Together We Build

Sermon Transcript

“TOGETHER WE BUILD”

Pastor Phil Winfield

Nehemiah 2:17-3:32

October 7, 2007

Grace Church of Des Moines, IA

4200 E. 25th StreetDes Moines, IA 50317

Website:  http://www.gracehome.com

Online Sermons:  http://gracehome.sermonaudio.com

We have been teaching from the book of Nehemiah and God has used it.  Peoples’ lives are being touched and changed including mine and I am just so thrilled that you are here to share with us once again today.  So if you have your Bibles open here is what we are going to do.  We are going to open it up to Nehemiah chapter number two.Well, we have been laying the foundation.  The first week we talked about the need to face reality.  No sense of trying to hide from the truth or going around it or trying to just forget about it.  Nope.  Face the reality of our lives.  Face the reality of our families, our community, our church, our culture.The second thing we had to do was realize that God has always given us the right position and we can always pray.  Pray before you do anything else.  Pray first, pray early, pray often. Pray that God would help you as you are facing the reality of your life.And then the third thing we learned was that we are not going to be able to go very far with fear.  Fear won’t help us.  We have to go through fear by faith.Somebody says, “Well, you know, I’m just so glad that I came to know the Lord Jesus as my Savior because he took all my fears away.”Well, that’s a great testimony. I wish I could give it.  I get scared to death sometimes.  I don’t know what the next step is and, boy, I’ll take next step by faith that God has spoken. And if we just do the next thing, but a lot of times it is a fearful step.  So we go on by faith.  Faith is hearing what God says and doing it.  And that is what we are supposed to do.And then last week we found out that we are going to have to communicate what is going on in our lives with those that it affects.  And we are going to have to make an investigation, get down to the details.  Take a look at it.  Rome wasn’t built in a day and our lives won’t be rebuilt in five minutes.  We are going to have to look at what is going on in our life.  We are going to have to look at the problem areas and find out what it is.  We are going to have to investigate. Then we are going to have to communicate to those that love us and that we love here is what God is doing, help me.  I need you, you need me.Now, the fifth week.  We are halfway through.  Here it is. Teamwork. That is what we are going to study today.  Teamwork.  We have to work together. And that is the key building block on your sheet.And the key opposition is going to be: Uninvolved and unavailable.  I am not involved. I am unavailable.  I can’t help with this project.  I can’t help with myself.  People are going to have to fix me.  I can’t do it.  Others are going to have to do it.  So we are not supposed to do that.Now, I have given a subtitle to this and you can write this on your sheet there.  The subtitle of Together we Build is “Don’t stay paralyzed.  Get organized.” And I want you to see in the Word of God, in Nehemiah chapter two, we haven’t stood and read yet, have we?  Have we read yet?  We didn’t read yet.  That was last service.  Stand to your feet, why don’t you, and let me read chapter two, verse 17.  Here is what it says.Then I said to them, "You see the distress that we are in, how Jerusalem lies waste, and its gates are burned with fire. Come and let us build the wall of Jerusalem, that we may no longer be a reproach."  And I told them of the hand of my God which had been good upon me, and also of the king’s words that he had spoken to me. So they said, "Let us rise up and build." Then they set their hands to this good work.  But when Sanballat the Horonite, Tobiah the Ammonite official, and Geshem the Arab heard of it, they laughed at us and despised us, and said, "What is this thing that you are doing? Will you rebel against the king?"  So I answered them, and said to them, "The God of heaven Himself will prosper us; therefore we His servants will arise and build, but you have no heritage or right or memorial in Jerusalem."Well, when you come to chapter three—stay with me now, don’t go anywhere—when you come to chapter three you have some of the more redundant reading that you will find in the Bible.  It is similar to 1 Chronicles chapter four, five, six and following. It is just...it is a redundant bunch of reading.You say, “Well, then, let’s just don’t read it. Let’s don’t study that.  Let’s go to something like John 3:16.”No, no.  We don’t jump stuff and God puts things in the Bible for a reason.  Now, this is the inspired, inerrant, infallible, unchanging Word of God.  He took space in this book, an eternal book, he took space to write down things in this book about who was building where and who was next to him and what they were doing and where they built and who didn’t put their hand to the work.Listen to God’s Word, chapter three, verse one, five verses only.Then Eliashib the high priest rose up with his brethren the priests and built the Sheep Gate; they consecrated it and hung its doors. They built as far as the Tower of the Hundred, and consecrated it, then as far as the Tower of Hananel.  Next to Eliashib the men of Jericho built. And next to them Zaccur the son of Imri built.  Also the sons of Hassenaah built the Fish Gate; they laid its beams and hung its doors with its bolts and bars.  And next to them Meremoth the son of Urijah, the son of Koz, made repairs. Next to them Meshullam the son of Berechiah, the son of Meshezabel, made repairs. Next to them Zadok the son of Baana made repairs.  Next to them the Tekoites made repairs; but their nobles did not put their shoulders to the work of their Lord.Drop down to verse number 12, if you would. “And next to him was Shallum the son of Hallohesh, leader of half the district of Jerusalem.”  Look at what it says.  “He and his daughters made repairs.”Jump over to verse 23. “After him Benjamin and Hasshub made repairs opposite their house. After them Azariah the son of Maaseiah, the son of Ananiah, made repairs by his house.”Drop down to 28: “Beyond the Horse Gate the priests made repairs, each in front of his own house.”Verse 29: “After them Zadok the son of Immer made repairs in front of his own house.”Drop down to verse 30. It says there, “After him Hananiah the son of Shelemiah,” and drop down to the bottom of the last phrase, “After him Meshullam the son of Berechiah made repairs in front of his dwelling.”Interesting where they worked.Would you bow your heads and let’s ask the Lord to bless.Now, Father, we could look at these lists of names and we could look at these redundant verses and we could say, “Well, that’s interesting.  Someday we’ll understand it.”  But you didn’t give it to us for someday.  You gave it to us now.  When you said that there were so many things that Jesus did that was in this world that all the books of the world couldn’t contain it, you didn’t include all of those things, but you did include this list.  There is something here. Help us to understand your Word and apply it to our heart in Jesus precious name.  Amen.Would you be seated?Do you know that in order to not be paralyzed by the fears and the problems of our life we need to get organized?  And that is exactly what happens in chapter three. Nehemiah was a master administrator.  God had given him that gift and he motivated the people.  He found out who could do what and how they could work and who could work with whom and they put these people to the task of building the wall.  It was a community project. Each one had work to do all of his one, but each one had a work that was interrelated to everybody else.  Sometimes we don’t see it that way, do we?We are building our life and we think that our life is our life and that is it and that’s all that matters and I don’t care what you do and you don’t care what I do.  I’m just going to build my life and don’t care if it hurts the rest of the world.  It doesn’t make any difference to me.Well, that is not the attitude that we are supposed to have.  Each one of these people, they were given a task and they get organized.Did you know today that people pulling together can get a lot more done than individuals pulling all by themselves?  Two people can get more done as a team than two individuals can apart.  “A threefold cord is not quickly broken,” the Bible says in Ecclesiastes. And when we can work together as a team and we can all pull together then what we can do is avoid pulling apart.And I have got something to say to you this morning about the many families that are here of this church.  I want you to know that I am the pastor.  I am the shepherd.  Better spoken, I am the under shepherd of this church, the chief speaker and pastor.  And I want you to know I take that very, very, very seriously.  Men and women decide that they are going to disrupt and tear up their homes because of selfishness and because of lack of understanding of the project God has in process and so they decide they are going to just divorce their wives or divorce their husbands.“Let’s start all over, get a new start.  After all God wants me to be happy and that is the most important thing in life is for me to have what I want and be happy and I know God always wants me to be happy. So I’m just going to go that direction.”And so they just make choices.  I want to tell you that I am not the chief shepherd of this church, but I am the under shepherd.You say, “Well, who is the chief shepherd?”Do you have an answer to that for me?  Who is the chief shepherd of this church?Jesus Christ.Peter spoke about it. He said, “I am just an under shepherd.”  Paul explained that he was an under rower.  He was an under rower.  That’s what he was.  He was underneath in the galley and he was rowing at the behest and the calling of the one who is beating out the time. That’s all I am.  The one who is leading this church, he better be the one leading this church, is the Lord Jesus. And if he is not leading this church we don’t have a church.  We have just got an organization, a congregation of people that are coming together misguided, misled and without purpose.But I am the under shepherd.  I am telling you as the under shepherd I am worried about a lot of families in our church because if they don’t come together they are going to pull apart.  And we are all that way.I just heard this story read this week.  You know, this is football season.  I kind of get into college football, high school football.And, by the way, Tennessee really did well this weekend.  I just want to let everybody know that.  They just really, really did well.But anyway, I read and I thought this would really get you the idea.  How many of you know who Paul Bear Bryant is?  Any of you guys? Sure you do.  Paul Bear Bryant, coach at Alabama, well, since they came over on the Mayflower almost.“But I am just a plow hand from Arkansas,” he said, “But I have learned how to hold the team together and how to lift some men up and how to calm some men down until there is finally one heartbeat together, a team, where we are committed to one another.  Then there are just three things I would ever like to say.  If anything goes back it is my fault.  If anything goes semi good then we did it together.  And if anything goes really, really well, then you guys get the credit.  That’s what it takes to win football games.”And I am going to tell you. If we could get off the self centered mentalities of our lives it would make all the difference in our homes and in the workplaces where we work.  When it goes bad it is my fault.  When it goes ok we did all right.  When it goes really, really great give other people the credit.And so he learned that.And so what we are supposed to do is we are supposed to not stay paralyzed.  We are supposed to get organized.  We are supposed to pull together like one heartbeat working  together for what God wants us to do.I want to look, now, at these recovery workers in this chapter three. We are not going to read every verse of it, but I would encourage you to do that.  It is very interesting some of the side comments that you will find in there.  But I want you to look at them and the first thing I want you to know from this passage of Scripture, if we are going to rebuild our lives, if we are going to just keep building, we are going face reality and we are going to pray and then we are going to have faith and we are going to do the initiation because of investigation.  And then we are going to have teamwork and work together. Then here are the elements that are going to be involved.The first thing is that recovery and rebuilding calls for participation.  Write that down.  Participation. Every one working.  And there are several thoughts I would like to give you under that and that is that we as individuals need other people.  You show me the person that thinks he doesn’t need anybody, he doesn’t need anyone else, he is a Christian, he is all ok by himself.  All he needs is just, “Well, I’m all right.  I’m saved and I know the Lord and I read my Bible.  I just don’t need anybody else.”Well, they are not investigating the Scriptures.  In Nehemiah they could have done a tremendous job at their own wall. They could have built their own wall and could have tuck pointed every brick and I mean it could have been perfect and that wall could have been perfect, but if you look next door and his wall is completely absent then have you kept out the enemy, have you protected the wall?  We need each other.  Listen.Listen to this.  1 Corinthians chapter 12, verse 12.  “For as the body is one and has many members, but all the members of that one body, being many, are one body, so also is Christ.”  And here is the catch.  Here is the clincher.For by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body––whether Jews or Greeks, whether slaves or free––and have all been made to drink into one Spirit.  For in fact the body is not one member but many.And that is exactly the way that the body of Christ is supposed to operate.  That is the way families are supposed to operate. That is the way businesses are supposed to operate and organizations. They need each other.  We need other people.We cannot say, “I don’t need anyone.”  It is an impossibility.  We can’t function without them.The other thing is that other people need us.  Write that down.  Other people need us.  Ephesians chapter four, verse 15 and 16 says,Speaking the truth in love, may grow up in all things into Him who is the head––Christ––  from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by what every joint supplies, according to the effective working by which every part does its share, causes growth of the body for the edifying of itself in love.Other people need us.I know people that come to church on a need to basis.  They come to church and they become part of the congregation. They participate when they have a need.  When things are going well and when things are going ok and, you know, they can just carry on by themselves, well, that’s fine.  “I just, you know, I’ll go to church at Christmas, Easter, a few other time during the year and that will be it.  And I’m fine.  You know, but if I run into trouble I know that that godly bunch of pastors on pastor Phil’s staff and I know that those wonderful deacons and elders and those youth workers and all of the volunteers in the youth department and all of those children’s directors and leaders and parents, I know that I can go over there and talk to them.  They are going to care about me. They are going to love me.  And so I know that when I need it I can go over there.”Well, that’s a wonderful thing. It is wonderful to know that there is somebody that is going to have a sympathetic ear who is going to weep with those that weep and rejoice with those that rejoice.  That is wonderful that we know that.  But did it ever occur to you that it is a two way street?  Did you know that we don’t only come to church when we need help?  But did you know that we come over here not on the basis of need, but we also come because we are here because other people need us.  You like your hand to be shaken Sunday morning?  Then you better go over and shake somebody else’s hand because they like it, too.I had a family quit this church because they saw me in public.  I didn’t see them.  They saw me.  They were convinced I saw them, ignored them, went the other direction.  They said, “Well, if that is the way that pastor is then I am never going to go back to that church anymore because he snubbed me in public.”Well, I didn’t see them. My question is, if they saw me why didn’t they come running up to me and say hello to me and shake my hand?  People come to church.“You know, I went to that church and that was the meanest bunch of people. They were so unfriendly. They just didn’t help anybody because I came in that church and they didn’t shake my hand.  They didn’t help me find the...I’m telling...I’m just not...”Do you know what?  Do you know what we ought to do?  We ought to go out of our way to be as friendly as we can be personally because he that hath friends must show himself friendly.  Isn’t that simple?  Just go out of our way to be kind to other people, to help other people.Other people need us.  And we can’t say that no one needs me.That ought to be enough reason right there for us to just get involved and get involved in the groups, get involved in studying on Sunday morning.  By the way, if you don’t get in a group you are missing half this sermon.  You are missing them every week because the most of this passage of Scripture talks about the gates and I’m only going to talk about one of all the gates that are mentioned.And so we need each other.  You need to be involved with other people.  We cannot say, legitimately, “No one needs me.”Do you know?  I am a fanatic of the V-8 engine.  I love...I have got a friend in this church, brother Jack Zimmer, that has got a Chevy GT.  Jealous is not the word for me about that guy.  I’m just kidding.  But he has this Chevy GT and he just got it and there is nothing sweeter.  The only thing that sounds greater is a philharmonic orchestra than a V-8 engine when it is running right.  He steps down on that thing and I mean, boy, it purrs.You know, I am not a very groomed sort of person.You say, “What are you talking about?”To get my V-8 Chevy pickup truck away from me gas is going to have to get to about six dollars a gallon.  I’m sorry. I just...you know, I love to be able to mash it and to take off.  I haven’t had any tickets, folks.  Do not make assumptions, all right?  Most of the policemen know me by name, but I have not had any tickets.Now, listen to me.  A V-8 engine is a wonderful thing if all cylinders are firing.  But you pull a couple of plug wires or you, you can drop a couple of lifters or something like that and that thing is not working and I am telling you there is nothing more pathetic than that and I want you to know that this church, Grace Church and every church, your family, your business, your organization, whatever you are involved in, if everybody is participating then you are going to have something magnificent.  