The sermon by Scott Brown focuses on the book of Nehemiah, emphasizing the transformative work of the Spirit of God in rebuilding the broken walls of Jerusalem and the lives of its people. The sermon delves into the historical context of Nehemiah, highlighting how God uses individuals and communities to restore His church. Nehemiah's journey illustrates the importance of prayer, compassion, and action in response to spiritual and physical brokenness. The rebuilding of the walls is symbolically linked to themes of salvation, protection, and fellowship with God. The sermon draws connections between Nehemiah's efforts and the life of Jesus Christ, underscoring the power of the resurrection and the need for revival within the church. Throughout the sermon, the speaker encourages the congregation to examine their lives and the state of their spiritual 'walls,' urging a collective effort to rebuild and strengthen their community according to God’s will.

Sermon text today is Nehemiah 1, 1-4. The words of Nehemiah, the son of Hashaliah, and it came to pass in the month of Chisleu in the twentieth year, as I was in Shushan, the palace. The Hanani, one of my brethren, came, he and certain men of Judah, and I asked them concerning the Jews that had escaped, which were left of the captivity, and concerning Jerusalem. And they said unto me, the remnant that are left of the captivity there in the province are in great affliction and reproach. The wall of Jerusalem also is broken down, and the gates thereof are burned with fire.

And it came to pass when I heard these words I sat down and wept and mourned certain days and fasted and prayed for the God of heaven. Let's pray. Lord, we're thankful that you have given us yourself. You've given us the church where your body of believers can come. We pray an anointing upon our ears today that we might hear what you have to say to the church.

In Christ's name we pray, amen. It's always a great joy to launch out into a new journey in the Word of God. What we found over the years in our church is that God changes us every time we go through some text of Scripture, and particularly as we work through books, we learn things, we discover things about ourselves and about the world, and we're different. And it's such a blessing to know that that's how it's always been, and I pray that God would give us a great sense of sensitivity to him as we go through this testimony. It's going to take us about five months, I think.

It'll probably be, you know, mid-late summer by the time we finish the book of Nehemiah. And what you find in the book of Nehemiah is that God breaks a man's heart because of the brokenness of his people. And the whole book really teaches us So many things about how God builds his church. If you're part of his church, you'll learn a lot about how God desires to build you, to strengthen you, to protect you, to grow you, and to really put your life back together. Our lives have been destroyed by sin.

You know, even the person that grew up in a Christian home and didn't have all that much external defilement, their hearts are so broken with sin and the rebuilding is so critical. There's really no one who comes to the Lord at any time in life that doesn't need a complete remake. And the Lord Jesus Christ does that. And what you find here is how God by His Holy Spirit builds a person, how He builds a family, how He builds a church, and really how he builds a nation. It's such a significant book.

You know, how does God restore an institution? How does God restore a personality? How does God reverse patterns and put protections where there were none before? Well, this book really speaks of it. But I think we should say right at the outset that this book, while it's named Nehemiah, doesn't have that much to do with Nehemiah.

It really is about how God worked in order to rebuild worship among his people. And it really is a testimony of how God and God alone moves, how he changes people's hearts, and how he begins to build up the broken lives that exist as a result of sin in the midst of the ruin that there is because of sin and and so in this introductory message of Nehemiah It's going to be a whirlwind that you can see you've got a kind of a whirlwind outline that gives you some real applications for every chapter in the book. And in this introductory message, I want to identify 13 things from these 13 chapters that God does in people's lives in the book of Nehemiah. And I want us all to be asking, is he doing this in my life? Has the Spirit of God stirred me up in this area?

Does he need to? Is now the time when I need to cry out to God that he would stir me up in the same way that he stirred up Nehemiah or the way that he stirred up these people in particular ways. And so there this is really the essence of Nehemiah is what happens when people have a sense of God. There's really no hope for for any church or any person or any family unless God has mercy upon them and gives them a great sense of God. And I pray that God gives all of us that, you know, day by day as we walk through this world but as we gather together that he gives us a real sense of his presence.

One of the remarkable things about Nehemiah is that there are so many occasions where God brings his people together, just like we're gathered together right now. This is how God shakes and shapes and changes and helps his people is when they gather together. And so I'm really excited to see how God is going to change us, because I know He will. And I know there are many people in this church, they mark various milestones in their life by a chapter of a book that we're in. Oh yeah, that was when we were in the book of Matthew.

It was Matthew 7. That happened to me. I remember this always takes me back to 1 John chapter 2. That's how God is such a kind God to us as we've gone through the books of the Bible. Okay, you see an outline in front of you.

I've got three introductory remarks, and the first is, how do you read Nehemiah? I want to talk to you about how you're going to read this book. I'm going to pray that you're going to read it a bunch of times in the days ahead. We're going to read three chapters right after lunch today. Mike and I are going to stand up and read chapters seven, eight, and nine.

And then the next week we're gonna read some more. But I pray that you'll just read it over and over again, let it saturate your soul. And how do you read this? What's the interpretive grid from which you should operate as you read Nehemiah? And the First is you need to understand the history and the message of the history.

