Reformation among God's people is not a straight line upward.

It's kind of a jagged line, isn't it? There are victories and there are reversals, and there's repentance and there's more victory, and then God's not done with us yet. We're not, we have not been sanctified in terms of our outward life and we have been we have been sanctified by the blood of Jesus Christ we are we are in a position of be of having been sanctified But in terms of our life in this world, there's this process that God has us all in the midst of. But all Reformation really is a returning to the true worship of God. And I pray that that's what happens with us, that God will use this testimony that we've been involved in for seven months, and it would make us a people more ready for awakening than we ever have been before.

And that if there are any who are truly dead, they're dead to God, they're dead to Jesus Christ, that they would turn, that they would turn to Jesus Christ, who is the author and perfecter of faith, to Jesus Christ, the faithful creator, to Jesus Christ, the one who died for the sins of sinners, to Jesus Christ who will take sinners home, and in the meantime, he'll care for them, he'll sanctify them, he'll carry them through. I pray that God makes us a people like what we have just read here, and that the end of it for us would be the restoration of the worship of God in our hearts and in our homes and in this church. Would you pray with me? Oh Lord, we thank You for these records that You have given to us so that we might turn from everything pagan and so that we might be saved from a lost condition. O Lord, that you would come and give us the blessings that had been revealed to us in this book of Nehemiah and that we would claim to Jesus, the author and the Perfecter of our faith, that great High Priest, through the blood of the everlasting covenant, who makes his children complete through Jesus Christ.

Amen.