But if only a few are doing it you are going to have problems.  And in homes, which is my key area of concern, in homes upon which society itself is built, if we are not pulling together, we are pulling apart. And if everybody is individualistic and selfish and only thinks that this home is about what makes me happy instead of how I can do those things that are the best for my family, for my children, for my future, if I make decisions in light of my past record, in light of my present circumstances, in light of my future hopes, if I would do that then it would make all the difference in the world. We have to pull together.  We have to participate.  We belong to each other.Romans 12:4-5 says,For as we have many members in one body, but all the members do not have the same function, so we, being many, are one body in Christ, and individually members of one another.We cannot say, “My life does not matter.”  You just can’t say it.  You can’t say, “I don’t need anybody.”  You cannot say, “Nobody needs me.”  And you cannot say, “My life does not matter.”  It is impossible...not and be a Christian because God’s Word says just the opposite.Now, we can’t say something else.  We cannot say, “I don’t do windows.”You say, “Is that in that Scripture?”No, and it’s not in the sermon either, but I am adding it.You say, “What do you mean by that?”Well, look at verse number five.  It is interesting, isn’t it?  Look at verse number five.  It says, chapter three, verse five, “Next to them the Tekoites,” which that’s where Amos was from, “the Tekoites made repairs; but their nobles did not put their shoulders to the work of their Lord.”Do you notice that?  Sometimes I think people get it in their mind when there is a task to accomplish, when we come together as a church family or we come together as a family, we don’t understand that it is the work of the Lord.  You know what?  We have missionaries that are all over the world?  When I say let us be faithful in giving so they can stay there some of you say, “Well, that preacher just wants my money.”I don’t want your money.  I want these people to be able to stay on the job in far away places preaching the Word of God and so we need to be faithful in giving. It is the work of the Lord.But it says the nobles didn’t lay their shoulder to it.  It actually says they wouldn’t stick their neck out. That’s what it actually means.  They would not...the nobles wouldn’t get involved.  The common man, they said, “Ok.  Tell me where to grab hold.”  And so they were organizing, they were putting people to work and I mean there are...you read the passage, jewelers, goldsmiths do it, perfumers do it, women do it, men do it, young do it, old do it, everybody gets involved, but there is this crowd that just stands over there.Have you ever watched ants?  Do you know that if you watch a crew of ants doing something there is always a big crowd watching?  Do you know that in a beehive that everybody has to do something?  And even though only half the hive goes out every day the other half stays inside of the hive and does nothing but bat their wings so that it keeps it 10 degrees cooler than it would be if they didn’t?  Think about that.  We are supposed to participate.  Nobody can say, “I don’t do windows.”  Nobody can say, “I just don’t do it.”You know, I have several thoughts about why these nobles didn’t want to do anything.You say, “Pastor, does everybody in your church serve?”No, but that’s our goal.You say, “Pastor, does everybody in there lay their hand to the plow?  Does everybody grab hold, does everybody do something?  Is everybody pulling together?  Is every member of your church a minister?”Well, I wish I could say so, but it is our goal.  I believe every church member, I believe every attender at Grace Church needs to be in a worship experience like this.  You need to be in a learning experience like a small group and you need to have a place of service to the body of Christ because you have been so gifted by God in heaven to serve the body.Then you need to be a witness to the world.  Now, listen to me.  No, not everybody is doing something and I have got suspicions about why they don’t.These nobles, first of all, they weren’t used to being accustomed...they were not accustomed to working alongside of the people who were getting their fingers and their hands dirty, were they?You know, I love this church.  I love to come here because you have got everything from three piece suits for Heart Shraftner and Marks all the way down to shorts, flip flops and a pull over.  And thank God for a church that we just want you.  I don’t care anything. I just want you to come to church and hear the Word of God.  Aren’t you glad for a place of grace.  Just come to church.  Just come.  Come to church.And, by the way, bring friends.  Don’t tell them how to dress. Tell them to come. Just get them here.  Let them come to church and hear the Word of God.But I have got a sneaking suspicion these nobles weren’t accustomed to working alongside what they might consider lower classes of people.There is something else about these nobles.  They may have been afraid to stick their neck out.  That’s what it actually means in that passage.  They were nobles.  They weren’t going to get down and lay their shoulders to the work of the Lord because, I believe, if you just let me whisper it to you, I believe they thought there might be financial ramifications.You say, “What?”I mean, I think they were afraid to really get down and get dirty and get with it and make a commitment and say, “There is the wall. It needs to be rebuilt for the glory of God.  Not mine, but thine. Not my will, but thy will.  I want to work on rebuilding this wall for the glory of God.”  I am sure that these nobles—we are going to find them later—they had business dealings with all of the people that were around them and they were afraid of what it might cost them in the greater picture of things. There are a lot of Christians that are afraid to come clean with God and grow because they are afraid, they are afraid of what it will cost them in their pocket.The great sign of Satan that many Christians are bowing down to is the sign of the dollar bill. It decides everything. It decides where they will live, how long they will stay there, where they will move, what they will do.  It determines their level of spirituality.“Well, I would never...I would never think about lying on that form. I am going to turn in my boss.  I’ll tell you.…”“How about for $10,000...”“Well, I’m never going to do it.”“How about $20,000?”“I would never...”“How about $100,000?”“Well, I think the Lord might forgive me for that.”You know, these nobles wouldn’t put their shoulders to the task.  We’re supposed to do that.  Families can’t survive if everyone doesn’t do their part.  Roles in families are very important.Now, please keep your tomatoes in your bags, knives, daggers, bows and arrows, just please let me say this without being killed. I am just a messenger.  I am not making the message.  Do you know that men...the Bible says in Ephesians chapter five that men have been given t their families to create an environment of unconditional love at home?  That’s right.The Bible says, “Therefore men ought to love their wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself for it.”  Love their wives.  Now, that doesn’t mean you love your wife like a tool, you love your wife like a manipulation, you love your wife to get her to do what’s going on and if that tool doesn’t work you pick up a different one.No, no, no.  Men have the role of creating an environment of love in their home where they live.  In other words your address is one thing and your home is a place of love unconditionally where you work and live together and men it is our responsibility.Second of all, women have a role.Oh, here is where I get in trouble.  Here is where I just absolutely reveal my counter cultural thoughts.Women are here to provide help for the man to create the environment that is loving and to nurture it.Adam was a flop until Eve came along. And Eve’s great purpose was to help Adam accomplish what it was that God had called him to do.  Women are here to provide help for the man to create the environment and to nurture it.There is a third thing. Children are here to perpetuate and not hinder the process of a home glorifying God because God intends for those that come to know him and have children, according to Malachi, to put off godly offspring.And I want to tell you the greatest detriment that could happen to a family to prevent godly offspring from coming into the world and growing up loving God is for that family to decide to disintegrate and go their own way because of personal preferences, discomforts.  Instead of working out, they find a way out.  Instead of working together in love, they give up.Children are here to perpetuate and not hinder.You say, “Well, why would you put it that way?”Well, because—here we go again, pastor Phil, old guy telling you parents that your children cannot be in charge of your family to set the agenda for your family.  They don’t have the experience. They don’t have the understanding. They don’t have the wherewithal.  They don’t have the calling of God.  They don’t have the intellectual ability at the points in their lives to set the agenda for your family.Can I say it once and again and once and forever?  Parents, you are totally free to be parents.  Parent your children.  Lead your children.  Plan your homes.  Love them.  Care for them.  Be there for them.  Enjoy them. Have fun with them.  But be in charge of your home. That one statement will change America.Be in charge of your home. You are free to be in charge.Let me hurry. Recovery calls for cooperation.  Everybody working together.  That is the key phrase that is used in this passage of Scripture over and over. It says next to them, next to him.  Isn’t that amazing?  They actually could be right next to somebody and work in concert.  Wouldn’t that be great if families were working together so well that they just didn’t pull against each other?  Wouldn’t be great if...how many of you...you have got to be honest within your...you know, from time to time in your home it is hard to figure out if you are on the same page.  Sometimes you are wondering if we are even in the same book.  Some of you think you are in different libraries.  Be honest.Come on. Raise your hands up.  I mean, it’s just...how many...boy we have got to come together or we are going to come apart.  We have got to pull together.  We have to participate together and then we have to cooperate together.What would a church look like?  What would a church look like where everybody was truly working together?  What would a family look like where there was a common goal, a common direction, a common purpose and that was the glory of God and that was the rearing of the children and the preparation of those children for the world in which they are going to live?I didn’t say this in the first service, I am going to say it right now.  Do you know that God does not grade on a curve?  Are you aware of the fact that God does not have a floating standard of holiness and righteousness according to the culture in which we live?  Did you know that? Did you know that just because the world is winding around in a great circular motion toward degradation and not even knowing who God is, do you know that the standard of God does not change just because culture does?  Are you aware of that?  And are you aware that we, as leaders of our family, need to set the example for our children of what God would want and not what the world dictates?What would a family look like?  What would a community look like?  Well, we have to understand that we have to cooperate because we are working for the same purpose, the much needed repairs.Everybody understands in a home when a father or a mother or some child in the home is off track going the wrong direction. So don’t let a child that is in trouble divide the mom  and dad or a child that has a sickness divide the mother and father.  Don’t let the wife get into a sickness and let that divide the family.  Don’t let there be financial reversal and let that be the dividing...No, no, no, no. Come together.  You need each other more than you ever have.  Please be careful about blaming each other about what is going on in a family.  Pull together or you will come part.  We must cooperate.  We must work together.  The same purpose is to make the needed repairs.  We have the...and we are working for the same person.Ultimately we need to repair our lives and homes so that the Lord’s name will not continue in reproach. And, by the way, that is what God is interested in. He is interested in homes that give him glory.  He is interested in churches that give him glory.  He is interested in organizations and businesses that will give him glory.  He is interested in people that will point others to him by the way they do things.  We are working for the same purpose. We are working for the same person.  We need parents and we need teachers and we need preachers and husbands and wives and friends, we need everyone to give their best to the cause, helping to recover peoples’ lives and reclaiming the glory of God.Finally, and probably the heaviest and the most important of anything I am going to say, this is weighty. Do you know what worth is?  When we say that Jesus is worthy it means he has substance. He has weight.Well, this is a worthy statement I am going to make right now.  It carries tremendous weight.  Put stars around it.  Put big exclamation points behind it.  This is something that is huge.  I want you to see it with me in verse number 23.  I’ll tell you what it is in just a second.  It says in verse 23, it says, “After him Benjamin and Hasshub made repairs opposite their house.” And then later in the verse, “Ananiah, made repairs by his house.”Verse number 28: “Beyond the Horse Gate the priests made repairs, each in front of his own house.”Verse 29: “...in front of his own house.”Verse number 30: “...in front of his dwelling.”Recovery calls for participation. Recovering calls for cooperation.  Recovery calls for the right location.“Ok, pastor, what is the right location for rebuilding and recovery?”Do you know where they worked?  Do you know what they did?  He put them to work in their own homes, right in front of their own houses, right there with those people that they had the greatest amount of influence over.It calls for the right location.  It is so important for us to understand—and I want to say this loud, clear and long—we are most responsible for our own house.  We are most responsible for our own house.I am the under shepherd of this church. Brother Chris and brother Paul and brother Chuck and Jonathan and Josh and Carla and many others are helping on this leadership team along with a group of lay elders that...the best group of lay elders that God ever gave a pastor.  I am here to tell you this morning that my number one job is not pastoring this church.  My number...the place where I am going to be most held responsible for in my life is not for this group of people.  Now, let me just say this. Hebrews said, “Take heed and consider your pastors because they have to answer for your souls.”Please don’t let me when I call you on the phone ask you where you have been, why you have not been in church.  Don’t get mad at me.  Please when I call you on the phone and you are a man or a woman and you are going down the wrong path and you have decided that you are going to find more happiness outside of your home than inside your home and you just know God wants you to be...please don’t be mad at me if I call you on the phone and plead with you and beg you and cry over you and beg you not to go that direction.  Please don’t be upset because the Bible...God has given me the responsibility of watching for your soul.  I am going to answer for you.But I am going to answer for Philip and Sherry and Amber, for their spouses and their children far more than I am going to answer for you.  Each one built in front of his own house.  Do you know the place that you are the most responsible in this world?You say, “Well, I messed up.  I tell you, I wish I could go back and turn the clock back.”Listen, the Bible says he can restore the years that the canker worms have eaten. He can give you back those...he could start it all over again. The first thing to do is to pray.  Get on your knees and pray for those children that you didn’t rear the right way. Get on your knees and tell God almighty. Fast for them and pray for them and tell God that, “Ok, I messed up, but God you can reclaim my children.”We are the most responsible for our own house.Second of all we are most effective in our own home.  That is where you are more capable.  You are more capable and you are more effective with your own family than you are anybody else.  Why?  Because you have a vested interest. God gave them to you. They are your family. They are not somebody else’s family. Moses learned this.  He was the Savior of the Jews. He is on his road to Egypt. He is going to Egypt and when he gets there he is going to be the Savior. He is going to set those people free.  And on the way down there God met him in a wayside place, Exodus chapter four, he met him in a wayside place and was going to kill Moses because he failed with his son.You mean he put his one son...the responsibility to circumcise his son above all the people of Israel? Absolutely, because God—you hear me and you hear me well—God can raise up another deliverer for his people, but he cannot raise up another father for his son.  God could raise up another person to build bridges and buildings, but he can’t raise up another father for your son.  He could raise up another person to type letters and send them out of the workplace.  But he cannot raise up another mother for your children.Are you listening to me?I am so counter culture.  I am so opposite of the...but let me tell you something.  How is our culture doing?  How are we coming?  How is that working for us?Are you listening to me this morning?  The weightiest thing I am going to say to you before you go home is that we have got participate.  We have got to cooperate. But we have got to get in the right location.You say, “Pastor, does that mean that we don’t ever work in the church or serve in the church?”You know better than that.“Pastor, I thought you were a missionary.  You are worried about people all around the world.”I am.  I took my family to another country for 13 years to do that very thing.  But I didn’t’ do it without my family.Would you bow your heads and close your eyes? Jeremiah 2:17-20  (All Scripture references are taken from the New King James Version of the Bible unless otherwise indicated).Nehemiah 3:1-5Nehemiah 3:12Ibid.Nehemiah 3:23Nehemiah 3:28Nehemiah 3:29Nehemiah 3:30Ibid.Ecclesiastes 4:121 Corinthians 12:121 Corinthians 12:13-14Ephesians 4:15-16Romans 12:4-5Nehemiah 3:5Ibid.Nehemiah 3:23Ibid.Nehemiah 3:28Nehemiah 3:29Nehemiah 3:30Page  PAGE 1 of  NUMPAGES 16