You need to understand the history and the message of the history. We find ourselves in 444 BC. This is the final historical scene in the Old Testament. It's not the last book in the Old Testament, the way it's arranged, but it's actually the last historical scene in the Old Testament. Malachi is the last book, and Malachi is speaking during this same time.

And of course Haggai is also a prophet at that time, and Zechariah. So Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi are the three prophets that are actually at the end of the Old Testament, but Nehemiah is the last historical scene. And these preachers are preaching in this last historical moment. And the book covers a 19-year timeframe from 442 to 425 BC. And during this 19-year timeframe, God is continuing to reform his people.

And what we learn from this is God is controlling history. He is always working. And this is a 117 year snapshot of God's resolve to restore his people in Ezra and Nehemiah. Those two books comprise 117 years of reformation. Reformation and reversal.

Reformation and reversal. And we've seen it as we went through the Ezra We saw how God was just consistently caring for his people. He's so kind He keeps coming back you fall he comes and he picks you back up again you sin he sends preaching He sends his spirit. He's he's so kind Isn't he kind can't you see that how patient has God been how long-suffering has he been? Well, here's a 117 snapshot of long-suffering.

I'm so thankful for the long-suffering mercies of God. And so Nehemiah also represents the third wave of captives coming back from captivity after 70 years of captivity in Babylon. When Zerubbabel, who and Joshua were raised up to restore the worship of God by restoring the the temple and the altar This was the first wave of the captives and then Ezra was raised up about 80 years later to restore the spiritual strength of the nation through the preaching of the Word of God and then now Nehemiah is raised up to restore and protect Judas protective barriers the wall and their obedience to the law of God in this third wave but again Nehemiah just continues to tell the story of God's resolve to protect and preserve and sustain his people and how kind he is to keep coming back to his people even when they fall into sin. And everything in Nehemiah is a picture of God's passion to restore his people. So that's the first element in how you ought to read Nehemiah.

Secondly, rebuilding walls has a particular meaning. Rebuilding walls has a particular meaning. These walls point to Jesus Christ's finished work on the cross and the power of the resurrection. They all point, everything that happens here points to Jesus Christ and the power of the resurrection. You should be thinking of Jesus Christ when you read of Nehemiah and how he is pictured in these shadows and types that are in the Old Testament.

You'll read about the gatherings of God's people, feasts and sacrifices. All of these things point to Jesus Christ, who is the faithful and compassionate high priest, who gives a better covenant and gives better promises. And every Reformation in the Old Testament has a double meaning. And you should read Nehemiah with that double meaning in mind. It points to Jesus Christ, his life, his death, his resurrection, and the transforming work that Jesus Christ does.

When you talk about raising up broken down walls, you really are talking about the power of the resurrection to raise people up the new life and to give them the proper protections and life-giving functions around them that the gospel does. The third way to read Nehemiah is that it really is designed to help us identify idolatry and to resist temptation. 1st Corinthians chapter 10 makes this perfectly clear. 1st Corinthians 10 sex says, these things were written to be examples to the intent that we should not lust after evil things as they also lusted. When you look at the Old Testament and find people falling into sin, those are markers for all of us to teach us about our own idolatry.

And every idolatrous failing of Israel is an idolatrous failing and you're in the core of your soul somewhere. Please look for it. Look for the idolatries. Throw away your idols. Isaiah says there's a day when you're going to hate your idols, you're going to want to throw them away.

You're going to see how they betrayed you. You're going to see how they hurt you. Throw them away. Run from the world and look in Nehemiah for worldliness in your own soul. And then the fourth is that Nehemiah shows how God revives his people.

And this 117 year period is so critical. And here's how it happens. A sense of God. It always happens by one thing. And God is the only one who can bring a sense of himself and his holiness and his presence, his goodness, his beauty, and the greatness of his kingdom.

Only God can do that. We should cry out to God that he would fill our hearts with a greater sense of the beauties of his kingdom so that we would have such a sense of God. We're gathered here today. You know, how often do you come in here dull and dead? It happens, doesn't it?

And what we always need is a sense of God. And we are so dependent upon it. How does revival happen? Only God. Only God can do it.

And God deals with sinners and he brings them into his kingdom of his love. And any reformation in your life or in your family or in your church is really dependent upon a sense of God. Now one thing about revival that we always must keep in mind in our own lives and in our church or any other church is that revival is never a straight line. It's a jagged line. These 117 years show you a jagged line, don't they?

And they really are a picture of how God deals with His people, how He comes to them in their sin, and He continues to work with them. But Reformation takes place over time, and there is fruit bearing over a long time horizon. I often get discouraged about how slow my sanctification is in a lot of areas in my life. But I'm thankful for God's patient forbearance in His mercy, because Jesus Christ is a merciful and He's a faithful high priest who continues to work with us. And you know, there's much brokenness that we'll encounter.

The walls are a symbol of the brokenness of the human soul. One of the most fascinating things about Nehemiah is that when the workers got together to rebuild the wall, Each family rebuilt the wall right in front of his own house. I think that's really interesting. And I think we should ask, you know, what part of the wall is broken down in front of my house? There are parts to our walls in every one of our houses.