Investigate and Communicate

Sermon Transcript

“INVESTIGATE AND COMMUNICATE”

Pastor Phil Winfield

Nehemiah 2:11-20

September 30, 2007

Grace Church of Des Moines, IA

4200 E. 25th StreetDes Moines, IA 50317

Website:  http://www.gracehome.com

Online Sermons:  http://gracehome.sermonaudio.com

And so if you have your Bibles there, open to Nehemiah chapter two.  We have been going through this series and we found that just as Nehemiah was going to rebuild the walls in Jerusalem, we need to do a little rebuilding in our own lives.  And the very first thing that we found out is that in order to get started at rebuilding our lives we have to do two words, number one, read it with me, what we do we have to do?  We have to face reality.Then, over here, after we face reality we don’t just go fix everything.  We don’t just go get busy trying to straighten everything out.  No, before we talk to men, before we talk to others we need to talk to God.  And so the second thing we do...I don’t know if you can see it.  The two things that God has given us concerning prayer is that we are in the right position to pray. And so it is, number one, face reality and, number two, say it with me...prayer and position.  And the position part of that is God has you exactly where he wants you to be able to make the changes you and I need to make.Well, as we do that, as we face reality and we start making changes, the next thing we are going to find out is that it is a fearful thing.  It is always fearful to confront the situations and the people of your life and especially when we have caused them trouble.  And so fear has got to be confronted with one word.  And what is that one word?  Faith.  And so faith carries us through the fear.Today what we have to do is we just can’t make an assumption that we know all the details that are involved.  As we read this passage in just a moment you are going to find out that Nehemiah had a general idea of what he would need and what it would be like to build the wall, but when he got to Jerusalem he had to do something else.  He had to take time and he had to rest and then he had to do an investigation to find out exactly what was going on.  Before he said a word to any other man or shared it all, what was in his heart, he investigated.  He got down to the details.  He knew that there were some particular issues that he was going to have to face.We have to do the same thing.  We have to investigate and we have to communicate what we have investigated. So, once you face the reality of your situation in life don’t despair. Take it to God in prayer.  Once you have begun to pray and share it with the Lord in faith, then proceed with faith in spite of your fair.  And then, today, don’t hesitate, but initiate the change.One Bible story that illustrates this so very well is Joshua when he stood on the plains of Moab and he looked across the Jordan River at the land of Canaan. It was the land of promise.  It is the land to which the children of Israel had been directed and heading for quite some time. And so as they were getting ready, looking across to the land of Canaan, they had been from Egypt through the wilderness, learned many lessons and when they looked across that Jordan they had one thing left to do and that was they needed to wade in, they needed to step in the water and follow God’s leading. They had to fight off their fears by faith.  They had to walk right into the water following the ark of God and guess what happened? When they took those first few steps of faith they found out that the waters and the rivers of difficulty moved back.  Circumstances changed when the took steps forward.Well, what do we find Nehemiah doing?  Well, we find him doing exactly the same thing. He had arrived to Jerusalem.  He took a good lingering first hand look at the situation before him and then knowing what needed to be done, he shared the vision.Listen to the reading of this passage of Scripture and I believe you will be encouraged.I went to Jerusalem, and after staying there three days  I set out during the night with a few men. I had not told anyone what my God had put in my heart to do for Jerusalem. There were no mounts with me except the one I was riding on.  By night I went out through the Valley Gate towards the Jackal Well and the Dung Gate, examining the walls of Jerusalem, which had been broken down, and its gates, which had been destroyed by fire.   Then I moved on towards the Fountain Gate and the King’s Pool, but there was not enough room for my mount to get through; so I went up the valley by night, examining the wall. Finally, I turned back and re-entered through the Valley Gate.  The officials did not know where I had gone or what I was doing, because as yet I had said nothing to the Jews or the priests or nobles or officials or any others who would be doing the work.  Then I said to them, "You see the trouble we are in: Jerusalem lies in ruins, and its gates have been burned with fire. Come, let us rebuild the wall of Jerusalem, and we will no longer be in disgrace."  I also told them about the gracious hand of my God upon me and what the king had said to me. They replied, "Let us start rebuilding." So they began this good work.  But when Sanballat the Horonite, Tobiah the Ammonite official and Geshem the Arab heard about it, they mocked and ridiculed us. "What is this you are doing?" they asked. "Are you rebelling against the king?"  I answered them by saying, "The God of heaven will give us success. We his servants will start rebuilding, but as for you, you have no share in Jerusalem or any claim or historic right to it."I can imagine what it as like when he did—Nehemiah, that is—began to communicate with the people and as he communicated found out that in his audience that there were those that were going to stand up against him.  And that is probably one of the most amazing things of the Christian life is to find out when you decide to repent, you decide to start changing, you decide to start doing things that are right.  There are always people that seem to stand up and oppose you.  It seems nonsensical.  It seems unreasonable, but there is always that group that will stand up and ridicule and mock and they will always stand up and oppose.Well, we are going to end up with that thought.  But I want to start off by looking back, now, at the passage and I want to talk to you about how to communicate a vision for change.I love this part at the very first here, it says in verse 11, “So I came to Jerusalem and was there three days. Then I arose in the night.”  I love this because when he got there the very first thing he did was not after taking such a long trip just jump right into the work and start trying to fix everything. That is not what he did.  Do you know what the very first order of business was for Nehemiah when he got to Jerusalem?  Take a nap.  Basically, he needed to rest.  He took three days to do it.You say, “Wow, that was...he must not have been very urgent.”Oh, he was very urgent about doing the thing. His predecessor, Ezra, had done exactly the same thing.You say, “Well, why is that?”Well, because that trip, that 800 miles or so from Susa all the way to Jerusalem was across very dangerous territory.  Remember they were riding camels and, perhaps, on the backs of donkeys and walking. They might have made eight, 10, 12 miles a day.  So it may have been weeks and months even before they actually got there. And so when they got there they were tired.  They were dirty.  They were dusty. They were hungry for something a little better than what they were getting in their camp.  And so when he got there the first thing he did was he took...and he took some time and he rested.And I just wonder this morning how many of you would love to have a three rest.  Anybody out here just to have three days to do nothing but just rest?Well, I would, too.  I think I might be one of those in here that needs it as much as the next guy, but you know what?  God made us that way.  And I want to say to everybody here, in the Old Testament when we were studying the Ten Commandments, one of those Commandments was, “You will remember the sabbath day and keep it holy.”  And what were their assignments on the sabbath day?  What was it that they had to do?Well, there were a few things they had to remember and they had to think about God.  But primarily the number one thing they were to do on the sabbath was nothing.  They were supposed to just stop.  And we are made that way.So here is what I want you to do. Go to your boss, or, if you are the boss, I want everybody to just tell him, “Look.  The preacher said that I need a three day rest.” So just tell him that tomorrow and see how far you get with that.  I doubt you are going to get very far, but, you know, just go ahead and tell him.Well, here is the deal. He got to Jerusalem. He was tired.  He took a rest.  He needed his wits about him.  He needed to be able to really find out and investigate what was going on there. I told you a moment ago, before he ever went to Jerusalem while he was still in Susa he made...he did some meditating, he did a lot of thinking. He thought, “Now, if these walls are burned down...if the timbers are burned and the walls are destroyed then I am going to need...well, I’m going to need...I’m going to need all those stones and more and I am going to need new timber and I need something from the king’s forest and I am going to need.…”  He started talking about all the things he needed. But do you know what?  He was speaking in general terms.But now then he is there and he takes a rest.  Then he rises up in the middle of the night and he takes a walk.  I call it the midnight ride of governor Nehemiah.  He got a very up close and personal inspection going where he looked personally at the condition of the city and now, then, he is going to be able to lay out his strategy a whole lot better. He is going to be able to communicate what he needs to do, but he gets up and he takes a midnight ride. He didn’t tell anybody what was going on until he knew the depth and he knew the details of what was going to have to be done.  And so that is exactly what he started to do.And on your sheet there, your Scripture sheet, write a few things down. And the first thing we have to do is we have to recognize, firstly, the ruins of our life.Somebody might say, “Pastor, I am amazed that you would go to Nehemiah and that you would teach these kinds of things.”And I have a real simple for and that is the Bible says that, “All Scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for correction, for instruction in righteousness: that the man of God may be perfect [that is mature and completely] furnished unto all good works.”“And so why would you...what are you saying?”I’m saying that God has put these things in the Bible to teach us something and to apply to our lives.  This is application preaching.You probably wonder, “Pastor, what is your whole way of thinking?”Well, if I haven’t led you through a thought process that requires a decision or a commitment I have not preached a sermon.  And so from week to week that is exactly what I do.  I look at God’s Word. I see what it says.  I try to explain what it mans and then I try to ask the big so what question.  So what do I do with this?  There I something to do with this passage of Scripture, not just read it.  It is not just about knowledge.  It is about applying God’s Word in our life. And the first thing we need to do, like Nehemiah, he made a good investigation and that was point number one under number four there.  Investigation. He looked to see exactly what was going on, what were the needs going to be and then he began to communicate that need.  So step one, recognize the ruins of your life.And how do you do that?  Well, acknowledge, first of all, to yourself, that the ruins of your life are real.  They are real ruins.  Now, we talked a lot about this and in the first one, in facing reality.  Until a person admits and understands that their life is in shambles, that this alcohol problem is more than just a little problem, it is something that is consuming your life.  This addiction, this anger, this envy or these attitudes of aggression towards everyone and everybody or this self defense mechanism that kicks in every time anybody says hello to you, those kind of things are problems and our lives, because of the choices we make, because of the direction we take, our lives are in a mess and we have all kinds of problems that we have to deal with, that we have to look at them.  We cannot minimize them.  We can’t go around them.  We cannot just ignore them.  We cannot be negligent.  And so we have to acknowledge to ourselves that the ruins of our lives are real.A wonderful example is what Alcoholics Anonymous does.  They have been doing it for years.  And, by the way, originally, that was a Christian organization.  It is kind of interesting how it has evolved. But the very first thing that a person had to do is they have to be able to say, just three little words, “I am...” four little words, “I am an alcoholic.”  They have to be able to say that.  They have got to come to that place, come to the grips that they are an alcoholic.  We have got to come to the place where we say, “I am an addict.”  “I am angry.” “I am selfish.”  “I am lazy.”  “I am self centered.”  “I am an egotist.” “I am mad all the time.”  And we have to come to the place where we actually investigate...don’t just hear what people are saying and brush it off, but stop and look at our lives, investigate and find out just exactly what kind of person we are.So we do an exam.  We realize and acknowledge that the ruins of our life are real and then the second thing is, under this, acknowledge to yourself this.  You have to acknowledge to your family that you are responsible.We live in the greatest blames shifting age of all history.  Psychology and psychiatry are designed, they are in business to help people shift their responsibility for their actions to somebody else.  They like to say, “Well, you know, if it hadn’t been for your great, great, great, great grand pa so and so who did such and such then you wouldn’t be in this kind of situation.  It wouldn’t be your fault.”  And so we love to shift the blame. We don’t like to take the responsibility.I love what David did.  Somebody said, “Well, you know, David in the Bible must have been perfect because he was a man after God’s own heart.”Well, King David was far from perfect, but when somebody put the finger on the problem David didn’t blame anybody.  When Nathan said, “David, you are the man that has done this deed of killing this other person and of robbing his wife,” David said, “You are right.  Against God I have sinned.  I have sinned.”You need, we need, I need to take responsibility for what is going on in my life.  I need to be responsible.You know, we say, “Well, that’s right.  You know, out in the old cruel world that’s the way it is and, you know, people like to shift responsibility and we don’t have presidents and vice presidents and we don’t have congressmen and senators that say, ‘the buck stops here.’ We just don’t have that anymore.”Well, let me let you in on a little secret.  It is creeping in and has crept in, Jude says, “unawares,” right among the Christian community because we have terminology for it and we have decided that the way we are going to handle that is we will say, “You know, it is really not my fault because I am suffering from generational sin.  You know, my great, great, great grandfather was an alcoholic and then my great, great grandfather was an alcoholic and my great grandfather was an alcoholic...”  Just coming on to, “So I’m an alcoholic.  That’s the end of the matter. I don’t have to worry about it.  It’s not my problem.  It is their fault and I am just going to just keep on with it.”Funny that Ezekiel says that nobody is going to be able to use that, but the Bible says that every man is going to die and be punished and corrected and is going to answer for his own sin.You say, “Well, didn’t they have any influence over us?”Yes, but we are under no obligation to past generations to carry on their mistakes. Let me say that to you again.  You are under no obligation to the generations before you to carry on the exact same downfall in your life that they had.And so the first thing we have to do is look at the ruins of our life and admit they are real.  I have got real problems.  I am angry.  I am mad.  I have problems with pornography. I keep doing the same things over and over.  You  know, I chase skirts, you know.  I am after women.  I can’t be faithful to my wife.  I can’t be faithful to my husband.  And this thing is just...What we have to do is face the facts.  I am a lazy person.  Laziness is an infectious thing, contagious in America today.  I am lazy. I am irresponsible.  I can’t be counted on. I am a liar.  We have to come to a...in our own hearts. I didn’t say you had to stand on the street corner out there and tell the whole world. In your own heart the first thing you have got to do is quit blaming others, look at yourself and say, “You know what?  Here is the truth about me. Here is what is ruining me and I am responsible.”  That is the first thing that you have to do.Then we are going to move on to the second one.  Write this down. Look at verse number 14 if you would.  He says, “Then I went on to the Fountain Gate and to the King’s Pool, but there was no room for the animal under me to pass.”You say, “Well, what in the world are you going to get out of that?”Well, listen to this.  You need to realize that you have left no room in your life.You say, “Well, what would have been the problem why that animal couldn’t pass?”Well, the walls were broken down. There’s all burnt timbers laying everywhere, you know, just imagine Nebuchadnezzar and his army the come through and they pull these walls down, pull all the buildings down, there is stuff laying everywhere and he is trying to get around rocky terrain. If you have ever seen any kind of picture of what Jerusalem looks like, it is perched on top of this hill.  There are valleys all around.  And here he is trying to go around the outside of it to get a good look at the walls and the extent of the destruction. And while he is doing it there is so much junk and there is so much rubble and there is so much trash, he just can’t do it.  And so what does he have to do?Well, he has got to dismount, walk slow, tip toe around. It takes him all night long and he makes this very meticulous survey and he has to do much of it by foot because there is just so much junk.All right.  So you investigate your life.  And you take a really good investigation of your life and you are going to find out that because of the issues of your life and the situations of your life and the circumstances of your life and the choices that you make, you leave a lot of rubble, a lot of junk, a lot of baggage, a lot of things that people, other people are having to deal with.It is important to understand that a life of bad habits and decisions makes so much junk and trash that a person doesn’t hardly leave himself any wiggle room personally.And do you know what a prison is?  A prison is a place where you put a person that has taken personal indulgence to the nth degree. They have taken personal freedom and personal rights to the nth degree and they have trampled on everyone else in the process and because they have trampled on everyone else and because they have decried any restraint whatsoever, the only way for those people to be able to get along is to put them in a place where the only person that they are damaging now is themselves.We don’t leave any room in our life and any effort to make a change is like moving a beached barge.  Not only that, but the people around you have been kept at a distance, too, by the bad habits.One of the greatest stories in the Bible is the story of Abigail and Nabal. And Nabal was a very foolish man.  In fact, his name meant fool. He lived in the time of King David.  One day when he had done something that was the most foolish of things, he had threatened King David and his armies and his own wife, while still honoring him by saving his life from David and from his army looked at him and thought about him and she concluded, “Well, you know, this man is just a scoundrel.”  His workers, in fact, and all of his servants looked at him.  And when they were communicating with the wife Abigail they said, “You know, he is just a scoundrel. He is so much of a scoundrel that nobody can even talk to him.”Well, it is like that isn’t it.  We get edgy quick. We are know it alls, self absorbed, defensive, combative, argumentative and the list goes on.  Why? Because whenever we start self destructing and we start influencing the people around us, the very first thing we begin to do is we get to the place where there is no room for anybody to say anything to us because we are just going to lash out at them.  We are going to fight back.  We are going to be defensive.The first thing we do is we don’t leave any room for God in our life.  I have noticed that when people are at the height of their self destruction the last thing they want to do is hear from God.  The last thing they want to do is for somebody to come talk to them and try to use God’s Word to help them and encourage them.  That is, until they come to themselves, until God gets their attention because they get at the bottom of the rope.Not only that, but they leave no room for others.  The person that allows himself or herself to self destruct is always consuming not just their own lives, but the lives of all of those around them.I want to ask you a question. How many of you know that you know people that because of all of the choices they have made and what has happened to them as a result of those choices, they are not just consuming their own life, but they are consuming the lives of their family and people around them?  Just raise your hand.It eats people up.  People who become self destructive, people who make decisions, they become proud or they become angry or they become know it alls or they become addicted to this substance or that, the next thing you know or it could be something, it could be pornography, it could be some sexual sin or adultery, they get involved in those things and then all of the sudden that event and those strings of events begin to consume the very family around them because nobody does anything that doesn’t have influence on other people.I want you to know that everybody in this room this morning is a leader, absolutely unequivocally, without any shadow of a doubt you are in here and you are a leader because leadership is influence and we are all influencing somebody toward God or toward evil.  Every life is an influence and so a person who is not in line with what God wants, but only what they want, are influencing people and you are affecting the lives, I am affecting the lives of other people. There is no room for others.Let me go on, number three.  Write it down on your sheet very quickly. Renew the relationships of your life.  Look at verse number 16.And the officials did not know where I had gone or what I had done; I had not yet told the Jews, the priests, the nobles, the officials, or the others who did the work.  Then I said to them, "You see the distress that we are in, how Jerusalem lies waste, and its gates are burned with fire.”He began to communicate, he began to tell other people. He began to build relationship with those people.  Why?  Because he was not going to be able to build this wall alone.Now, you remember, this man is a cup bearer.You say, “What is that?”Well, it is a governmental attaché who had the responsibility of tasting the food and wine that was put before the king at Susa so that he would not be killed. That was his area of expertise.You say, “How old was Nehemiah?”I don’t have any idea.  I suspect a man of 30 or more because most of the time in any of those positions you never got into those positions until you were 30 years of age. A priest, for instance...he couldn’t become a priest until he was 30 and he had to be done by the time he was 50.  He couldn’t say anything. He couldn’t be a priest after he was 50.  Kind of interesting, isn’t it?But so I don’t know how old he was.  I don’t know how much experience he had.  I don’t know whether he had a tinker toy set or legos when he was a kid and he learned how to build.  But when he was going to Jerusalem, I have a sneaking suspicion this was all new to him.  In his heart he wanted to rebuild a wall.  But did he know how to build a wall?And, number two, could he build the wall alone?  No.  He had to build a relationship with those people. He was very wise.  He said, “Listen.”  He said, “Look at the walls of our city.  Look at the destruction that has been wrought. Look at how desperate your situation is, but more important than anything else, look at the name and reputation of our God which lies in disrepute. God is suffering because of the destruction of this city.”Can I let you in on a little secret?  When your life is self destructive do you know whose purpose is thwarted?  Do you know whose glory is robbed?  Do you know whose plans are put on the sideline?  Do you know who it is that we are stopping?  Not that you could permanently stop him, not that God can’t do your think another way, but whenever we begin to choose our own way and our own self indulgence instead of the will of God do you know what we do?  We rob God of his glory in our life.Do you know what the ultimate goal of God is for every single person in this world?  