There are parts of the wall broken down in my house, and I need to work on the wall right in front of my house and pay really close attention to that. I pray that God would use this to really reform our families in ways we've never seen before. More joy, more holiness, more devotion, more fruitfulness, more love, more service in this community, more evangelism, you know, all over the world, that God would take us together and that we would rebuild in the fundamental institutions that God has given us, not just our own hearts, but in our families, that great institution, and our churches as well, that great institution. And the meaning of the walls, Next, you see that next point, number two, the meaning of the walls. Another critical matter here.

Now without walls, Jerusalem could not be protected. We understand that very, very clearly. But I'm going to give you I'm going to give you several passages of scripture really quickly we're going to return to these from time to time but I want you to get a sense of it I'm probably gonna go a little too fast for you to grasp it all but I want you to really get a picture of what walls mean in the Bible. Because like I said, there's a there's a double, triple, quadruple meaning for these walls. Salvation, that's the first meaning of walls in the Bible.

In Isaiah, chapter 60, verse 18, we read we read this, but you shall call your walls salvation and your gates praise. Walls are compared to salvation in Isaiah. In Psalm 51 verse 18 walls are compared to repentance and David at the very end of Psalm 51 where he's he's repenting of his sin with Bathsheba one of the most remarkable repentance texts in the whole Bible. David says this in verse 18 in Psalm 51, do good in your good pleasure, O Zion, build the walls of Jerusalem. And what David is talking about is repentance and how repentance is a wall building exercise.

You know, when you tear down through repentance, you're always building at the same time. And it's such a blessing. Number three, fellowship with God. In Isaiah chapter 56 verse 5, walls are compared to fellowship with God, particularly as the church itself relates to Jesus Christ. In Isaiah 56 verse 5, we read, even to them I will give in my house and within my walls a place and a name better than that of sons and daughters.

I will give them an everlasting name that shall not be cut off. He's talking about the comforts and the protections of being in fellowship with God. Fellowship with God is a wall in your life that needs to be rebuilt. You know, we spent lots of time talking about fellowship with God in 1st John. Our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ.

What a treasure it is to be connected to the vine, to actually be connected to life, and building up the walls of your life really is a life-connecting kind of activity. Number four, protection. That's obvious, isn't it? Walls are for protection. Everybody knows that.

God protects his children from the walls. And in Isaiah chapter 62, verse six, we read, I have set watchmen on your walls, O Jerusalem. They shall never hold their peace day or night." In other words, they will never be quiet. You who make mention of the Lord do not keep silent. What Isaiah is saying is that God protects his city through watchmen on the walls.

And walls are all about protection. Self-control, that's another element of walls in the Bible. Lack of self-control in your life is like an unwalled unprotected city. Solomon speaks of this of what it means to be a man without walls. Like, you can be a man or a woman without walls.

And those walls of self-control are sometimes broken down. And Proverbs 25, 28 says, whoever has no rule over his own spirit is like a city broken down without walls. I just want to encourage all the children in this church to learn this passage of scripture. Proverbs 25, 28, self-control is a wall. Do you have a strong wall of self-control?

Or do you just let anything go in and out of your life number six God's nearness in Isaiah chapter 49 the Lord says your walls are continually before me your walls are continually before me in other words God God sees the condition of your walls and he says in that same passage I have inscribed you on the palms of my hands your walls are continually before me this speaks of just the the marvelous intimacy of the nearness of God. Walls have to do with nearness. And a broken down wall of the nearness of God is a disaster in our lives. It means we're just operating independently and autonomously. We just say whatever we wanna say, do whatever we wanna do, not governed by the government of love and the love of God in Jesus Christ.

So that's the meaning of walls. I'll give you two more. Number seven, infinite protection in heaven. Walls symbolize infinite protection in heaven. There's a prophecy that Zechariah actually brings during this very same time period in Zechariah chapter 2 verse 4.

And Zechariah, he's talking in the far future where he's saying that God alone will be the wall of protection in that day. And he's talking about heaven. There's a day when all the earthly walls are going to go away and you'll have walls of infinite protection but they're God. God is infinite and your walls of protection go out infinitely. There's nothing that can get in and there's nothing that can get out and you are protected infinitely by God.

So these walls are also a picture of heaven where where God is the one. Zechariah 2 4 Jerusalem shall be inhabited as towns without walls because of God. And then lastly, number eight, broken down walls are a sign of God's rejection in many cases. Punishment for sin can involve the removal of protection in your life. In Lamentations chapter two, verse seven, we read this.

The Lord has spurned his altar. He has abandoned his sanctuary. Why? Because their worship was fake and they were worldly. That's why.

And then he says this, the Lord has given up the walls of her palaces into the hand of the enemy. They have made a noise in the house of the Lord as on the day of a set feast. In other words, during the Babylonian captivity, God sent the Babylonians in to destroy the walls of Jerusalem because of their sin. They refused to keep the Sabbath, they refused to keep his laws, and They had a really elaborate sense of worship and they did a lot of stuff in the temple But they did it without a heart of love for God. It was fake They were just going through the motions and God pulled down their walls It was a sign of judgment against them and now in Nehemiah they're coming back to rebuild those walls that God pulled down by the Babylonians in 586 BC.

So that's the meaning of walls. Now let's talk about Nehemiah the man. Now I'm going to give you five words to help you understand Nehemiah the man. And the first word is the word courtier, courtier. A courtier is a person who attends the royal court.

And He is either a companion or an advisor to the king or the queen. A courtier is a high official in the court, in the king or queen's court. And that's who Nehemiah was. He was in the court of Artaxerxes. He was a courtier.

The second C, Comforter. His name actually means the Lord Comforts and he did this. He did comfort God's people in many ways. You'll see as we go on. He was strong but he was also merciful in so many ways.

He was a comforter. Thirdly, the third C, cupbearer. He was a cupbearer. Anybody know what a cupbearer is? Well, he was a cupbearer before the king, before he went back to Jerusalem.

Artes Xerxes was his boss, and he handed the king his glass of wine and really all his other food before the king ate it or drank it because the king didn't want to die of poison. And so Nehemiah was standing in the way of the king being poisoned by his food in one way or another. He really operated kind of like the Secret Service. You know, the Secret Service, they're always looking around to protect the president. And the Secret Service are going to throw themselves, they're going to throw their bodies in front of the bullet.

They're going to take the bullet first. Well, Nehemiah was going to take the bullet first if it had to do with food. That was his job. Now, You know, he controlled the food of the king. Now, just think about that for a minute.

Think about Nehemiah's life. You know, if you're the last one to eat or drink before the king, what would you do? What would you do with the food that the king ate? How carefully would you pay attention to the the harvest the growing of that food and the harvesting of that food and the process and the and the transportation of that food and the and The bringing in of that food and the paying for that food and who prepared it how? Careful would you be to pay attention to the entire process if it was me?

I would want to control the entire process I wouldn't want any poison to get in from the field to the table And that's exactly what Nehemiah was doing because Nehemiah was a human being too, and he did not want to die either. And so he protected the king. And God gave him a well-organized way of living, and he knew how to get things done. Nehemiah was a supremely gifted organizer and administrator. He was a leader, he was a warrior, he understood the law of God, he really was a remarkable man and in many ways he's like a modern-day deacon in the sense that he's capable of handling the physical side of a Reformation.

He's a godly man like Stephen, you know, who was a preacher of righteousness, who had the word of God on his lips, who cared about the poor. You know, one thing about deacons is that they're compassionate. They have hearts of mercy toward people because they're supposed to take care of the poor and the needy that are in the church. But Nehemiah was like that. He was an unusual mix of mercy and administrative prowess.

The next C, he was careful. He was careful to observe every commandment of God. Deuteronomy 8.1 says, be careful to observe all these things. And you'll see how he hated sin how he how how he hated the breaking of God's laws particularly the breaking of the Sabbath and the lack of mercy that was taking place in among the people this the the fifth see correspondent he was a correspondent that means he was prayerful up The role of prayer in Nehemiah is striking. We probably should do some sessions just on the prayers.

Well, we're going to encounter lots of moments of prayer in in chapter 1, chapter 2, chapter 4 more than once, chapter 6 more than once, chapter 9, and then chapter 13 more than once. Prayer prayers are being uttered or referred to over and over again. And why, you know, again, whenever we're in a book of the Bible, you know, we're always asking, why are we here? Why has God brought us here? I'm pretty confident one reason God's brought us here is that we would go deeper in prayer.

And we have tremendous instruction here in Nehemiah. Anybody want to grow in prayer? Anybody need to grow in prayer? Here you go. We're in the right place for that.

So he was a correspondent. Everything is bathed in prayer. Some of his prayers were long. We're going to encounter a couple of long prayers and some really short prayers. You know, I preached on this.

I preached on this book 35 years ago in California. And I remember reading somebody who said that Nehemiah's prayers were like arrow prayers. He would shoot them up. He would be in a moment of time and he would shoot up this little arrow prayer or he would have long periods of prayer when he was in private and things like that. But there's just much about prayer.

You'll find short and long but heartfelt prayers in times of need, and it's beautiful to see it. So that's sort of an introduction to some of the details of this book and how to read it and how to interpret it and how to understand what the walls are. I pray that all the children in this church think about walls in a whole different place. You know, Jesus taught us to think about doors differently. He says, I'm the door.

He taught us to think about bread differently. He said, I'm the bread of life. And now we should learn how to think about walls whenever you look at a wall Think about that think about what they mean. Why why has God put walls around us even now? What why do all of our houses have walls in them?

To teach us something about the glory of God. And so here we are in the place where we learn a lot about walls. I hope we never look at a wall again the same as we're walking around through this world, that we have an awareness of what God is trying to say to us as we walk through this world. When we see the stars or the trees or the fish, there's always something to learn about God. So I wanna dive into these chapters now.

You can see before you, there are listed 13 of them. But I want to approach these chapters in a particular way. There's no way I'm going to exhaust what's in these chapters. But I want to give a taste of how God moved these people's hearts to rebuild. And I want us to ask, is the Lord moving my heart like that?

Let's be like children who are saying, is it me, Am I being picked for this? Is the Lord putting his hand on me for this? And that we would really consider if God is laying his hand upon us in any one of these areas, what a blessing it would be if God would even lay His hand upon us for one of them. I pray He gives us all of them together. And so these are works of the Spirit of God.