It is that they would be born into his family.  It is not God’s will that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.  God wants everybody to be saved.Number two, Romans chapter eight and verse 29.  “For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son.”  That is the plan of God for every one of us.  And if you are not becoming more and more like Christ in your daily life as a Christian, then who is it that is being robbed?Well, first of all, you miss out on the joy of knowing you are doing God’s will. Number two, God does not receive the glory for your life.Can I let you in on a little something this morning? I pray that every sermon I preach and every lesson I teach and every prayer I pray encourages you and builds you up and helps you in your life and brings you great joy.  But the great purpose of every sermon I preach is the glory of God.  And the purpose of every song we sing in this church is to lift up the name of Jesus. And the very reason that I would teach to you so that your life could be turned around, I know it will help you. It will bring happiness and peace, but that is not the primary reason.  The primary reason and I see Kevin sitting on the front row.  Kevin, you exist for the glory of God.  God wants to do something in your life that will bring him glory.Do you understand that?  Do you understand that every single person in this world was created in the image of God for the glory of God and that when we don’t yield and submit to his will we rob him of his glory?  Can anybody say amen?It is the truth.  It is the Word of God.  He made us for himself and for his glory.  And so how do I do this?  Well, you renew these relationships.  We are not recruiting people to build a physical wall.  We need people to help us with our situations and our problems.Number one, under that, you alone, you alone, I alone, we alone, personally, individually, have to face our problems. We have established that.  We face our problems.  They are yours.Number two, you alone cannot fix your problems.  You alone must face your problems.  But then you are going to have to have help.  Nehemiah alone got the vision from God, but Nehemiah had to have some help. He had to share his vision. Every man in this room needs an accountability group.  I’m not going to talk about the women, the children, the teens.  I think everything rises and falls on leadership and I believe that when the men in this church and the men in any church get their own hearts right with God and in tune with him and when you will submit yourself to a group of men that will ask you hard questions and will pray with you...I have the benefit every Friday morning, been doing this for years since I have been here.  I have got a few friends together to say, “Hey, let’s have breakfast.”  And we started it way back when Mugs first started.  We said, “Let’s get together once a week and have breakfast. I tell you what we’ll do. We’ll just talk and chat and talk about the ball game and what we’ll do is we’ll also ask each other hard questions and see if we are living for God.”  And so Bernie Lyle is in my group.  Bernie Lyle has given...I have given Bernie full permission to ask me, “Pastor Phil, are you being honest in all of your dealings? Pastor Phil, are you preaching one thing and living another?  Pastor Phil...”And do you know what?  We get together and we cry and we pray and we prayed over all kinds of situations together.  But I have just got a little...you know what?  You don’t need 100 men, 200 men.  You need a little group of men that you can get together with and you can sit down and you can be accountable and you can enlist their help in holding you accountable. You need your wife on board.  You need your children on board.  You need all kinds of people to be on board to help you.  You alone must face your problem. You alone cannot fix your problem.  Admit it.  You need other peoples’ help.Assure the other people that you are seeking God’s help.  I love this.  In verse 18 says, I have talked about the hand of God being on him.  He talked about it earlier.  Later in verse number 20 he says that the God of heaven is going to prosper us.  Here is one of those situations where a person wants to renew the relationships and start fixing their life and start seeing God move in their life.  And so what do they do?  Well they start going to the people that matter most. They go to a wife, a husband, a father, a mother, a brother or sister and they tell them. They say, “Listen.  I have come to the place where I know that I have really messed up my life and I am ready to turn it around.”The very first thing that that wife, mother, brother, sister, friend says is, “Oh, yeah. Here we go again.”Now, listen to me.  Please don’t be discouraged if you make...if you decide in your heart you are going to change, you decide in your heart that God is moving, you  are tired of blaming others, you are going to take responsibility, you are going to face the issues of your life, you are going to enlist some help for your life. Don’t be surprised if people have given up because they are tired. They have seen this before.I talk to people and deal with people on a daily basis and sometimes a wife will call in and say, “I have been over this and over this and over this with him and, pastor, he just will not turn off that computer and all of that pornography and I am at my wit’s end.  I guess I am just going to have to live with this or divorce him.”They may have given up because they have heard it all before. They may have given up because they have just become accustomed to it.You know, that was what was going on there in Jerusalem, wasn’t it?  You know, these people had been in that city for all of these years.  I mean those walls have been down for over 100 years and you know what?  I mean, they had kind of gotten used to it. They were walking around it and going by it and ignoring it and stepping through the stones and, you know, I can just imagine after 100 years all of the little secret passages and pathways that the people had worked in and out of that city as they finally figured out and located all the problems and they knew how to just go around the problems.Do you know what people do in their homes when you have got a family member or you have got a bigger or larger family scenario? Do you know what people do?  Well, we begin to make accommodations.  We begin to make excuses for that person.  We begin to make reasons and we begin to prop up all kinds of things to sort of help just get around the situation because, you know, that’s the way they are.  Their parents were that way, their parents were that way. Yes, they are drunks or yeah he is lazy. No, he really won’t work.  No, he can’t keep a job.  He can’t keep a job because he is just mad all the time.  Nobody can be his boss.  He gets...and so they just...ok, you know, it’s job after job after job or it is anger after anger or it is trip to the clinic after trip to clinic because they just can’t put the pills away. They can’t get off the meth.  They can’t get...They just can’t.And so what do family members do?  Family members learn to accommodate and what happens?  When this individual says, “It is time for change God is working in my heart,” the rest of the family says, “Look.  You know, I  know you have got good intentions and you want to do this, but you have done this so many times before.  Look, we have gotten used to it.  Look, let’s just keep it under the blanket.  Let’s keep it quiet.  Let’s just, you know, let’s just carry on.”  That’s what happens.And let me go just a little further.  They may have given up because God doesn’t seem to be listening to their prayers.I have dealt with people and I have talked to people recently that have been praying for a mate for a son, for a mother, for a sister, for some family member that has just had a melt down and it is consuming all of the family.  And they have prayed for them for a week, a month, a year, for two years, 10 years.  They have been praying and praying and praying.  And, quite frankly, they are wondering if God is listening and if he is ever going to listen to anything that they pray about.Do you know when the child of God will not respond to the warnings of God and the corrections of God and they just harden their hearts, do you know what happens in the process?  You harm the spirituality of everybody else that is around you.I can’t tell you how many women would say, “I would be at church a whole lot more and serve the Lord and be involved, but, you know, my husband just throws a fit when I go out the door.”  Or, “My wife, you know, she is just not with me on this.  She is just, you know, she just thinks I have become some kind of a holy Joe and she just doesn’t want to have anything to do with it.”  And so you got one that is pulling one way and one that is pulling the other.And because of not listening to the correction of the Lord and the Spirit of God, it damages the spiritual lives of other people.Well, when we start actually taking steps, people will be encouraged to help us.  Look at verse number 17.Then I said to them, "You see the distress that we are in, how Jerusalem lies waste, and its gates are burned with fire. Come and let us build the wall of Jerusalem, that we may no longer be a reproach."  And I told them of the hand of my God which had been good upon me, and also of the king’s words that he had spoken to me. So they said, "Let us rise up and build." Then they set their hands to this good work.Boy, when he told them, “Here is how God has worked it out and here is what God has done in my life and here is the vision that I have before us and let’s just, come on, let’s just work on this and rebuild this city.  Boy, they were encouraged.  They could see God moving.  And here is what I am here to tell you.  Whenever you start making some real concrete progress and you start making some steps and you face your situation and you confess your sin and involve the help of other people, even though reluctant at first, whenever you begin to get serious with God and with other people do you know what?  Other people will get serious with you.  And they will be encouraged to help.Let me say it again. You alone can face your problems.  But you alone will not solve all of your problems. You are going to need the help of almighty God and you are going to need the support of other people.  God never intended for us to be individuals. We are so individualistic, we are so much to ourselves in these United States of America. We have got it in our mind that I will lift myself up by the bootstraps and I will do this and I will do that.  God never intended for Christians to be that kind of independent, but rather interdependent.  And there is no more important place of interdependence than in the home.And, by the way, men, the Bible says that your wife is your comleter, not your competer.  She is not your competition. Listen to your wife.  Listen to your husband. Listen to those that love you.  Listen to those that try to help and listen to God almighty in heaven.Finally and probably the most important of anything is refuse to listen to the riff raff of your life.  Verse number 19.But when Sanballat the Horonite, Tobiah the Ammonite official, and Geshem the Arab heard of it, they laughed at us and despised us, and said, "What is this thing that you are doing? Will you rebel against the king?"The first thing they did was to come along with mocking and ridicule. And then they did it by slander and threats.  Here is the most absurd of all truth.  As soon as you come to your senses and assess your life and begin to make changes, people stand up to oppose you. I just cannot understand it.  You would think that the people of our lives, the people that know us, they would be clapping for us, encouraging us, trying to help us.  And, by the way, you be an encourager to other people. When people start trying to change, don’t belittle them.  Don’t mock them.  Don’t laugh at them. Don’t make fun of them. Don’t say you have seen it before.  Don’t say, “I’ll believe it when I see it.”  Encourage people. Encourage people to take the right steps.  But here is what happens.  People stand up.One of the little thoughts that I would like you to writ eon the margin of your page or on the margin of your Bible are these two little words.  And the words are: building and battling.  And let me let you in on a little secret that for the rest of your Christian life all of your life in this world you are going to be in a process of building and then you are also going to be in a process of battling those people and those influences and forces that would fight against you.  You are going to build with all of your heart and while you are building, there is going to be a battle ensue.  It happens every time.  You make up your mind you are going to serve the Lord and somebody is going to step up to try to keep you from it.  It is funny. Before people come to know the Lord Jesus as their personal Savior, people leave them alone. Nobody seems to bother them.I can’t tell you how many people say, “Pastor, you know, when I came to know the Lord Jesus it seemed like that I had more opposition and more problems and more difficulties.  I thought when I got saved things were going to get easier.”Well, you have an indwelling Holy Spirit in your life empowering you, but here is what I want you to understand.  Before you came to know Jesus as your Lord and Savior, you were no threat to Satan.  But when you come to know the Lord Jesus as your personal Savior all of the sudden you are in the enemy camp.  You are in opposition to his kingdom and our adversary, the accuser of the brethren is going to stand up and oppose us.  You are going to build and battle.  You can work on building your home. Satan is going to battle your home. You can work on building your spiritual life.  Satan is going to battle your spiritual life.  You work on building a relationship with your children.  He is going to make sure that they have influences at school that fight against your relationship with your children.  It is a building and battling process.  It is going to go on the rest of your life.But here is what I want you to know. I want you to know that in Jesus we can have the victory.You say, “Who were these people that did this, this Sanballat the Horonite, Tobiah the Ammonite, Geshem the Arab?”Well, Sanballat was a pagan politician.  He was just a pagan.  He was a materialist.  It was all about the taxes.  It was all about who was going to be in charge in Jerusalem.  He was just a pagan.  Well, you expect it from the pagans.  You expect the pagans of our life, those that don’t know our God and could care nothing about him, you could expect them to oppose us, but it is that next group, Tobiah the Ammonite.You say, “Well, who was Tobiah the Ammonite?”Well, Ammon, the great, great, great, great, great grandfather of the Ammonites was the son of a man named Lot.  Lot was the nephew of a man named Abraham. One day Lot living in Sodom was warned of God to get out. He didn’t want to.God said, “Lot, get out of Sodom.  I am going to destroy it.”He grabbed him.  His two daughters went with him. He ended up getting drunk and having an incestuous relationship with the daughter.  That daughter gave birth to a son by the name of Ammon and Ammon is a distant relative of the children of Israel.Isn’t it amazing?  Paul, I...this is amazing to me.  It is amazing that not only the pagans of our life might stand up against us.  But somewhere in our parentela, somewhere in all that group of people out there that are in our family, somebody is going to stand up and opposed us even in our family.Do you know that Jesus says sometimes the greatest enemies are going to be those of our own household?Would you listen to me for a moment?  Not that we give up and we quit praying for our family and our friends and stop loving them. Do not be surprised when family does not understand what you are trying to do when you begin to give your heart and life for Jesus for change.  How many of you know it is a fact that sometimes family stands opposed to change in our life?  Would you just raise your hand?  They have gotten used to use the way that we are.You say, “Why is that? Why does...why would people be opposed to us bettering ourselves and getting right with God?  And why would we be...why would they be opposed to that?”Because many time we have been involved with those people in activities and lifestyles that are not right with God and if God starts changing us what does it make them feel about themselves?  It is easier to ridicule you and stop your change than it is to get right with God themselves.Well, who was the third one?  Well, it was the man by the name of Geshem.  He was an Arab.  He was the son of Ishmael.  He was just an out and out enemy opposition.  So there is always the materialist and the family members and then the outright enemies that are going to stand up against us.And let’s finish with verse 20. Do you know how Nehemiah handled this?  I love it.  It says in verse number 20 of chapter two. It says this.So I answered them, and said to them, "The God of heaven Himself will prosper us; therefore we His servants will arise and build, but you have no heritage or right or memorial in Jerusalem."God is on our side.  God wants me to grow.  Listen.  I want to tell you there is no one in the world that wants you to do well in the life more than your heavenly Father.  There is nobody in this world that wants you to stand up in the face of difficulty like your Father in heaven.  There is no one on this planet that wants you to be able to say no to the devil and no to Satan and no to self and no to sin like your heavenly Father.  And so what did Nehemiah do?  He looked at this bunch of people that were ridiculing, laughing, mocking.  He looked at the riff raff of the situation and he said, “Our God is going to prosper us.”I want to announce something to you this morning.  That with God on your side, you and God make a majority in every situation.  And I want you to know that you do not have to yield.  You do not have to give in.  You do not have to go backwards.  You are under no obligation to go back and live the life that God does not want you to live.  You are not obligated.Let me just give you just a couple of thoughts here.  When we looked at this situation and we see who these people are, these individuals, a pagan and a distant family member and an outright enemy. They standup to fight.  And do you know how he answers them?  Here is what he says to them at the end.He said, “God is going to prosper us and, by the way, we are going to rise and build this thing because you have no heritage, you have no memorial and you have no rights, you have no authority.  You have got no authority in this place. We are not rebelling against the king. He knows exactly what we are doing.”Here is what I want you to understand. The one that stands to oppose every good step you will ever take in your life, the one who stands to oppose every right choice you will ever make in your life, the one who stands to accuse you day and night before your heavenly Father in heaven is Satan himself.  And here is what we need to understand.  I want you to get this if you get nothing else.  Satan is trying to build a paper prison around you. He is trying to tell you that you are obligated.  You have always been a drunk. You are always going to be a drunk.  He wants you think that if you have ever been a pornographer, you are always going to be a pornographer.  He wants you to think that because grandpa was this and grandma was that and because this is your habit, he has got you in a paper prison.  He wants you to think he has authority in your life.  Well, here is what Nehemiah told that bunch.He said, “Listen.  I’ve got something to tell you. You don’t have any authority in Jerusalem.”Here is what I am telling you this morning. Satan has no authority in your life, none.  Listen to me this morning.You say, “Well, what do I do about it?”I want you to open your Bible to James chapter four and listen to the Word of God.  Here is what it says.  Listen to the Word of God.  Here is what it says. “Make sure you understand that you are not...” It is a paper prison. Break out of it.  You don’t have to...you don’t have to give in. You don’t have to go backwards. You don’t have to obey every impulse that your body or your spirit might give you.  You do not have to do that. James chapter four, verse seven. Listen to God’s Word.Therefore submit to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you.   Draw near to God and He will draw near to you.Folks, the devil wants you to think he has authority over what you do.  He has you in a paper prison of doubt and fear.  He says you can’t change, you can’t be saved, you can’t repent of your evil.  And I want you to know that the devil is a liar. He is a usurper of God’s authority and God will put his hand on you.  God will help you.  God will give you the favor of people in your life. God will be there.And here is what I want to say to you.  How do you handle it when these people stand up against you and when Satan opposes every good step and when he tempts you?You say, “Pastor, isn’t it a sin to be tempted?”If it is then Jesus was a sinner because he was tempted.You say, “Pastor Phil, are you ever tempted to do wrong?”Jesus was tempted.You say, “Is temptation a sin?”If temptation was a sin we are without hope.Listen to me this morning.  We do not have to yield to temptation.“What am I supposed to do?”Resist.  Resist temptation. Fight against it.  Say no to the devil and yes to Jesus.You say, “What am I supposed to do?”You are to...when the temptation comes, the immediate reflex action through the power of the Holy Spirit needs to be, “No.”  And then go another direction.  Just, “No.”Do you know what Satan can’t get in anywhere he is not invited? Did you know that? He has no authority, not in the life of a lost person, especially not in the life of a saved person.  Demons can’t even come into lost people until they are invited and they open the door to them.  Did you know that?Listen to me.  Resist Satan and he will flee from you.You say, “Well, what exactly are you talking about?”Here is what I want you to understand this morning.  I hear it all the time.“Well, pastor, you know, George struggles and struggles and struggles with pornography.”No he doesn’t.  He enjoys it.“Well, you know, I got a sister and she’s been tipping the bottle ever since she was such and such...she’s just...she’s just been struggling with that all of her life.”No, she doesn’t. She doesn’t struggle with it.  She enjoys it.And the reason I say that is because the Bible says that...listen. I didn’t write the Bible.  The Bible says right there, it says in James chapter four verse seven, it says this, it says, “Resist the devil and he will flee from you.”  It is either true or it is not true.  Do you choose to believe the Bible is true or it is not true? Let me hear you.It is true.All right.  If we resist the devil in the power of the Holy Spirit then he is going to have to flee from you.   You are not in a prison of Satan. You do not, I do not, none of us have to yield to temptation.You say, “Pastor, are you trying to tell me that I can be sinless?”I’m not trying to create a new doctrine of sinless perfection, but I am certainly telling you this morning that we can sin less.“Resist the devil and he will flee from you.”  I love this part. “Draw nigh to God, and he will draw nigh to you.”Isn’t that wonderful?  You take a step towards God, God is going to take a step towards you.The story of the prodigal son.  The prodigal son is way off.  He is way off in the distance. He has wasted all of his father’s blessing upon him in riotous living with wicked friends. Remember that pagan bunch?  He has wasted all of it.  He is eating nothing but the husks of what the pigs are eating as he is feeding the pigs.What happens to him?  He comes to himself.  He says, “In my father’s house the hired servants are eating far better than I am.  I will arise and I will go to my father.”  And he took a step toward his father and every step he came toward the father, guess what?  The father on the other end is watching and waiting and looking for him to come.  If you are the child of God and you take a step toward the Father, the Father is taking a step towards you.  “Draw nigh to God, and he will draw nigh to you. Cleanse your hands, ye sinners; and purify your hearts.”And, by the way, those were imperative verbs. That is for you to do. That is for you to do. That is for you to do.You say, “What do you mean?  I thought the Holy Spirit was going to have to everything?”Oh, yeah.  He is going to.  He is going to give you the power to do it, but you in your own heart, you had better decide, “I am going to drawn night to God.  I am going to get closer to God. I am going to get closer to him and then I am going to be able to say no to Satan.”Do you know what we need to learn to do this morning?  We just need to learn to say no.  Resist Satan and he will flee from you. Draw nigh to God and he will draw nigh to you.  Cleanse your hands you sinners.  Purify your hearts. It is amazing what it will do.Would you bow your heads and close your eyes?  We’re building. Nehemiah 2:11-20 (New International Version.  All Scripture references are from the New King James Version unless indicated otherwise).Nehemiah 2:112 Timothy 3:16 (King James Version)Nehemiah 2:14 Romans 8:29 (King James Version)Nehemiah 2:17-18Nehemiah 2:19Nehemiah 2:20James 4:7-8James 4:7Ibid.James 4:8 (King James Version)Ibid.Page  PAGE 2 of  NUMPAGES 19