This wasn't about people who just decided to change their lives, okay? This is about a work of the Spirit of God to bring a sense of God into their lives and as a result certain things happened. And so I really want us to look at how God moved in order to rebuild these people's lives. And The first thing is he gave loving compassion for a broken people. He gave loving compassion For a broken people that's in chapter 1 of Nehemiah What happens in chapter 1 is as Hanani one of Nehemiah's brethren?

He reports the sad state of affairs in the church in Jerusalem, and the people are in distress and reproach, the walls are broken down, and what happens is Nehemiah is broken by their brokenness. He has mercy upon them and he prays with such emotion and intensity. After the first four verses it's all a prayer and we're going to go into that next week. But he hears, he hears and his heart is broken and he prays. And it's a good time to ask, you know, is God doing that to me?

Have I heard something? Have I heard something that broke my heart and I prayed? Or have I heard something that should have broke my heart and I didn't pray? Well, let's go back. Let's go back and revisit that moment.

Now, Nehemiah has love in his heart for these broken people, and he cries and he prays. He's moved in his heart. He's a very tender-hearted man, although he's a strong man. You know, Nehemiah is very much like the Lord Jesus Christ, who was moved with compassion when he looked over the city of Jerusalem and he wept. During the final week of his life, he's coming to Jerusalem and he wept there and it's recorded in Luke chapter 19.

Nehemiah is like Jesus, he weeps for his people and he intercedes in the same way that Jesus Christ interceded for his people and wept for them. But here's what I want us to think about. Love hears and love prays. He doesn't just, from what he heard, He doesn't see it with his own eyes until chapter 2, but he heard and he prayed. When love hears, it cares and it prays.

And love prays words of love. What you'll find here is that Nehemiah praised the words of the Old Testament. He praised the word of God. And Nehemiah knows God by God's word. Did you get that?

Nehemiah prays the things that he knows about God and he pulls phrases out of Deuteronomy. He pulls phrases out of Chronicles. He's pulling phrases out of various books of the Bible. He pulls phrases out of Isaiah. When Nehemiah prays, he prays the Word of God because he knows God by his word.

And we're going to talk about praying scripture probably next Sunday About just various ways to think about how we should pray the Word of God for the for the people around us and You know we I I think we are a lot like the disciples in Matthew 5 where they said, Lord teach us to pray. Well here we go, next Sunday. We're going to really dive into that whole matter. And then Nehemiah, he prays before he acts. And that takes us to chapter 2.

And in chapter 2, what you find is that Nehemiah is looking and surveying, and he's praying and he's taking action. This is a work of God in his life. And he, now after hearing with his ears and praying, now he sees with his own eyes. He actually takes action and he goes and he looks. And In one way, it's not enough just to hear.

One, it's a blessing to be present with the problem, and that's what he does. It's a work of the Spirit of God that is like a magnet to take you to that problem, and to go and see with your own eyes what is happening. So in chapter one, he's hearing, in chapter two, he's seeing, and he's taking action to relieve the pain of the people. Nehemiah prays before he acts. And so he surveys the damage and he goes out in the middle of the night.

Nobody even knows why he's there. He's there for three days and nobody even knows why he's shown up. But then in the middle of the night he goes with a very small group to look at the damage that has been incurred to the walls and he goes to all these different places in the wall. We're going to learn all those places as we go through. We're gonna go to the fish gate.

We're gonna go to all these different gates. The sheep gate. Why are those gates there? Well, we're gonna go there and find out why they're there. But he goes and he surveys these things and he's taking stock.

He's surveying what is wrong and it's what every Christian should do. They should be surveying what is broken down. We're being brought in to a time in our lives right now where we're going to be doing a survey of what's broken down I'm gonna ask everybody in the church to do that You know, don't just hear this and walk away and be the same survey Do just what Nehemiah did take the time under the quietness of the night and take stock of what's happening. You know Jesus said for which of you intending to build a tower does not sit down first and count the cost And we ought to be doing that as well, to survey the damage that God has done. Hey, there's a lot of damage that has been done to us by the devil.

And, you know, we ought to survey it and bring it before the Lord and see how God might rebuild us, you know, in that sense. And but it was it was God who who brings Nehemiah to this place. We need to take a nighttime tour, all of us, of our lives, and to survey the damage in our hearts, in our families, and in our church, and what does need to repair, and what do we need to do about it. Here's another work of the Spirit in chapter three, working together to build. God raises up these people to build, and it's this, I love chapter three because it just explains how all these people rose up to rebuild these walls.

And they organized the rebuilding according to families. Like I said before, they had each family working on the section of the wall right in front of their own house. It's a picture of people rising up. The church always has different kinds of people in it. There are people with that have a largeness of heart and they actually they actually do the work in their own place and then there are those who are heartless.

Those are the two kinds. But what you find in this chapter, it's mostly the people that have largeness of heart, and all of their names are listed there, but there are some people that are listed here that didn't have a heart for the work at all. And They're always those who will refuse. And here the nobles of this particular tribe in verse 5 are recorded. They're always going to be those in a church who exempt themselves from the work.

They just want to hang around. They want to show up. They want to get fed, and they want to roll, but they don't want to work. And some of their names are recorded in verse 5. You don't want your names on that list.

We don't know exactly why they exempted themselves from the work. Maybe they were too busy. Maybe they were too proud. Maybe they were too worldly. Maybe they just didn't care about the right things.

Maybe they thought they were just too big for the work. But guess what? They were big enough for their names to end up in the Bible, OK? And their names are recorded right here. There are two books and There are two kinds of people that are recorded.

There are those who are written in the book of life And those who are written in the book of death Those who are written in the book of death don't work. They don't bear fruit. They're not true Christians The Bible makes that really clear when a person is converted they bear fruit and if you if you say that you love God and don't keep His commandments you're a liar that's what John says. So there's there's a sense of working that is a natural result of true conversion. And so that's what we see there.

And we'll see that both the great and the small work is, it's a picture of 1 Corinthians chapter 12, where there the body is composed of many members. They're not all the same. And the eye can't say to the hand, I don't need you. We need everybody's work. And that's really pictured here.

Every Christian has a part in rebuilding their section of the wall and to build according to the gifts that God has given them. My dad used to say all the time, are you a worker or a shirker? That's what he would say. And I know he's listening to that now, and he's smiling because he probably said that to me a thousand times, are you a worker or a shirker? Because he pretty much thought there were only two kinds of people in this world.

And Nehemiah discovered that when they started building the walls. Also, I can't wait to get to verse 12 in chapter 3 because there's this there's this family The the daughters of Shalom it looks like he didn't have any sons But his daughters were out there working on the wall, you know moving rocks and putting stuff back together I love that picture, you know, and it reminds me of my girls. I mean, if you want to meet my wife or my daughters happy, get them a power tool. They love it. But the daughters of Shalom are right there on the wall, you know, working.

And I'm sure they had their weapons in one hand and their trials in the other, just like everybody else. And then when we get to chapter 4, it's the beginning of kind of a long section of opposition. Chapters 4 through 6 document the opposition that took place. With any work of the Spirit of God, there is opposition. We meet it first, well not first, but we meet it in a very demonstrative way in chapter four.

And it is that enemies escalated from mocking to conspiracy to outright attack of the people during this time. Started kind of low level, you know, with a little bit of mocking, and then it just kind of grew until they were armed eventually. Their true colors were shown. And Sanballat and Tobiah are two people you're gonna meet. They are Samaritans and Sanballat is the governor of Samaria and he's furious.

Now I hope you remember Samaria. When you hear Samaria, hear what you need to think. A little bit of Jesus and a lot of the world in worship. That's what that's what Samaria is. The Samaritans wanted to mix a little bit of worldliness into their worship and they hated those who wanted to only worship God in the way that he prescribed.

And so the Samaritans liked the world a little bit too much. And so Sanballat is furious. And he says this in verse 2. What are these feeble Jews doing? Will they fortify themselves?

Will they offer sacrifices? Will they complete it in a day? Will they revive the stones from the heaps of rubbish? Stones that are burned? So it starts with mocking.

By the way, Nehemiah finished the wall in 52 days. They did actually get it done. And Tobiah is the same. But the Samaritans had a reason to keep those walls broken down. The Samaritans did not want worship to be regulated by God.

The Samaritans knew that that's exactly why Zerubbabel and Jeshua and Ezra and Nehemiah came back, to restore worship, to refocus worship on what God has prescribed alone. They want, you know what, here's what they did. They wanted to mix the Easter bunny and eggs and rabbits with the church. That's what they wanted to do. And, but Satan's, you know, predictable, well-worn method is to intimidate and humiliate and discredit the people of God and and and they wage a psychological warfare because they really don't like pure worship that's the issue they don't want to have a people that are set apart for God they do not want to see a holy people they do not want to separate from the ways of the Gentiles, they want to have a syncretism.

And so they hate this effort of rebuilding the walls. They understand what it means. They're going to build those walls and worship is going to be established and it's going to draw people out of their little worldly club. And they really would like to keep the Easter bunny and the eggs. They like it.

And Nehemiah, what does Nehemiah do? Verses 4 and 5, he prays. That's what he does. And one of the most beneficial and helpful results of opposition is that it drives you to humble yourself before God and to pray. And one of the commentators of this says, the enemies sought to storm Jerusalem.

The builders stormed the throne of grace how about that you know when your walls are being stormed stormed the throne of grace that's what you do and that's what Nehemiah did and then and Nehemiah also you know positioned the builders on the wall They continued building and they gave swords and spears, which they held in one hand, and trowels in the other. You've heard of that publication of Charles Spurgeon, The Sword and the trowel. It's taken from this very chapter of the Word of God, Nehemiah chapter 3. So a work of the Spirit of God is when opposed, when opposed, Are you praying together? And that's what they did and then number five chapter five Demonstrating mercy and truth when there are internal offenses now chapter four is about external opposition and and difficulty chapter five is about Opposition and and disunity that rose up from within.

There was disunity in the camp. Those were two kinds of problems that they existed. And so, you know, If the devil can't convince you to give up because of external opposition He's gonna try internal opposition to discourage you and get you to just throw up your hands on the Church of Jesus Christ And he'll use internal dissatisfaction and opposition to do that and so here in chapter in this chapter Internal disunity raises its ugly head and sin sin will raise up its ugly head when you're rebuilding, and you shouldn't be surprised about it. But in this case, there actually was sin among the people. It was the sin of mistreatment of people and lack of mercy in a really hard economic time.