Get Ready For A Change

Sermon Transcript

“GET READY FOR A CHANGE”

Pastor Phil Winfield

Nehemiah 2:1-10

September 23, 2007

Grace Church of Des Moines, IA

4200 E. 25th StreetDes Moines, IA 50317

Website:  http://www.gracehome.com

Online Sermons: http://gracehome.sermonaudio.com

Now I want to ask you a question. I want to ask you, as we looked at the facing reality and then we began to pray—and we talked about this quite extensively the first two weeks—I want to ask a question.  And you have got it on your Scripture sheet to write it down. And that is: When is, pastor...When is a good time to pray?  When is it that I should pray?And somebody is going to say, “Well, 1 Thessalonians 5:17 says pray all the time, ‘Pray without ceasing.’”  And David prayed early in the morning. Jesus prayed, you know, before every temptation and every problem.Yeah. There is a great time to pray. But here is what I get from this passage of Scripture that we have been studying. And I want you to write it down so that you won’t forget it. And that is: When is a good time to pray?  The answer: Pray before I do anything else.  Just write that down.  Pray before I do anything else in my life.Prayer is a priority for those that would find help and seek meaningful change from the status quo.Somebody might ask, “Pastor, now aren’t we going to have to do more than pray if we are going to get our lives straightened out?  You know, I’ve got situations.  I’ve got circumstances. I’ve got people.  I’ve got all kinds of things and issues and I am going to have to confront them. And so don’t I have to do more than pray?”Yes.  We are supposed to do more than pray.  We are going to have to do more than pray to change our lives.  But we should never do anything until we have prayed.  And we learn that from this first chapter and second chapter of the book of Nehemiah.   He was going to take action, but he didn’t take action until he had prayed.We studied his prayer and found out that it wasn’t a little two minute, two second, 30 second little prayer that he shot up to the Lord, but rather he spent months in prayer and we will see that in just a little bit more in a moment.What we find is that Nehemiah’s prayer was followed, then, by action.  He expected God to do something. He was going to be ready when God did it.  His plans involved the risk. He risked his position, his rank, even his life to seek the good fortune of an occupied country from the very occupying king. He must face the king.  He must face his fears.  He must have a plan.In building block number one we have to face reality.  We can’t ignore it.  We can’t deny it. We can’t minimize the junk.  And the disasters of our lives, we cannot minimize the effects that the junk of our lives has on the friends, relationships and the influences of our life.Now, as we assess the needs, we need to ask God to do something. And then we need to be ready to seize the opportunity.If you have your Bibles they need to be open to Nehemiah chapter two and we are going to look at the verses one through 10.  I want you to allow the words of Nehemiah to speak God’s living Word into your heart.In the month of Nisan in the twentieth year of King Artaxerxes, when wine was brought for him, I took the wine and gave it to the king. I had not been sad in his presence before; so the king asked me, "Why does your face look so sad when you are not ill? This can be nothing but sadness of heart." I was very much afraid, but I said to the king, "May the king live for ever! Why should my face not look sad when the city where my fathers are buried lies in ruins, and its gates have been destroyed by fire?"  The king said to me, "What is it you want?" Then I prayed to the God of heaven,  and I answered the king, "If it pleases the king and if your servant has found favour in his sight, let him send me to the city in Judah where my fathers are buried so that I can rebuild it."  Then the king, with the queen sitting beside him, asked me, "How long will your journey take, and when will you get back?" It pleased the king to send me; so I set a time.  I also said to him, "If it pleases the king, may I have letters to the governors of Trans-Euphrates, so that they will provide me safe-conduct until I arrive in Judah?  And may I have a letter to Asaph, keeper of the king’s forest, so he will give me timber to make beams for the gates of the citadel by the temple and for the city wall and for the residence I will occupy?" And because the gracious hand of my God was upon me, the king granted my requests.So I went to the governors of Trans-Euphrates and gave them the king’s letters. The king had also sent army officers and cavalry with me.  When Sanballat the Horonite and Tobiah the Ammonite official heard about this, they were very much disturbed that someone had come to promote the welfare of the Israelites.All right. Let’s bow our heads and pray and ask that the Lord would bless our time.And, our Father, we do thank you, once again, as we come into your presence. We have heard not only just a simple reading, but a dynamic reading of your Word this morning, Lord. And I pray that you would add your blessing to the preaching and teaching of your Word.Lord, as we are in our third week, now, we start getting into the meat of what we have to do to change.  I pray that these would not be words passing over my lips that only entertain.  I pray that folks would not just be engaged by my mannerisms, but I pray that they would hear the message and make changes, Lord, in their own heart.  Bless us now as we are in your presence in Jesus’ name.  Amen.So if you have your Scripture sheet out it says, “Get Ready for Change” at the top. I need you to write a few things.  The key building block for this week is obviously going to be the word “faith.”  And that is the third in the series that we are building.  As we build and rebuild our lives it is going to take faith. And the key opposition is going to be the word fear.Look at verse number two of the passage just read.  And it said, “‘Why is your face sad, since you are not sick? This is nothing but sorrow of heart.’ So I became dreadfully afraid.”I believe that there is a misnomer.  There is a mistaken thought out there that Christians, believers in Jesus Christ, never fear, that they just go forward and they never have a fear in the world. Well, just not true.  Faith and fear are those elements that are always present in a Christian’s life. And as your faith increases, the opposition is going to increase. The difficulties are going to be there and we are going to fear.Sometimes I read lots of different information in books and I read about people like Douglas MacArthur and we look back on him as just that war hero that was just rock solid and he just never feared.  Not so.  Read his memoirs and find out the times of fear and trepidation in his own heart as he was leading men into battle and trying to conquer that area of the world in World War II.It goes on like that.  There is always fear going to be present in our life.On your sheet, there, the first thing we have to do is we have to recognize that whenever we come to understand the situations of our life, the circumstances of our life, the first thing we are going to find ourselves doing is waiting. We are going to pray and then we are going to wait.  We don’t like waiting.  I am not one of those people who likes to wait. I don’t think anybody here particularly loves the whole idea of patient waiting for anything.Somebody said that the definition of a split second is how long it takes between the light turning green and the idiot behind you to blow his horn. I mean, it is just really, really, really quick.  We don’t have a lot of patience.  And  I am just as bad as the next person. I feel so bad for Chris Eller here at the church.And you say, “Well, why do you feel bad for Chris?”Well, up till now one of his responsibilities has been babysitting... I would say babysitting a bunch of computers around here and taking care of the technology, but truthfully, he is not babysitting the computers as much as he is the impatient people like me that want it to do what you want it to do yesterday, never mind the fact I don’t push the right buttons and click and drag and do all the things I am supposed to do.  And so he is always having to do that because we are just not patient people.And I can imagine the emails that he gets from different guys around here.  We have got five or six pastors and we have got secretaries and we have got administrative people and, you know, the emails come in and I bet he wonders which way to turn sometimes because we all need it yesterday.Well, a lot of us are like that concerning our prayer life and concerning the situations of our life. And I want to say to you that the decision, the facing of reality that brings us to the place of heart brokenness or that brings us to the place—after we faced reality—that we need to do something, is a wonderful step, it is a necessary step, it is a priority step, it is the first step, but it is not the only step.Many times people will face the realities of their lives even in the spiritual realm in church or somebody will have a messed up life or a messed up home or they have been mean to their family or their wives or their children.  And they splintered their relationships.  They have got fragmented relationships everywhere and all of the sudden they say, “Oh, I am the guilty one.”  So they confess and then they come and they have an emotional response and they tell God, “Oh, God, I am going to change and I want to change it right now.”And then we get up and we expect that that’s it and everything is going to be different from then on and God is just going to remake us.  Listen.  It is just not going to happen that way.  It is necessary to face reality.  Then it is necessary to pray, to meditate, to think and to plan.  But it is going to take some action.And I want you to know that true repentance in our life—which is what we need. And I don’t want to get off on that big Bible word and doctrine and theology. But just simply to say that true change in our life is going to happen, it is going to happen when we not only face the truth, when we pray about it and give it to God. But then we turn around and take measures. We take steps. We make advances.And so we don’t like to wait.  But what we are going to have to do is while we are waiting for an opportunity to actually do something we need to be patient.Will you look at verse one again? “And it came to pass in the month of Nisan.”You say, “What do you get out of that?”Well, Nisan is four months later than the month Chisleu which we first saw in the first verse of the first chapter.  So what I am saying is that this man, Nehemiah, has come to know and understand the desperate situation that was going on concerning his people. And for four months he has been carrying it in his heart. He has carried it on his shoulder.  He has prayed about it. He has mourned about it. He has wept about it. He has fasted about it.  He has gone into long prayer and meditation over it. And now, then, we are four months later.  The first thing we have to face is that we need to be patient.I am amazed how many times when I am studying something in the Bible that God is able to bring me to other passages and bring other illustrations that I wasn’t even thinking about to bear on the subject.  It is kind of like this.  I don’t know about you, but whenever this kind of happens in our life anyway.  It’s kind of like, you know, when you have a relative that moves to a distant state that you have never visited or you don’t know anything about and as for you it might as well not be a state. They moved to that state and then all of the sudden you start noticing.  It seems like every other plate on somebody’s car is from that state.  I mean all of the sudden you are aware.  You are awakened to that whole thing.Or perhaps it is you get a different car and maybe you get a car of a year and a model and a date and a color. And the next thing you know, you never noticed these cars before, but now you have one and the next thing you know, everybody has got one of those. I check out every Chevy pickup in the entire city every time because that is what I got.  I have a little Chevy pickup and after I got it—I always had Fords up to that point because I was a Ford guy, you know.  And then I was just Fords.  And then I finally got one and now I’m pooh-pooh on Fords.  I like Chevys because that’s what I got.  And so everybody...I look around.  And he’s a cool guy because he has got a Chevy.  And so on.You know how we do.  We just start noticing things like that.Well, I was studying this about patience and I was reading in my devotions this week and all of the sudden I come to this passage of Scripture that talks about patience and it leapt off the page.  It  concerned King David.And, you know, we think about King David.  We look back on his history in the Bible as this glorious reign of King David, but do you know there was probably no Bible character that was in more trouble all the time than King David. He was always in hot water.Sometimes it was his own fault. Sometimes it wasn’t his own fault. But he was always in trouble.  And I read in Psalm 62—and I want you to listen to what David said about his times of trouble in the life that he was living.  And the first thing he says in verse one:Truly my soul silently waits for God; From Him comes my salvation.  He only is my rock and my salvation; He is my defense; I shall not be greatly moved.You drop down to verse five and he starts talking to himself.I  will never forget the first time that I encountered one of these people with these new techie telephones that hang on their ear.  You guys know what I’m talking about? How many of you have seen those? They look like Dr. Spock or Captain Kirk or somebody, you know, just sort of a little behind the time. They got these things hanging on their ear. And, you know, you are looking at them.I will never forget.  One day I pulled up to a red light and I’m sitting at the red light and I am waiting on the red light and I looked over to the right and a guy in this land over here is sitting there with his hand on the wheel and he is gripping that wheel.  He is just talking like that.What in the world is wrong?I mean he is just really just talking. I thought, “Man this guy is...they need to pull him over, get the guys with white coats, get, you know...”  I didn’t know what was going on there.Finally, I guess Philip or somebody said, “Well he is probably on the phone.”I said, “Well, his hands...he was holding the steering wheel.”They said, “Yeah, but you ought to...you know, get with it, pops, you know,” he said.  “You know there’s a lot of stuff you don’t know about. And these little phones hang on your ear and you just voice actuated and all that.”And I said, “Well, I’m so far behind.”You know, I thought he was talking to himself.David was talking to himself in this verse.  Listen to what he says.  He says, “My soul, wait silently for God alone.”He says to himself, “David, hey, in there. David, wait in God.  You have learned this lesson. You have been down this road.  You have been in trouble before. Don’t run ahead.  Don’t solve it yourself. Don’t put your hands in there.  Wait on God.”We have a really, really hard time waiting on God once we have decided to start trying to put things right in our life.  I want you to listen as I give you some very important thoughts this morning concerning this.  Don’t miss it.Patience before God when praying for a change is crucial. I want you to see this.  If God answered all of our prayers just as we pray them, just when we pray them, we would miss out on the lesson that God is teaching through our problems.And think of this. God is teaching us something.  God, if he answered all of our prayers just like we prayed them, then our character would suffer. And the reason is that God is far more interested in our character than he is our comfort and our convenience.Let me say that to you again.  Please do not miss this statement.  God is far more interested in your Christian character, in you becoming more like Jesus Christ than he is your comfort and my comfort, your convenience and my convenience, because if you look at the life of Nehemiah he already had a life of convenience. And the very prayer he was praying was going to take him through great discomfort, great trepidation, great fear and is going to complicate his life tremendously.God is more interested in making us what we need to be, more like Jesus, for his use than he is for us to just simply be comfortable and convenient.I want you to listen to this.  Nehemiah wanted to bring about a change and he would certainly need character to do it.Have you ever thought about your prayer lives and just sort of summed them up?  Think about this statement.  Many of our prayers are directed at asking God to remove the circumstances he is using in our life to make us more like Jesus.You probably didn’t hear that so let me say that to you again.  Pay attention and listen.  Many of the prayers of our life are directed at asking God to remove the circumstances of our life that he is using to make us more like Jesus.You say, “What?”The Bible says in James, it says, “Count it all joy when you fall into different temptations and trials because the trial of your work, because the trial of your faith works what?” Patience.  “And let patience have her complete work.”God is doing things in our lives. And if we get on the wheel of God’s workings as if we were a piece of pottery and we don’t like the pressure and we don’t like what God is doing to us to make us a vessel fit for our use, then we start complaining and we start, “Oh, God, take away the pain.  Take away the hurt.  Take away the bad relationship.  Take...”We start asking God to take away the very things that are making us useful for him. Don’t forget.  God’s purposes supercede our pleasures. Let me say that again.  God’s purposes always supercede our pleasures in our life.  God is doing something in our life.And many of our prayers are directed at asking God to remove those circumstances instead of embracing them.  Many prayers are directed at removing us from the place where God knows we need to be to be used by him.Imagine Nehemiah getting to be a complaining sort of a person. “Oh, God, I’m in Babylon. I can’t believe this.  Or I’m in Persia and here I am and I am not where I want to be and I would love to be over there and oh if things were just different and if timing was different and if I had a different boss and if I had a different wife and if I had a...”And you know how we go with that.  You know, I spend half of my ministry dealing with people on these two question: If and then.“If this was going on then I could do that.”“If I could get a different situation.”“If I had a different job.”“If I could get my bills paid.”“If I could get my mortgage down.”“If I could get these kids through school.”“If I could get my wife to pay attention.”“If I could get my kids obedience.”If, if, if...we go all the way through life if, then, if, then, if then.Nehemiah said, “Now is the time. I am going to pray and I am going to wait on God because now is the time.”It is not a matter of if and then.  It is a matter of God is working here and he is working now.  And God is building into your character what he wants you to be so that you and I can be fit for his use.Be patient in prayer. Pray not only for deliverance.  Pray for understanding.  Pray not only for deliverance.  Pray for understanding.After you are in this situation of being patient, then be preparing.  Write that down.  Be preparing.There are four months of time since he found out about the conditions in Jerusalem to the day he is going to face Artaxerxes and he is scared to death.  It says there in verse number two, “I became dreadfully afraid.”So for four months he has been praying. He has been fasting. He has been weeping.  He has been mourning. He has been meditating.  He has been thinking. He has been planning.  He has been praying and he has been planning.“Well, if I were to go to Jerusalem what would it take?  And if I was to get over there what are the things that I am going to need to help get this thing done?”And so he begins to think about it then.  “Well, the first thing I am going to have go have is help from the king.  Nobody is going to do anything without the king’s permission. I have got to have the king’s help. And then I am going to have some help from some people. I can’t do this all by myself.”As we get through this study you are going to find out how important working together is.  But even on the difficulties of an individual life you still have to work with the people of your life in order to be able to accomplish it.“I need help from the king and I am going to need help from some people. I am going to need whole lots of materials, you know. I mean, the place has been burned with fire so that means anything that was wood was burned up and it is not just a matter of stacking stones.  I have got to have girders and I have got to have beams.”And so he is thinking all...  “Here is what I am going to need. I am going to need this and that.”And here is the thing that we have to understand. If Nehemiah failed to plan then he was planning to fail. And if you and I fail to plan, then we are planning to fail.You say, “Well, how in the world does this work out in my individual life when I am trying to get back in order and get back on track with what God wants me to be?  How does that work?”Well, you are going to pray faithfully.  You are going to pray first.  You are going to pray sincerely. You are going to face your reality. You are going to pray continually and then you are going to begin to plan the things that will be necessary to make it all happen.He was planning.Well, what might you need to plan?  Well, things like this.  “All right.  I am an angry person.  I don’t know why I am so angry, but I get angry and I stay angry and I explode and I have a phosphorous type personality.  I am just like a little match. I explode when anybody rubs me the wrong way.  And so, Lord, I need help with my...I am going to have to face my anger. I am going to have to put a lid on it.  I am just going to have to do something with it.“The next thing is I have got to give time to my relationships. The truth is as I look at this matter and I sum up all the problems, I just...I have got relationship trouble with my wife, with my children or with my husband and my relatives.  I have just got these relationship problems.  And I am just going to have to give some time to these problems.”And so you start taking steps. “All right. How do I do that?”Well, you take a look at your life. You look at your calendar, what you have to do and you start blocking off time to be with them.It is amazing to me that when man and woman first meet and they are dating in the dating period before they get married, I mean, being together, they just can’t get enough of each other. They want to be together.  And men are the most conversational animals on planet earth before the conquest is over.  But once they have made the conquest, marry the woman and go home, then he moves on to other things and she is just...he just doesn’t have time.You know what?  It is going to take time on strained relationships. Can I say that again?  It is going to take a dedication of time.  And so what are you doing? You are planning.  So you are planning to face your difficulty, your anger.  You are planning to face your relationships.Something else we have got to do, I have got to put my priorities in order. I am going to have to face my priorities and see if I have got them in the right order.I hear Christians all the time and I have, you know, I am one and I talk.  And I am just as guilty as others from time to time. But sometimes we have to have a priority check.  We have got to look and find out: Is God first?  Is he first in our life?Let me just bother you.  It is that time of year when the great cathedrals of the autumn sport are now open.  And the great cathedrals, the great temples and those gods, those gods of the gridiron are out there running around and they...and we are giving enormous offerings to be able to go to those games and to be able to see them.  And we are giving enormous time and enormous worship.  It is not enough to go to the game and enjoy it and to buy a pop and Coke and a $17 hot dog or however much they cost.  It is not enough to do that. We have to come home and then get online and we have to talk to everybody in the county about the game that we just went to see. And we have to get on the chat rooms and we have got to read what ESPN said.  And then we have got to read what Fox Sports says. And then we have got to read what Yahoo Sports says. And we have got to read...You say “How do you know all that?”Because I do the same thing.But, you know, there are lots of people that would say, “I love God with all of my heart and he is first in my life.”Yet you will allow the god of the autumn cathedral to take first place and you will put God on hold, his work on hold, his service on hold, his giving on hold.  You will put it on hold in favor of being in a certain location at a certain time when it contradicts with being in the house of God.Let me tell you a little something.  