You know, when people get pressed financially, they make compromises and they might sin against each other in the church. That's what happened here. And The people became offended at one another. These internal offenses can become some of the most difficult matters in church life. That's what you find in this chapter.

What happened is that some were taking advantage of others. Nehemiah is raised up and he really brings the mercy of God into the situation. There's a lot of forgiveness that Nehemiah causes as a result of his instruction and admonition to the people. And he is a merciful leader in this situation. People were charging excessive interest on loans and they were grinding the faces of their own countrymen for their own gain.

There was sin in the camp. It was real sin. And sometimes that happens in a real church, because you have sin and it happens on the inside and God's mercy and the mercy of Jesus is the only way out of it. So then in in chapter 6 there's another work of the Spirit of God to rebuild, and that is this matter of distraction. And what you find here is that they are undistracted by detractors, and they stick to the work at hand.

They are undistracted by detractors. You just might ask, am I being distracted by detractors? Am I all obsessed? Am I wrapping all my time up with you know the opposers of God or am I sticking to my work and just continuing to do it? And I think one of the great messages of chapter six is don't get distracted by the detractors.

You know, stick to the work at hand. What you find here is a gigantic smear campaign and the walls are finished but the enemies aren't finished. And here's what they did. They did four things. First of all, they tried to lure Nehemiah out into the wilderness, and they did it four times.

And four times, Nehemiah said, No, I'm about a great work here. I'm just gonna keep on working. You can keep on slandering us. We don't care we're going to work and and the second thing is that these people spread false information about Nehemiah and Then thirdly they mounted an intimidation campaign to discredit him, accusing him of defiling the temple. That's in verses 10 through 13.

And the fourth thing that they did is they tried to strike fear into their hearts. You know, fear is so debilitating, and we struggle with it at different levels, which is why the most often repeated command in the entire Bible is what? Do not fear. God says that as a command more times than any other command in the Bible because we were weak and we often fear. We fear man.

We fear consequences and things like that. The fifth thing is that they use their alliances to come against them. They use their networks to come against them. But Nehemiah is not deterred by it at all. He turns to the Lord in verse 9 and he prays, Lord strengthen my hands.

I'm not going out there. I'm going to stick with the work. And it's a picture of God sort of throwing down his enemies by the right focus and discipline of his people, to focus on the things that really build the walls. You can spend your life pining away about your problems and your difficulties and the people that don't like you, and you'll waste your life. And a work of the Spirit of God is when you're drawn back to do the work of God, and that's what you're really focused on.

And I just wonder, as we think about this, together as a church, do we sense the Lord leading us in that way? Is the Spirit of God working in our hearts to turn us way more back to our work rather than our worries. And it really matters. The next chapter, chapter seven, another work of the Spirit of God to rebuild, was populating the city and letting your light shine. That's what they did and that's what we ought to do as well.

And in chapter 7, there's this tremendous organization of the people. The walls were up now and the people were protected, But there weren't that many people living in the city and it needed to be populated. And so God causes these leaders to draw people into the city, interestingly, in a really interesting way. But the city needed to be populated so that it could be that city set on a hill, so it could be the place of the worship of God. And so there are a number of remarkable people here, but there are gatekeepers and singers and Levites that are brought back into the city and there's this man Hananiah the leader of the citadel a faithful man and feared God more than many you know it's it's a good thing to have people who fear God in your city.

And that's what was happening here. They were repopulating the city. And then the next work of the Spirit of God is in chapter 8. This is the gathering for worship, for the word, and for rejoicing. This is one of my favorite chapters in the book.

But what you find here is that in verse 1 in chapter 8, all the people gather together as one man in the open square that was in front of the Water Gate. And so they gathered together and they listened to the law of God being read and you know the whole family was there, all the little children were there, people were there, and they listened to the Word of God. It was just one of the remarkable, beautiful celebrations that you find in the Bible. There is a lengthy treatment in the instruction of what was read. The scriptures were put in a place of authority, and there was repentance and rejoicing.

I think we should ask, am I rebuilding the walls of my life by gathering with all my heart to hear the Word of God and to worship and to pray together. I've always been so thankful for this church. Almost everybody shows up for prayer on Wednesday night. I can't believe it. God has given us a heart to gather.

Now the other part of it is, are we gathering with all of our heart? We have a heart to gather, but do we, do we gather with all of our hearts? That's always my problem, and I know that's the problem that we struggle with. And here they, they gathered together and they were confessing in chapter nine and fasting and praying and they, and they were, and they were reminiscing. In chapter 9 there's this picture of days of prayer and fasting and humiliation and remembering they turned from their sins.

They spent a quarter of the day hearing the Word of God and another quarter of the day confessing their sins and worshiping God and What a day it's it's you know, it's gonna be a little bit like today we're gonna spend a day kind of like that and we're gonna we're gonna celebrate the Lord's Supper we're gonna eat together we're gonna come back and and and hear more instruction on the whole doctrine of repentance tonight we're gonna spend you know a good part of today doing a lot of what they were doing there Who knows what God can do with a day like that. And then the next work of the Spirit of God to rebuild is in chapter 10. They entered into a covenant with one another. They signed a covenant. They entered into an agreement together.