When revival comes to a soul, when revival comes to an individual heart, they give God first place and they do not forsake the house of God.You say, “Well, that sounds so foreign. That sounds like 1957.”Well, I’m not trying to carry us back to 1957, but there was a lot of things going on in 1957 than are far greater than 2007: dedication, honesty.Listen to me for a moment.  We have to make some plans.  I have got to plan, put priorities in order.  I have got to get rid of selfishness.Let me tell you the phrase that is killing America, especially men and women.  “Well, I have just got to do the thing that I think is the best for me.  I know that you know what?  It is going to be rough on my wife and kids, but, you know, I just can’t believe God doesn’t want me to be happy.  And this relationship doesn’t seem like it is going anywhere and I just want...I know God wants me to be happy so I am just going to have to obey...  In the name of God wanting me to be happy, I am going to break all my promises. I am going to eliminate my vows.  I am going to go the opposite direction.  I am going to...my choice...I am willing to condemn the next generation, those children that are going to come up, because I am ready to go and do something different in the name of personal, selfish happiness.”Well, first of all, you don’t know anything about happiness if you think being happy is pleasing yourself non stop.  And, second of all, you don’t have the right to seek your own pleasure at the expense of everybody that knows you.You have to make plans, plans to face yourself, face your relationships, face your priorities, face your selfishness.And, guys, let me help you. You have to face this whole idea of the fact that in order to have a good relationship with your wife you are going to have to actually stop and have a conversation.Could I please give all the men a little revelation here this morning?  Your wife likes to talk to you.  She likes to have a conversation.  And she doesn’t like it to be limited to the commercials in the ball game.  In fact, there are other necessities that sometimes supercede that and there is not even time at the commercials.  They like to talk to you.  You need to talk to them.Now, folks, I talk for a living.  That’s what I do.  I talk.  I talk here at the church and I make phone calls all day long and talk to people and I talk to people in the staff and I talk to the secretaries and I talk to people in counseling and I talk about this and talk about that.  And when I go home and I walk in and Bonnie just, you know, it’s automatic.  Just hit the switch.  I walk in and oh she is so glad to see me.  “What was your day like?” And this and that and the other. She wants to talk.  And she begins to talk and everything like that and I kind of...my ears are hurting from so much listening.Do you know what?  It doesn’t make any difference. It doesn’t make any difference at all because if I want to be happy, if want...if she is going to be happy, if we are going to have a nice relationship then we are going to have to talk.You say, “Well, what kind of plans do you have to make to talk?”You are going to have to plan to put off something that you think is so much more important. And you are going to have to talk, converse, husbands and wives.Do you know that in all the studies that I have read, anything that I have read about anything concerning to do with husband’s and wife’s relationships, one of the largest categories of difficulties is...You say, “Well, it’s sexual.  That’s the big...”No, that’s not the big one.  The big one is that just cannot communicate.We are going to have to face it.  Face the situations.  Make plans. Plan to change.  And if you don’t...if you are failing to plan then you are planning to fail. I don’t care how many times you confess at the altar. You can confess and tell God you are going to change until you are blue in the face, but until you are making...Do you know what Nehemiah did?  Nehemiah said, “The walls are down. The walls are down. The walls are down. The people are in trouble.  And I am going to go to God.  And then when God lets me I am going to go to them and I am going to help.”So what do we have to do?“God, look at the situations of my life.  Ok.  I am going to pray. I want you to get my heart right. And now, then, Lord, give me the opportunity. And I am going to wait for it and I am going to step out there and I am going to help in this situation. I am going to confess.”Be patient in prayer. Don’t pray only to be delivered.  Pray that God would teach you.  Pray that God would use you. Put your priorities in order.The next thing is, be in position.  Be in position.  Do you know what? He was present when his opportunity came.  Whenever Nehemiah was...he had been praying that God would help him as he knew he was going to have to face this man. He didn’t miss work that day.  He didn’t miss his opportunity.  He was in a location where he could actually interact with a person he had to interact with.A lot of people have the whole idea of, “Man, you know, things are just getting so, you know.”  There are guys that would rather work 80 hours a week than to spend a few hours at home in conversation because they don’t want to face it. They don’t want to confess. They don’t want to be honest. They don’t want to work on it. They are not planning for anything to be different.We have got to be in position. We have got to be where we are.Do you know what?  Nehemiah did not shirk his responsibility.  He was present.  We shouldn’t either.How many of us are just not ready to show up in the face of difficulties?  If Nehemiah had been absent when his opportunity came it was going to affect not only him, but also his entire race of people were going to be affected.I want to say something to you about you parents.  You don’t know when your opportunity is going to come, but you need to be there for your children.  Be there for your children. You need to be there so that when the opportunity arises you are not out of pocket, you are not out pocket, you are not off on your own thing, you are not doing this, that or the other. You are there to have the influence on your children that you want to have.I know a person.  I won’t call their name. They are not a member of this church, but this person is very, very, very, very politically active. I mean big time.You say, “Are you against political activity?”Of course not. I think we ought to stand up.  We ought to speak up.  We ought to speak out. We ought to do what we ought to do.  But here is this individual that is just so...this person has two wonderful children. They are growing up and those kids are starting to develop some rebellious attitudes and starting to question what is going on in their home because mom is never there because she is in Washington and she is here and she is there and she is traveling and she is going and she is coming and she is doing this, that and the other.  And she is fighting abortion and she is fighting for the rights of parents and she is fighting for the home and she is fighting, fighting, fighting, fighting, fighting. And guess who she has time for? She has time for everybody, except two people. Who do you think those two people are?  Two kids.You have to plan for it.If you want the opportunity to arrive, you are going to have to be present and accounted for while they are there.Can I debunk something for you once again?  I have said this many times.  Can I please help you? I want to help you.  Throw away the idea that quality time is better than quantity time. It is a lie.  It is not true.  You are going to have greater opportunity in the regular habits of everyday life to influence your children and to show them what life is about than you are by borrowing money that you do not have, taking a trip that you cannot afford to go down there and have them fall in love with Mickey Mouse while they are still upset with you.  Quality time does not supercede quantity time.  You need to be present and accounted for.I have talked to you about my mom and dad.  Momma was here a couple of weeks ago. She is a little lady about that tall.  And my mom and dad—and you have heard me talk about them. I love them.  I revere my dad. My dad is...You say, “Was he perfect?”Of course not.“Did he have any quirks?”Yep.“Did he get upset about things?”Yep.“Did he have a temper?”Oh, boy.“Was your mom perfect?”“Were they highly educated?”“Were they smarter than other people?”“Did they have advantages?”No, no, no.  My dad graduated from high school. My mother didn’t. Neither one of them went a day of college. They didn’t know anything about that.You say, “Well, what do you think the great blessing of your mom and dad be?”Well, they did several things very, very well. Number one, they took us to church.  Number two, they believed in God and demonstrated it. But here is the big one.  Number three, that is, they were there.You say, “What do you mean by that?”I mean that the project of my father’s life was his three boys.   I mean that the project of my mother’s life were her three boys.  I remember like yesterday.  It was just like this.  Here it was.  Now, I’m not, you know, I know I am old and I know I am old fashioned and I know I came from another generation.  I know I am short, fat and bald headed.  I know all that stuff.  But listen to me for a minute.Here is what my mother would do.  I came home from West Haven Elementary School just like it was yesterday.  I came home from West Haven Elementary School in the Otis Dale subdivision of Memphis, Tennessee and I walked in that door. And when I walked in that door here is the succession of events.“Well, hello there, Philip.  Let me give you a hug.”That was my mother.  She would give me a hug and then she would say, “How as school?”And I would say, “Well, we did this, that and the other and this boy beat me up at recess and so on.”“Oh, I’m sorry.  Here.  Here is a cookie.  Here is some milk and where is your homework?”Every single day of my life going to school.You say, “Well, we don’t live in that generation. We live in another.”I know we do and aren’t we doing well?I am not here to glorify an epoch of time.  I am here to tell you that you are going to have make plans for change.  Don’t just have an emotional outbreak because you know you have a problem. “And, oh God, help me.”He will help you.  You call out to him.  “Call unto me, and I will answer thee, and shew thee great and mighty things, which thou knowest not.”  He will answer you. But here is what is going to have to happen:  You are going to have to next make plans for change.  That is what you have to do. Make plans.Plan on changing.  Plan on getting rid of your anger.  Plan on being with your family. Plan on communicating with your wife, with your husband, with your children.  Plan on addressing those relationships. Plan on loving one another. Like just plan on it.  Make time for it and plan on it.Oh, I have got to hurry. Time is gone.  Let me get to the end of this.  When your opportunity comes and you are going to have to do something else, when your opportunity comes, number one, proceed in spite of fear.  Verse two said he was dreadfully afraid.Let me let you in on a secret.  Fear is not failure unless fear stops you.  Fear is never failure.You say, “Well, I just can’t imagine people were fearful.”Listen, Douglas MacArthur was fearful. George Patton was fearful.  Joshua was fearful. This man Nehemiah was fearful. God never promised that there would never be any fears in our life.In the book of 2 Corinthians here is what Paul’s testimony was.  He said there was conflicts without and there were fears within.  He said, “I was always being attacked from the exterior.” And he says, “I was always fearful on the interior. But God stood by me and his hand was on me.”Fear is not failure. Fear is only failure if it stops you. And so don’t be paralyzed by fear.I know people that never learned to drive a car because they are so fearful. I know people that never learned to swim because they are so fearful.  I know people that never go to college because they are afraid to approach the whole idea.  I know of people who can never call for a dental appointment, a medical appointment or call to apologize or talk to somebody or even invite anybody over for dinner they are so fearful of the telephone. They are fearful to apply for a job, fearful to talk to an offended family member.You are going to have to go forth in faith because faith is going to conquer fear.  You just step out there.Let me give you a little bit of history about how my dad taught me to swim.You say, “How did he teach you to swim?”Well, we went to Clearwater pool in Memphis, Tennessee, south Memphis and he said, “Well, there is the water.”  He grabbed me and threw me in.  He said, “Beat your arms and beat your legs.”I said...“Beat them harder.”That’s how he did it. When I...when he thought I was in trouble he jumped in, grabbed me out, put me on the outside, beat me on the backside and said, “How are you doing?”I said, “I’m doing ok.”He said, “You’re doing all right?”I said, “Fine.”“Ok, in with you again.”  He kept doing that.Guess who learned how to swim? Me.You say, “Well, I don’t know how to face the fears of my life. I don’t know how.”Yes, you do.  Face them.  Go forward in spite of the fear.  Talk to your wife.  Talk to your children.  Talk to your husband. Talk to the people you have offended.  Talk to your boss. Go see them in spite of your fear trusting God, having prayed faithfully.Face yourself the same way.  Face your alcoholism.  Face your drug addiction.  Face your pornography addiction.  Face your fits of anger and your panic attacks. Face them.[?] and then go forward in spite of the fear.  You are going to have to face these things.  Proceed in spite of fear.And there is nobody harder to approach than somebody who is suffering because of our life.The next thing, chapter two, verse four, we have spent a lot of time on this last week, but this is a little different.  Chapter two verse four says, “So I prayed to the God of heaven.”I like to call this the quick arrow of prayer, the quick arrow of prayer.  What did he do?“Well, the moment has come. Here we are.  Doomsday. I have got to face the guy. Oh God, help me.”Do you know that is where most Christians live right there? They never ever bother with talking to God, never even bother with the whole idea of a real prayer life until there is a major crisis and then they want their whole prayer life to be made up of, “God help me.”We start shooting arrows of prayer to God.Did you know this guy who is shooting an arrow of prayer to God has spent the last four months in weeping and wailing and gnashing his teeth over the situation?  He has been talking to God about it, praying about it and fasting about it and weeping about it and mourning about it. This was  not the first time he prayed.Let me let all of you in on a little secret. Whether you have been a believer for 50 years or five minutes, let me just let you know something.  Let me tell you about Christianity 101. Christianity 101 is you need to be reading a little bit of God’s Word and you need to be praying, talking to your heavenly Father.Now, let me teach you Christianity 201.  Christianity 201 is that you need to be reading a little bit of God’s Word every day and then you need to be talking to your heavenly Father.Now, let me move on to Christianity 301.  Christianity 301 means that you need to be in the Word of God a little bit every day and you need to be talking to your heavenly Father.Do you get the gist?  Do you understand where I am going with this?If you are going to be a growing Christian you are going to be in communication with your God.  No communication with your God, no intake of the Word of God, no talking back to God about what you just took in and you are not going to grow.  I don’t care how many seminars you go to. I don’t care how many conferences you go to.  You can go all over this country.  You can attend every conference on spiritual growth and on prophecy. You can attend everything. But until you and I as an individual get in the habit of talking to God about what God is talking to us about then we stagnate in our growth, our Christianity becomes peripheral, external and web come griping, complaining Christians because God doesn’t ever seem to listen to our prayers.Christianity 1001 is you need to be in God’s Word and you need to be talking to your God.  Conversation with God.  That is exactly who Nehemiah was.Do you know why it was so easy for him to say, “Oh, God, here it comes.  Help me.”It is because he had been talking to God continually about that.You say, “Pastor, do you ever falter?”Of course.“Do you miss a day?”Yeah.“Are you happy about it?”No.  But I do have a habit that I don’t want to face any day without talking to God about it first.  Oh, I wish I could get you to understand that as a Christian.  You can’t face any problem. You can’t face any relationship.  You can’t face any hardship.  You can’t face a good day.  You can’t even face your best day without talking to God first.  Why? Because you are going to give yourself credit for the good day you had.Oh, you need to talk to God.  I need to talk to God.  Oh, we need to be real Christians.  Oh what it would do for us.  There is going to come a day in this country, I believe, before my ministry is over where I cannot stand up and preach to you like I am doing right now. And your relationship to your God in heaven is going to be based on what you do by yourself alone because I believe days are coming when they are going to make it very difficult to be an open outspoken Christian.Oh, you need to be in the Word of God.  Reading it, praying it, talking to God about what you just got done reading.My, my.  Present your plan to God for change. That is chapters two, verse five through the end.  You know what you need? In this situation Nehemiah knew he couldn’t do anything without the king’s permission. And what I can say to you this morning is that you can’t do anything and shouldn’t attempt anything without your king’s permission either.He said, “I can’t go over there and do a thing.  I can’t lift a finger. I can’t move out of his sight unless he gives me permission. He is the king of the world.”Do you know who the king of the world is?  Do you know who the owner of everything is?  Do you know who owns everything?  Our heavenly Father and his Son Jesus Christ.  And before you make any decision, before you decide to marry or unmarry, before you decide to move, before you decide to dump a job and take a new job, before you decide anything you need to talk to your God about it. Get the king’s...You say, “Well what doe his permission look like?”Well, if you go to the Lord in prayer, you lay it all out before him and you seek the Scriptures and make sure you are not...Listen.  God is not calling you to leave your job. He is not calling you to leave your job and to go run a house of prostitution.  He is not calling you to do that.I mean, there are some things that are abundant in the Word of God.  He is not calling you to leave your job and go open up a corner bar.  He is not calling you to do that.Now, I could go on and on.  But here is what I am saying to you this morning. If you are going to leave one place and go to another place, if you are going to uproot your children, take them out of this school and their friends and go somewhere else, you had better talk to God about it and get his permission.You say, “What does that look like?”Well, the Bible says in Colossians chapter three, verse 15, the thing that is going to assure our hearts is the peace of God.  God’s peace.  “And the peace of God will keep your heart.” God’s peace will be flooding your soul.You say, “Well, what if I am still scared and I don’t know?”Fear is not the determiner.  Peace about doing what God has said and what God says is the right way is the determiner.  Let God’s peace guide you.  You need the king’s permission. You need the king’s protection.  And he protected...he gave him letters.  He was going to cross dangerous territory. He needed letters of escort. He needed people to go with him.You need the king’s provision.  You can’t do anything in your life without God providing for your needs.  And the Bible says that in John 15, “Without me you can do nothing,” Jesus said.All right.  And then, finally, you can count on God’s providence. And I want to end with this verse six here.  It says there, “Then the king said to me (the queen also sitting beside him), ‘How long will your journey be? And when will you return?’”You know, it put that little phrase in there,  “(the queen sitting beside him)”Very, very interesting.  For those of you that are Bible...you have been around the Bible, you know what the very next book in the Bible is. What is the next book in the Bible?Esther. Thank you very much.  Esther became the what of what?  She became the queen of what nation?  Persia, this one right here.Now, it so happens that these two books cross over. They are contemporary.  Do you know that this queen may have either been a relative, a daughter, a granddaughter or somebody of Queen Esther who had it in her heart to protect the Jews with all of her ability?Let me ask you a question.  Do you suppose that a queen...if either Esther or one of her relations were sitting there who was very much a protector of the Jews and the Jewish people, do you suppose she would be interested in raising up the wonderful walls and the wonderful city of Jerusalem again?And I have got news for you.  If the queen is not happy in a family, they ain’t nobody happy.  And in this story if Queen whoever she was, who was sitting there by the king wasn’t happy then that king was going to get an earful and he wasn’t going to be able to get away from it. And shew as going to talk to him.God had placed this queen right where she needed to be to be the influence that God needed for her to be over this king right there at that time just like Queen Esther for such a time as this.Will you listen to me for a minute?  I want to say this to you. I said this last week.In all of our difficulties, in all of your hardships and heartaches and all of your problems and all those things, let me say this to you.  God is God. He was God yesterday.  He is going to be God today.  He is going to be God tomorrow. He doesn’t take a vacation, a week off. He doesn’t take an hour off, a minute off or a second off.  He is always God and let me say this to you. God is working.You say, “But it hurts.”I am still telling you that God is working.“But my heart is broken.”God is working. Wait on him.  Wait for him to move. Look for your opportunity.  Plan for your opportunity.  Proceed in spite of the fear.  And listen to this.  Look for God’s providence, his sovereign, overabounding will in your life because God is working all things out for you.The final phrase I want you to look at is in chapter two and verse eight. The bottom says, “And the king granted them.”  He had asked for all kinds of things.  He granted him everything he asked and it says, “according to the good hand of my God upon me.”Oh, my goodness, do I love that little passage? “According to the good hand of my God upon me.”He said, “You know, I asked the king, but it really wasn’t the king.  It was because I asked my God and God’s hand was on me and therefore he moved the king.  God’s hand was on me.”There are two groups of people in the world. There is that group of people in the world that has God’s hand on them. And then there is another group of people in this world that has God’s hand opposed to them. There is that group that has God’s hand on them and he is moving them and helping them. And then there is that group in the world that has God’s hand opposed to them.The Bible says in Proverbs that, “God is angry with the wicked every day.”Really?  Yeah.  That’s what it says.The Bible says that God’s hand was on him.There is a wonderful group of people here this morning. You are not perfect and neither am I.  But you know who ultimately is in charge. And you know who, at the end of the day, who you need to trust and who your faith is in. You may mess up. You may put your hand in. You may be impatient. You may do all these things and we need to work on that.We need to do just the things I was talking about this morning.  But you are here and you know that your soul is safe.  You know that you put everything into God’s hands and that you are depending upon him for your eternity in heaven and for your life here on this earth.  You have put it all in God’s hands.Well, let me tell you something.  God’s good hand is upon you.But there is another group of people here this morning. None of this applies.You say, “Really?”No, it doesn’t apply to you.You say, “Why doesn’t it apply to me?”Because if you are not the child of God, part of the family of God, then the Bibles says very clearly his hand is not on you.  He is calling out to you. He is reaching down with his hands of love for you to come and be part of his family. He sent his Son with a demonstration of love like the world has never seen, dying on the cross for your sins, but I have got news for you.  Until you believe on him with all of your heart and say, “Lord, save me,” he doesn’t put his hand on you for all of these things that we have been talking about this morning.Nehemiah 2:1-10 (New International Version)Nehemiah 2:2Nehemiah 2:1Psalm 62:1-2Psalm 62:5Nehemiah 2:2Jeremiah 33:3 (King James Version)Nehemiah 2:4John 15:5Nehemiah 2:6Ibid.Nehemiah 2:8Ibid.Ibid.Proverbs 7:11Page  PAGE 1 of  NUMPAGES 23