And they were explaining their position in the covenant. And there were two elements to their position. Are you ready? There are two things that formed this covenant. First to separate from the filth of the nations, that's in verse 28.

And the second part was a promise to obey the law of God because they had been disobeying the law of God. Those are the two things that they put in their covenant. Now, I'm oversimplifying a little bit, But that's pretty much what it was all about. And then in the next chapter, in chapter 11, we find even more of resettling in the city so that the city could be a place of the proclamation of the greatness of God. The Jerusalem would be the joy of the whole earth.

And the resettling of the city is, of course, it's a figure of heaven where God brings people, his own people into the New Jerusalem. And so people are streaming into the city to experience the blessings of the presence of God. And verse two is beautiful. And the people blessed all the men who willingly offered themselves to dwell in Jerusalem. And so he brings them together, you know, in this experience of being in the city.

And it's a very interesting story to see how they actually populated the city because there were just weren't that many people living there. And then chapter 12, another work of the Spirit of God, is identifying with the Reformation and rejoicing with great joy. And the women and the children and everybody who are included in this, They have fully identified themselves with this reformation that God was doing in their lives. They gathered together to sing and to feast and to celebrate. The priests and the Levites were all there.

And you witness this great dedication. It was a real dedication with musical instruments and jubilation. It was just a wonderful time that they had there. And they went back to the Temple of Solomon to get their pattern. They went back to the worship of God that was prescribed originally.

And then the final chapter, chapter 13, really speaks of identifying or turning away from everything pagan. The last two verses of chapter 13 really explain the heart of the message there. They turned away from everything pagan And this is really the first mark of repentance and restoration of anything. And what we learn in chapter 13 is at some point Nehemiah left Jerusalem and he went back to Babylon and during that time people fell away. And so when Nehemiah got back he saw that they had fallen into various forms of paganism.

And that's a question we should always ask. You know, in my absence from this place have I fallen into forms of paganism? When you exempt yourself from preaching or prayer or really the full fellowship of the people of God, you start to drift. There's no way to avoid it. It always happens.

You show me a person who's discouraged or really struggling with sin in a difficult way. I'll show you a person who's turned his head away, turned his ears away. And that's what happened here. And they had let Tobiah in a room in the temple. They had started compromising again.

They started bringing the worship of the Gentiles, or at least the ethic, back into the temple itself. They were becoming like Samaritans. That's always a temptation to keep becoming like the Samaritans. Well, everybody else does it. Why can't we do it?

Well, Nehemiah said, we don't do it because God said not to do it. We don't really care about what the Samaritans do. And so there was this statement at the very end, I cleanse them of everything pagan. And so they discontinued many of these pagan practices. Now, you know, this is a work of the Spirit of God.

And I think there's So much to learn from Nehemiah about our own lives. One of the things that is so clear to us here is that the welfare of God's church depends on walls, not bridges, to the world. The welfare of the church depends on walls, not bridges. And what do these walls mean? They're shadows of good things to come, but they were built by people who had a sense of God and a zeal for the Lord that only he can supply.

A revival like this is entirely a work of God. And what's the greatest need in this church? A sense of God. That we walk in here with a sense that God is going to speak through his word. That our our hearts are tuned toward the words of the songs, our hearts are gripped by the prayers, and we're saying amen.

Our hearts are really engaged, and the Word of God is preached, and we're saying, Oh Lord, help me. And we're gathered together in time of fellowship and we we love one another from the heart We do the things that we're called to do. That's how revival happens But revival doesn't happen because somebody announces that it's gonna happen or they schedule something But let's be really clear. It always happens when God's people gather it always happens when God's people gather. It always happens when God's people gather.

And I pray that God would just continue to give us more and more revival, more and more understanding of the power of the gospel of Jesus Christ, that He saves sinners, that those who repent of their sins and believe in His atonement and Whose hearts are changed Have entered the kingdom of heaven and I pray that God would just continue to give us Fruit as we move on I pray that God would help us to build up the broken parts of the walls here in this church There are many many many broken parts of the wall in this church, and we'll always be building them. But how will we build? According to the Word of God, by the power of the Holy Spirit Himself. I pray God gives us Great fruit as we go through this book in the coming coming weeks next week. We're gonna focus on Nehemiah's prayer I can't wait.

Let's pray Lord, thank you for giving us this season in our church's life to help us to ask What are you doing with me Lord? Are you doing this in my heart? Are you giving me compassion for a broken people? Are you leading me to survey the walls of my life? Are you moving my heart so that we would work together to rebuild as a church?

Are you making me a person of prayer? Are you giving me perseverance under trials and opposition? Lord, are you gathering me together to worship with your people? Lord, are you moving in my heart to cleanse myself from everything pagan? Lord I pray that you would give us such great and urgent care for all these things and that you would use us in our generation in this little tiny slice of the Reformation that you began with your son when he died on the cross and was resurrected.

Lord we Thank you for him and we pray that you would do a mighty work by his spirit. Amen.