Don't Despair--Take It To God in Prayer

Sermon Transcript

“DON’T DESPAIR—TAKE IT TO GOD IN PRAYER”

Pastor Phil Winfield

Nehemiah 1:4-11

September 16, 2007

Grace Church of Des Moines, IA

4200 E. 25th StreetDes Moines, IA 50317

Website:  HYPERLINK "http://www.gracehome.com" http://www.gracehome.com

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Philip was leading us and we were singing about that part of the son that said, “Remember your promises, oh Lord.” Well that comes directly from the book of Nehemiah chapter one. And so I want you to take your Bibles, if you would, please, and just open them up to Nehemiah chapter number one.We just got started on this last week, a series in the book of Nehemiah and I believe God is already doing tremendous things in our heart.  Listen to Nehemiah 1:1The words of Nehemiah the son of Hachaliah. It came to pass in the month of Chislev, in the twentieth year, as I was in Shushan the citadel, that Hanani one of my brethren came with men from Judah; and I asked them concerning the Jews who had escaped, who had survived the captivity, and concerning Jerusalem.  And they said to me, "The survivors who are left from the captivity in the province are there in great distress and reproach. The wall of Jerusalem is also broken down, and its gates are burned with fire."  So it was, when I heard these words, that I sat down and wept, and mourned for many days; I was fasting and praying before the God of heaven.And I said: "I pray, LORD God of heaven, O great and awesome God, You who keep Your covenant and mercy with those who love You and observe Your commandments, 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, and confess the sins of the children of Israel which we have sinned against You. Both my father’s house and I have sinned.  We have acted very corruptly against You, and have not kept the commandments, the statutes, nor the ordinances which You commanded Your servant Moses.  Remember, I pray, the word that You commanded Your servant Moses, saying, ‘If you are unfaithful, I will scatter you among the nations; but if you return to Me, and keep My commandments and do them, though some of you were cast out to the farthest part of the heavens, yet I will gather them from there, and bring them to the place which I have chosen as a dwelling for My name.’  Now these are Your servants and Your people, whom You have redeemed by Your great power, and by Your strong hand.  O Lord, I pray, please let Your ear be attentive to the prayer of Your servant, and to the prayer of Your servants who desire to fear Your name; and let Your servant prosper this day, I pray, and grant him mercy in the sight of this man." For I was the king’s cupbearer.Would you bow your heads as we go to the Lord in prayer?And our Father, we pray, of course, that you would add your blessing to the preaching and teaching of your holy Word.  And, Lord, I pray this morning as we go now and take this second look, this second step in rebuilding the walls of a broken down life, I pray, Father, that you would just anoint me as I speak this morning.  No one cares to hear my message.  No one wants to know what Phil thinks today.  But what they would like to know is what you have shared and what you have impressed upon me by your Holy Spirit and through your Word.  And, God, I pray that you would touch hearts this morning.  And as I always pray, Lord, whether out loud or in private, if there be one here that does not know you personally as Lord and master I pray that they would come to know you today, not only for eternal life in heaven, but to make sense out of the life on earth.  We ask you that you would bless this sermon in Jesus’ name.  Amen.And so this week you have a Scripture sheet that says, “Don’t Despair: Take it to God in Prayer.”  And last week as we got started we got started with this thought. And that is, is that the way Nehemiah was able to get anything done was Nehemiah took a real honest look at the situation at hand.  He faced reality. And that is exactly what we have to do.Some of you are here.  You were here last week and, perhaps, you have begun to face reality in your own life.  This story is the story about the rebuilding of literal walls and a literal temple and a literal city.  But God is not dwelling in buildings and behind walls. He is dwelling in our hearts.  He is dwelling in the bodies, the lives of believers today. And so we are talking about rebuilding or building in the first place a broken down life.How do you do that?  How do you do these things?  Well, number one, face reality.  And we said it last week.  We’ll say it again. Boy, some of us here are just given over to all kinds of problems, habits, hurts, hang-ups, addictions.  Perhaps we have just got addictions to anger or we have got addictions to this, that or the other.  Maybe it is a substance or a liquid or maybe it’s a relationship or maybe it’s some certain sin.  We have got these things and we need to face reality.  And no man stands alone. The things that bother you also bother your family, your relationships and people that you interact with. And so we have got to face reality.Now, when you get done today I want you to remember that having faced reality, when you go home I want you to remember this, I want you to remember that God says that the way that after facing reality that you can begin to rebuild is through prayer and recognizing your position.You say, “My position? What do you mean my position?  I’m not high and mighty and have some elected official position.”No, no, no.  God has placed each and every one of us in the exact place, in the exact position that he wants us to be in.  Now, we are really getting into this book of Nehemiah and, without doubt, it is one of the most amazing stories of recovery and restoration in history.  What everyone else had given up on was the very thing God used Nehemiah to bring to pass. I love the very thought of this whole story.  Everybody had given up. Everybody in Jerusalem was walking around the junk, over the junk. They figured it’s a lost cause.  Might as well give up. But I want you to know that the thing that everybody had given up on was what God used to bring to pass.And I want you to know when we give up, God doesn’t.   Did you know that?  When we give up on the whole thing, that’s just about the time that God is getting ready to work. And so he did that.  And the whole issue of Jerusalem and its broken down walls is a bigger story than the failure of the city maintenance crew to do their duty.  All of these walls were broken down.  It goes all the way back to the time of Nebuchadnezzar.  They are broken down, 150 years have been lying there.  Nothing has been done. Even the rescue crowd they sent there to try to make a difference didn’t get anything done because, now, well, they just became discouraged, despondent, disappointed on and on it goes.  And so this was a very important thing.But we have to understand something, that the failure of Jerusalem is not just a logistics problem.  It is not just that they can’t live there anymore.  It is a theological problem for the Jews.Down in verse number nine it says, “Yet I will gather them from there, and bring them to the place which I have chosen as a dwelling for My name.”You see, the city of Jerusalem has been a city that has always been a place where God has decided to make his name and his authority known and great.  He did that. All of the promises concerning the city of Jerusalem and the Jews are eternal and earthly in nature.  None of the promises of God concerning the Jews and the city of Jerusalem will go without being fulfilled.  It will be an eternal city.  But at that time it was in ruins. There were things that were going bad.  Things were going from bad to worse and no one was ready to do anything about it.Well, I’m just so glad that God is always God.  And I want to just say something to you here just for a moment.Do you know what is curious about this book of Nehemiah? That is that having read through it now dozens of times in preparation over the last year for this series of sermons, I want to tell you something that there is no miracle recorded in the book of Nehemiah, no miracles.  I mean, this unbelievable accomplishment of these people is done by God through them, but there is no miraculous intervention.  In other words, there is no Red Sea crossing like Moses did. There is no manna falling from heaven in the morning for them to gather up the free food.  There are no plagues against their multiple enemies.  I mean, there is no miraculous thing that is going on here in this story.Well, what is abundantly clear is that God’s providence is at work and that is nothing less than absolutely miraculous.You say, “Well, what are you talking about?”Folks, I want to tell you that God is God and God is God all the time.  Can you say, “Amen?”  You see, God is always God.  And I just want to say to you this morning as we get started, you and I need to be thankful from the bottom of our hearts that God never takes a day off, that he never takes an hour off, that he never takes a minute off.  In fact, utter chaos and wreck and the end of all of our lives would result if God took three seconds off.  I mean, God is always God.  And God is at work in this situation.  For Nehemiah who cannot see at this moment how things can work out, he is 1000 miles away, he can’t do anything about it personally.  And all the people in Jerusalem are in despair and the great name of God seems to have lost its luster.  The authority of Lord Jehovah...it just seems like nothing is happening. And so we might be ready to thrown in the towel to give up. But I’m here to tell you that God is God, God is always God. God never stops being God.  He never takes a day off.  And when we think things are not working out right, God is working things out right.Now, be honest with me.  Raise your hand if you just, sometimes, “Pastor, I got to confess.  Sometimes in my life with some of the difficulties, the reality of my life, sometimes I just can’t quit see how it is working...all going to work out ok.”Would you raise your hand?  How many of you ever have a big problem that you don’t understand?   Put your hand up.  All right.  Do you know that God knows exactly how he is working out everything?  You’re talking about somebody with experience.  Folks, God has been around a long, long, long time.  God is totally infinite. The one who created you and me has got the...he has got the experience of the eons. He is limitless. He is unlimited.  He is infinite.You say, “Well, give me something to help me understand infinite.”Well, one of the smartest men that ever lived in history was Einstein. They say that when Einstein was doodling his doodling was probably light years ahead of the rest of us. I mean, what his brain did in neutral was way ahead of what most people do when they are working at it as hard as they can.   But I want to tell you a little something about Einstein even with his theory of relativity and everything else.  He started and he stopped.  He began here and he ended here.  He knew this much.Our God knows everything.You say, “Why are you telling me all this?”Because he knows all about you, too.  He knew about Jerusalem.  He knew about the rocks. He knew about the junk. He knew about the city.  He knew about the walls. He knew about the defamation of his character.  He knew about Nehemiah and where he was.This is just so amazing.  God’s providence. And, folks, we don’t talk about this a lot anymore, but I want to say to you that God is sovereign and God is providence and he is working everything out. The events of Nehemiah’s life and Nehemiah’s day were out of control. They were out of his control. But they were never out of God’s control.So here is the first thing we learn. We learn that the place to go when we are in despair is to go to God in prayer.  In prayer?  God reveals to us just how we are in position for God to work through us and through us work to repair the broken down walls of our lives.The prayers that repair our lives is where we are going to pick up.  Write some things down on your Scripture sheet.  Please don’t miss a word of what I am going to share because it will really help you as you move through difficulty in rebuilding your life.We ended seeing that Nehemiah wept and mourned and he prayed and he fasted.  He didn’t do it for a minute.  He didn’t do it for an hour as you will see in next week’s sermon; proof positive.  He did it for four months.Boy, there was no “Now I lay me down to sleep” prayer involved in this situation. He...when he got a grip of the severity of the problem and the depth of the situation he was moved to pray.  And he prayed.  He wept. He mourned.  He prayed.  He fasted.I want you to see some things in this passage.  Write these down. The first thing we need to do, prayers that repair our lives, is number one, pray recognizing God’s character.  Write that down.  Pray recognizing God’s character.  Verse five. “And I said: "I pray, LORD God of heaven, O great and awesome God, You who keep Your covenant and mercy with those who love You and observe Your commandments, please let Your ear be attentive and Your eyes open, that You may hear the prayer of Your servant which I pray before You.”He talks to the Lord and he says to him.  First thing he says, recognizing who he was addressing he said, “The Lord God of heaven.” Now that puts everything on a different plain.  That, I mean, we’re not talking about the little despots and the little people who think they are gods with the little people who act like gods or some deity that has never written a book, never revealed anything to anyone, never bettered anyone’s lives, all of these so called gods all over the world that always end in an ism.  None of those things.When Nehemiah bowed, he prayed to the God of heaven.  He prayed to the God out of reach of manipulation of man. That’s pretty much a phrase that appears many times.  You know, Daniel prayed to the God of heaven.  Even Nebuchadnezzar and Darius, they both prayed when they were converted, to the God of heaven.  Even in Persia it was a well known phrase, the God of heaven.And so when he talked to the God of heaven he was talking to the God that man couldn’t manipulate.Do you know what mankind is trying to do to God today? They are trying to bring God down, set him beside them and make him a real cool guy that’s really hung up with all the same hang ups that they have.  Bring God down.Well, folks, I want to tell you a little secret. You can’t bring him down and God...we would like him to be just like us so we feel a whole lot more comfortable and don’t feel like our sin is such a big deal.  But God is not like us.  In fact, God is a three times holy God.  He is holy. He is holy. He is holy. And we are nothing like God.Can anyone say, “Amen?”We are not like God.  God is holy.  Do not try in your fondest imagination, do not try to bring God down and make him like you. The closest thing that ever...the realization of that was when Jesus took on the form of flesh, came into this world and lived 33 years a perfect life and died for our sins.  That was God in the flesh.  Yet he was perfect. He was tempted in all points as we are yet without what?  Sin. People don’t like to talk about sin today.“Oh, sin, what a big problem.  I don’t want to talk about sin.”We like to talk about mistakes.  We make mistakes.People sin.  Years ago people sinned.  But today we just have missteps.  We make mistakes.“You know, I made a mistake with those three affairs.”“I made a mistake when I was lying to the IRS.”“I...”We talk about mistakes.  Folks, mistakes are what you do in a check book.  Mistakes are when you try to get an answer right on a math exam.  Sin is when we do those things that God tells us not to do and we do them anyway.  We pray recognizing God’s character.  Well, God is God of heaven.  He is great and awesome.  He is beyond our description.  We are all, as the song says, were all the oceans ink and all the heavens parchment  you could not write all there is to know about God in his greatness across the skies if you wrote from now through eternity.  He is...he is great.  He is awesome.And then something else about God.  You keep your Word,” it says in this passage.  It says here in verse number five, “LORD God of heaven, O great and awesome God, You who keep Your covenant and mercy.”  The Jews had a problem, but it wasn’t because God didn’t keep his Word. It was because they didn’t keep theirs.You know, God is a covenant keeping, promise making and keeping God.  God keeps his promises. God does what he says he is going to do. It is just that we like the part where God promises to bless us, but we don’t understand and like the part that he keeps the part where he says he will also correct us if we do wrong.But, you see, that’s exactly what he said.Listen to this.  Exodus 34:6.  We looked at it in a different context a few weeks ago, but it says when Moses wanted to see God, “And the LORD passed before him [Moses] and proclaimed, ‘The LORD,’” That is the all powerful owner, “‘the LORD God,’” the powerful owning God, “‘merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abounding in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin.” Boy that’s the part we really like.  I mean we like that merciful, longsuffering, patient, forgiving.  That is just...boy when we talk about God that’s the way we want to talk about God.You know, I had three children. They were growing up, you know.  I mean, you’ve got children. I see  Kevin down here. He’s got boys at his house.  And you just all over the place. We’ve all got children.  We all were children.  You know how it is when kids are growing up the first thing that the parents want to do is they want to approach their child when he starts going the wrong way or misbehaving or becoming rebellious, they want to approach them with the very loving, kind...”Well, now, Junior, you know, let’s don’t do that.  Let’s don’t be kicking daddy in the shins.  Kick mommy in the shins, but don’t kick daddy in the shins.”You know, just...we want to be loving about this whole thing.  Just loving and kind and gracious and we want...that’s the way we want to work with our children. Well, that’s natural.  We would rather love them into obedience than we would correct them into obedience.But guess what?  Just about the time you knees start getting sore from the kids kicking you in the shins as you are trying to get him out of the grocery story and all that stuff.  You’re, you know what you do?  You say, “I am going to get some obedience out of this child one way or another. If he is not going to respond to my love, he will respond another way.”This is when I told you that my mother loved to apply the board of education to the seat of learning in my life.  And it worked very well.You know what God’s like?  Let me tell you what God is like.  First of all, God is loving, kind, patient and merciful, longsuffering.  He is forgiving. He shows mercy to generations to the fourth generation.  But he visits the iniquity of the fathers upon the children and the children’s children to the third generation and the fourth generation.Oh, I just want to pull over and say to you moms and dads that are making choices that you think you are free to make.  You make choices and you make decisions and you say, “I am free and I will do what I want. It’s my business.  It’s not anybody else’s business.”  Yet you set the example of indulgence.  You set the example of faithlessness and unfaithfulness.  You set the example of addictions.  And all you are doing is opening up the door for your children to fall prey to the same things to the third and fourth generations.Oh, pay attention.But God is loving and he is kind and he is faithful and he would far rather come with mercy than to come with correction.Pray recognizing God’s character.  And then we’re talking about this first element over here, prayer and position.  Position is the last thing. Several things on prayer. The second thing: Pray repenting of personal and corporate sin.  Pray repenting of personal and corporate sin.  Verse number 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, and confess the sins of the children of Israel which,” big word, circle it, “we have sinned against You. Both,” circle the word, “my father’s house.” And look at this, “And I have sinned.  We have acted very corruptly against You, and have not kept the commandments, the statutes, nor the ordinances which You commanded Your servant Moses.”We.  I.He included himself.  Pray repenting of personal and corporate sin, verses six and seven.You know, Psalms 106, verse six says this. David writing, “We have sinned with our fathers, We have committed iniquity, We have done wickedly.”  There’s a couple of points you need to fill in under that.  Number one, my sins are mine.  I told you about the word “sin.”  Please don’t minimize what God calls sin, call it a mistake a misstep, a happenstance, you just messed up. No, no, no.  No.  Let it be what God calls it and let it be an offense against God’s character, his love and his grace.  Sin is an offense against God.And my sins are mine.  They are personal.You know, in the affair that David had with Bathsheba he confessed clearly. Nathan the prophet came up to David and he said, “David.”  And he told a story.  He said, “But you are the man, David.  You are the one who has sinned.”And David immediately responded and said, “Yep, you’re right.  I have sinned against God and God only have I sinned.”  He confessed.Do you know what David didn’t do?  Well, the first thing he didn’t do is he did not blame it on Michal his arranged marriage by King Saul who despised him and said, “Well, you know, my first wife she was just such a problem. I might as well just go out and live it up because look what she did to me.”And, you know, we are in the...we are the world’s greatest blame game people. We just pass it on.“You know, I’m a rebel and an idiot and a jerk because my daddy didn’t take me fishing when I was six.”Or, “My mother, she didn’t have a very good Christmas for us in 1970...whatever it was.  And that’s why I’m just...”You know, we blame somebody for everything.I think some of the funniest things I have ever heard are people who are found at fault in automobile accidents and they fill out their insurance forms and if there is just some kind of way they can pass it on, it’s not their...no matter what the police said it’s not their fault. And I could tell you stories.Listen to me this morning.  We have to understand that my sins are mine. David didn’t say, “Michal did it.”  He didn’t blame it on Abigail. He didn’t say, “Well, you know, Abby is getting kind of old now and I just had to have somebody to meet my needs.”He didn’t do that.  We do that today, but he didn’t do that.  He didn’t even blame it on Bathsheba and say, “Well, you know, she was on top of that house and she was out there bathing.  It’s all her fault.  She was asking for it.”He didn’t do that.  He said, “I have sinned.”You know, if we are going to pray and we are going to go from, “I understand the reality of my situation to lay the next building block.”  We’re going to have to pray honestly and we are going to have to face up to our own sin.And then there is something else.  My sins are mine and then our sins are ours. And that is corporate sin.You say, “What does that mean?”He confessed his sins as a member of his father’s household and as a part of his people. It would have been a whole lot easier for him to say, “Well, you know, I didn’t do this.  Jerusalem is 1000 miles away.  I wasn’t there. I’m not the one that broke the sabbath.  I wasn’t even born when they were doing all these things.  I didn’t commit idolatry.  I didn’t break the sabbath.  I didn’t break any of those...”He could have just said, “It’s not my responsibility.  Let them pay the price for what they have done.”He went on and identified that he himself was a sinner in his heart.  But not only that, he felt a part of his people and he felt responsible.It is easy today as a Christian who is for the Word of God and for those things that are spiritual to simply say, “I am against abortion.  I am against gay marriage.  I am for the...”We just wash our hands of the whole deal and just point to the world around us.Folks, let me just say something to you.  You listen to your pastor.  We bear some responsibility for the depths to which we have allowed our nation and culture to sink as Christians.  We have been standing by while the ship is sinking. And we have been doing nothing to make a difference.You say, “Well, what’s the best way we can make a difference?”Folks the wall had fallen down not on the basis of one man’s problems, but on the basis of the entire nation generally turning their back on God.  And our nation is made up of many individuals, many of whom have known the Word of God all of their lives. They have been in church all of their lives. But what we have done is stand by and we have not lived the life that God wants us to live in the world.  We bear responsibility as well for what is becoming of our homes.Please, now let me just step over here and speak to you daddies for a moment, you fathers. I do this.  If you’re new here today I do this.  I really come and speak to the men. And I want to talk to you men for just a minute and I just want you to understand something.  God really does hold men responsible for the direction of the society and for what is going on.  I could talk all day on this.Do you know something? We give passive permission to our families to do things that are wrong by being silent, by just not speaking up.  We have decided that, “Well, we are just not going to fight these fights in our home.  You know, whatever the wife says, whatever the kids say, whatever anybody does, whatever the neighborhood says, what everybody...just whatever.  You know, I just want to go along, get along. I’m just going to be silent.”   And by our silence we give tacit, passive approval to everything.What’s going on in our homes, what’s going on in our lives, what Junior is into. We have little Junior growing up learning how to be a slier and a dicer and loving blood, blood, bloody, bloody video games thinking it’s the greatest thing on earth.  And we just sit by and think that’s not going to have anything to do with the way he looks at life when he gets older.You’re dreaming, you know that?What we allow our families to feast their minds on is what they are going to think about and it is where they are headed in their life. What we are becoming, by being passive, is laid at the responsibility of the father.Let me give one more. We give personal...we give passive permission by our silence.  We give personal permission by our example.  We give personal permission by our example.Kid ends up in the principals office because he got mad and threw his books across the room and screamed and yelled and called the teacher a name.  The parents show up down at the school and what to know what’s going on?  You grab the kid and say, “What in the world has gotten into you? And they start screaming.  And get home scream and yell and throw thing all around the room wanting to know why that kid is doing those kind of things.I had a lady tell me not long ago, “I don’t know what happened to my daughter.  She is 17 years old and, boy, no sooner did she get to where she could get out of the house and she started drinking and now she’s a drunk.  She gets drunk every weekend.  I don’t know where in the world she thought she got that permission to do that.  Why does she think she can...doesn’t she have any sense to know that she is not supposed to do that?”And the little girl looked at mom and dad and said, “Well, I learned it from you.  You have yours every night.”Don’t be surprised what your children emulate, imitate and follow.  You see, we bear some responsibility.  And that’s what Nehemiah was saying.  He wasn’t there. He wasn’t in the city.  But do you know what?  He said, “We collectively have stood by and done nothing.”The next thing is:  Pray by reminding God that you believe his promises. And this is so wonderful. We sang about it a few moments ago. Here is where it came from. It says in verse eight:Remember, I pray, the word that You commanded Your servant Moses, saying, ‘If you are unfaithful, I will scatter you among the nations; but if you return to Me, and keep My commandments and do them, though some of you were cast out to the farthest part of the heavens, yet I will gather them from there, and bring them to the place which I have chosen as a dwelling for My name.’He tells the Lord, “Lord, you know, I have been in your Word and I have been reading what you said and, you know, yes, you said you were going to scatter us. But you also said that you would regather us.”  And so he reminded the Lord of his promise.The Bible says in Deuteronomy 4:29 which is what he was quoting:But from there you will seek the LORD your God, and you will find Him if you seek Him with all your heart and with all your soul.  "When you are in distress, and all these things come upon you in the latter days, when you turn to the LORD your God and obey His voice  ‘(for the LORD your God is a merciful God), He will not forsake you nor destroy you, nor forget the covenant of your fathers which He swore to them.’”You know, God keeps his promises both to correct us and to comfort us. Adam and Eve had no idea how well God was going to keep his promise.  God  said to them, the day that you eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil is the day you die.  They doubted it. Satan encouraged the doubt. They said, “Hah, it can’t be that way.  God’s not that hard.  He’s not going to make us live to the letter of the law.”  And they went ahead and did what God told them not to and they found out that God doesn’t just keep his promise of love and mercy, God also keeps his promise from his warnings of how he will correct us.  God keeps his promises.And so he says to him, “God, you are a promise keeping God.”  And so that is how he appealed to God.I want to get on to this next one because it is so important. And that is:  Pray requesting specific help from God.Do you know that general prayers get general answers?  Do you know what many of us are in the habit of praying such generic and general prayers that we really never do know whether God actually, specifically answered a prayer or not?  We didn’t ask specifically, carefully that God would act on our behalf. And so because we didn’t ask specifically we didn’t get a specific answer to prayer.Many of you filled these out last week.  It was interesting to read them.“Oh, God, help our family.”“Lord, help our nation.”“God, we’re in trouble. Help.”I mean, just, you know, just sort of very, very, very general.  That way, you know, we’re not on the hook that we asked God to do something he didn’t do and God is not on the hook that we asked him to do something he didn’t do either.And so I mean everybody is off the hook because we didn’t get specific. God gets no glory from general prayers.Look at this passage of Scripture.  Let’s see what it says.  It says here in verse number 10.Now these are Your servants and Your people, whom You have redeemed by Your great power, and by Your strong hand.  O Lord, I pray, please let Your ear be attentive to the prayer of Your servant, and to the prayer of Your servants who desire to fear Your name; and let Your servant prosper this day, I pray, and grant him mercy in the sight of this man.You say, “What man?”Artaxerxes, of course, the king of the world, the tyrant of the whole earth at that time.  Here he sat.  You know, Nehemiah was nothing. I think we get it in our mind that, you know, hey, Nehemiah was really something. You know, he was way up there sitting right there by Artaxerxes.And, you know, it was a place of honor, I’m sure.  But do you know what Nehemiah’s job was?  He was the last stop before poison got to the mouth of the king and killed him. I mean, whoever was against the king had to go through Nehemiah.  And if it was going to come through some stabbing in the back or some sword thrust at the last second when he is coming to dinner or some poison Nehemiah is the one that is going to stand there.  He was in that position because he was a slave. He was born into slavery and that entire...the whole...all the people of the Jews at that time were classified, even if they weren’t functioning as slaves, they were under ownership of the Persian Empire at that point.  That’s what they were. They were just slaves there.So here is Nehemiah.  He is sitting beside the king of the world.  And there he sits and he has been thinking about this not one day, two days a week or a month. He has been in fear and trepidation. He has been praying with tears and mourning.  It’s not, “Now, I lay me down to sleep,” that he is talking to God about. He is not saying, “Lord, you know, bless this food and just help us have a great day today and bless all my children.”  That’s not what he is saying. He is saying, “God, Jerusalem is in a disastrous situation. Your great name, oh God, is in disrepute. And so, Lord, for your name’s sake, for the restoration of Jerusalem and for all of the children of Israel, Lord, please give me mercy in the sight of this man who has led this kingdom to capture other nations and drag them in chained by the neck and dragged them into the city of Susa and Shushan and to make fun of them as they become subjects of the world’s greatest kingdom.”And he is sitting beside the guy and he is about to go into him and say to him, “Oh, by the way. Listen, oh king.  You know, I have been serving you for quite a while here and I want to go back and rebuild one of those cities you destroyed.”Think about what he is getting ready to do.  Do you know what he did?  He prayed.  And he prayed requesting specific help from God.We ought to know better. Philippians 4:6 says, “Be anxious for nothing.”  I suppose he was anxious.  “Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God.”Be thankful. Be humble. Oh, for a little humility.  Oh, the Bible is so full of it.  Why do we think we can come in God’s presence stomping around in our ball cleats and telling God what he has got to do and what he doesn’t have to do? And who in the world do we think we are to tell God we’re mad at him because he didn’t do what we thought he ought to do when we said to do it?Folks, we are not God and he is not our servant. We are not the sun and he is not the moon.  We are not in the middle and he is not our satellite. He is the God of heaven.“If my people who are called by my name shall [what?] humble themselves and pray.” The Bible says in the New Testament that God in 1 Peter 5 he says that, “God resists the proud, But gives grace to the [who?] the humble.”This man is humbling himself.  He is humbling himself because he knows that only God, he is at the place where only God can change this man’s heart.He prays for mercy.You know, there is something that we really need to understand there and that is that he did not develop a prayer life at this moment.What, what, what, what, what, what, what?I said, “This man, Nehemiah, is not only recently developing his prayer life.”He didn’t live a happy go lucky slap happy life all of his life and then comes a crisis and say, “Oh, time to get spiritual.  I had better to learn to pray.” And go in and learn how...You know what?  In this very prayer he is recalling the history of Israel, the promises of God. He is laying claim to what Moses said and what God told...Do you know what?  He was already in the habit of prayer.  It is not a good idea to learn to be a prayer warrior when the crisis is on you.  Do you know that is pretty much the way we do as Christians?  Oh, no. We’re supposed to learn to pray.  Do you suppose Daniel learned to pray when he got thrown in the lion’s den?  Do you suppose that David learned to pray when javelins were flying from the hand of Saul?  Was that when he first started learning to pray?No.  These men prayed.  Daniel when he did pray he didn’t pray in general terms.You know, I could just imagine, you know, he has been thrown into the lion’s den, in this same kingdom, by the way, the king of Persia, Darius.  He gets thrown into a lion’s den.Imagine Daniel coming down to the bottom of the lion’s den, opening his eyes up after he shakes off the jolt from being thrown in.  He opens eyes and here is a bunch of snarling hungry lions in there.  Do you suppose that he prayed in general terms?  “Oh God, you are a great God and this is a wonderful day and I just, you know...God bless everybody an, Lord, you know, I might be in a little bit of a fix here.  Would you please help me, you know, for something.  You know, Lord, I’m looking around for the foot holds and places to get up out of this lion’s den and, you know, I’m going to do my best, but...”You know what?  He didn’t do that.  He looked up and saw those lions and he said, “Oh, God.  Shut the mouths of the lions.”And God answered his prayer.  But he didn’t learn to be in contact with God when he hit the bottom of the den.The three Hebrew children also that were thrown into the fiery furnace. They didn’t become prayer warriors then. And when they got into the fiery furnace they didn’t start praying, “Well, here we are boys.  What are we going to do?  I guess it’s time to pray.  You pray first, Bill.”They didn’t do that.  They called out to a God they knew very, very well. They prayed specifically.“God, shut the mouths of the lions.”“God, help me with Saul. He’s trying to kill me and my enemies are mounting up higher than my head.”“God help me with this fight.”You know, they prayed specific prayers.There is a man by the name of George Mueller who lived from about 1804 to 1898 and George Mueller wanted to be a missionary.  He grew up.  As he grew up he felt the call of God to be a missionary and to carry God’s Word to the ends of the earth.  And he was on his way to do that and he stopped in Bristol in England. And while he was in Bristol he looked around and he saw that it was a terrible place for child labor and for orphans. And what they would do is scour the countryside, find the orphans, bring them to Bristol, put them into these terrible work homes and work houses and moms and children and children all over. They would just work them. And, oh, he saw it.  It broke his heart.And George Mueller began to pray.  And he prayed very specifically.  He said, “Oh, God.  For the glory of your name and not man, Lord, by your grace we will house and feed these children.” And his daily prayer was, “Give us this day our daily bread.” And George Mueller, a guy, a human, not a god, not an angel, made a promise to God.  “God, as long as you will supply the need, I will never ask a man, I will never ask a man for one single dime.”At Ashley Downs there is a picture on the internet that you can go look at up under Wikipedia and you can see what even the world, not Christians, what the world had to recognize about George Mueller as he never asked anybody for anything.  And they built locations that looked like Iowa State University or looked like college campuses where they housed these children and where over his life time he saw more than 100,000 orphans with no other hope in life come through. And God housed them and fed them and put beds under them and roofs over their heads and they had food to eat and he educated them and they never went back to the work houses.Are you listening?And he did it because he asked God specifically in prayer.What happens to Christians who faced reality and went to God in prayer?  What happened to Christians who understood that God is a prayer answering God?Nehemiah knew God’s Word. He knew how to pray and he did it. He specifically asked for mercy with help in their terrible plight. He asked for God to grant him mercy in the sight of Artaxerxes.Oh, these verses in the Bible like Jeremiah 33:3 that says, “Call to Me, and I will answer you, and show you great and mighty things, which you do not know,” ought to ring in our ears.  We ought to call out to God.Are you a husband today and you have got a wife that is just not interested in the things of God and not interested in keeping her feet at home?  Have you prayed to God, called out to God and said, “Oh, God. Show me something that I can do myself.  I am calling out to you.”Do you have children in your home?  Do you have teenagers in your home that you have tried everything but the world has got their attention?  And you’re...listen I want to encourage you.  Be the best parent you can be.  Be the most consistent you can be.  Be loving.  Be kind.  Be patient.  Be firm. Be all of the things that we can teach you this morning. But be on your knees for your children and pray that God would bring those children back to you.“Call to Me, and I will answer you, and show you great and mighty things, which you do not know.”This is the most amazing thing that I think I want to finish with this. And that is: Pray realizing your position.You said, “What?”That’s that bottom word over there.  Pray realizing your position.You say, “What position is that?”Well, it is the position that God has placed you in.You see, Nehemiah was a thousand miles away and the first inclination would be, “Man, if I was over there I could do something, but I can’t do anything and, wow, it’s just really bad.  Lord, you’re going to have to send somebody.”That’s not what Nehemiah did.  In the time of prayer, here he is praying and weeping and going on for four months and during his time of prayer here is what he did.  He came to understand that “I am sitting next to the only man on the planet.  I am sitting next to the only one on the planet that can really do anything about this.  This is the guy that can give me not only permission to go back. This is the guy that can give me direction.  This is the guy that can help me. This is the guy that can make this thing happen. And I am sitting right...oh God, you have placed me in an unbelievable situation.”You say, “Well, what does that have to do with me?  I don’t have a position like that.”Here is what I would like you to understand.  Number one, you are always in the place where your prayer can be heard.  Will you write that down?  You are always in the place where  your prayer can be heard.There is no such thing as getting beyond the realm of prayer.  You are never in a place too far from God that he can’t hear you.  I mean, the vilest sinner, the person who has gone farther than anybody should ever go, the prodigal that has just gone to the ends of the earth in rebellion against parents and against family and against God and his Word and against...I don’t care how far you have gone, you have not gone so far that you are not sitting right next to the person who can do more for you, can do it all in just a moment of time with humility and confession and somebody would say, “I have sinned.”The second thing is that you are already in the position where your prayer can be answered.  You are in the place where your prayer can be heard and you are in the position where your prayer can be answered.  God can always answer the prayer that you are praying.I hesitate to share this this morning because the gentleman is sitting right back here.  Where are you, Tom?  There he is.  Wave at me, Tom. Everybody look at this hand over here on this side.You better come up here, Tom.  I wasn’t going to do this, but you just better come here.  Can you come up here?  You need help?Tom, you weigh about 90 pounds less than what you did when you started, right?  Come on up here.  Come on, man.Friday afternoon I went on a picnic.You say, “Pastor, do you relax?”Yeah.  I do.  People think I’m some kind of machine or something.  I love to have fun.  I watched Tennessee get slaughtered on the ball team, on the ball game last night, too. I mean, it was terrible.Hey, you know what?  I got a phone call.  Can I tell these people?“Absolutely.”I was going on a picnic and Bonnie was there and we were all the staff and we were going to go over and play dumb games. And I got a phone call. And the guy on the other end says, “Is this Phil Winfield, pastor of Grace Church?”I said, “Yeah.”He said, “I mean, the Phil Winfield, pastor of Grace Church over on 235 where the people really pray?”I said, “Yes, that’s me.”He said, “I mean the...”I said, “Ok, ok.  Who is this?”He said, “Well, this is Tom.  Tom McCarl.”And I said, “Well, Tom, what’s going on? What’s happening?”And Tom says, “Well,” he said, “I just go to share with you.”  He said, “I’m at Mayo Clinic and I’m on my way out right now and my wife and I we are driving down the road and I’m leaving and they told me I don’t have to come back for four months.”And I said, “Well, what’s that all about?”And he says, “Well...they told me that they have done the MRIs and they have done their exams and more than one of their specialists at Mayo Clinic,” we’re not talking about here in Des Moines.  The May clinic said, “Well, Tom, we don’t know what to say to you, but we cannot find the cancer.”Now, Tom, you may get run over by a car on the way home and die. But it’s not going to mean God didn’t answer your prayers.  Do you understand that?Are you listening to me this morning?  Tom, did God answer your prayer?“Absolutely.”Did he?“And so many people here that were praying for me. Thank you all.”It is absolutely unbelievable what God has done in this person’s life.And I want to ask you a question.  Were you general in your prayer or were you specific?“Very specific.”Would you go have a seat?Let’s give the Lord a hand for what he has done for Tom McCarl.Realize your position in the Lord today.  You are in the exact position where God can hear your prayer and answer what you need.  You have children that you really would like to get their attention?  Pray.  Listen to some of these great verses in the Bible, would you?So I say to you, ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you.  For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened.Jesus said, “Then He spoke a parable to them, that men always ought to pray and not lose heart.” Luke 18:11 Thessalonians 5:16:Rejoice always, pray with out ceasing, in everything give thanks for this is the will of God in Christ concerning you.Now, I want to give you what I think may be the most impacted little piece of a verse that we really need to get a grip on. And that is James chapter four when he is talking about the wars and the fights and the arguing and how we strive to get what we want and how we try to work it. “Ok, God, you’re busy. I’ll take care of it.” And we try to fight and grab and pull and smash and jerk. And we just try to manipulate until we get what we want in this life. And then he makes this statement.Jonathan, this has got to be one of the most profound Bible verses that has ever been written.  It says: “You have not because you ask not.”Are you wanting wisdom at rearing your family?  Well, you don’t have wisdom because you are not asking God. I don’t mean one time. I don’t mean today, not next week, but the next.  I mean are you asking God to give you wisdom every day of your life so that you know how to be a good husband?  Do you have a wife that is just not in tune with your family and your home?  Well, I want to say to you there is a better answer than just shipping her off and finding a new one.  The answer is to go to God in prayer and go to him continually. Go often.  Go early.  Stay at it. Pray.  Fast.  Ask God because you have not because you asked not.Do you have a husband that is just laughing at your Christianity and he doesn’t care about the things of God?  Well, here is what I want to say to you, dear lady. Then you go to God early. You go to God often.  You go to God continually and you pray because you have not because you ask not.How much clearer can it be?Now, don’t go asking God to help you win the lottery because that’s not what it’s all about.  Don’t go asking God to give you a new Mercedes Benz. That’s not what it’s all about. That verses says we are not supposed to consume it upon our lusts. But we are supposed to ask himDo you have wayward children?  Do you have a family that is out of kilter?  Do you have an addiction?  Have you asked God for deliverance?You say, “What are you talking about?”I am so up to here with people coming and emoting with a great show of emotion.“I’m just sorry for all these little...oh God, help me.”They get up and go do it all over again.Oh, you need to come to God in true repentance and humility. And you need to say, “Oh, God, these walls of my life, this self destructive behavior, these addictions.  Lord, I need deliverance and I am going to lay it here and get up and when the tempter comes I’m going to say that man is no longer alive. I am not going to do that anymore.  God help me. And help me to ask so that I can receive from you.”And you have not because you ask not.I have three children.You say, “Well, they are preacher’s kids so they are not perfect.”You are right.  And they are not perfect.You say, “Well, I thought all preacher’s kids were perfect.”Will you please give me a break?  There is no such thing as that.This little lady sitting right here on the front, my wife Bonnie and I when Philip was born and she had three c-sections and all you know, a lot of pain and all that stuff.  Little Philip was born and he was brought to her the first day. She had little Philip, the same thing with little Sherry, the same thing with Amber.  All of the first prayer that this lady and I prayed together for our children which went something just like this.  We prayed together and we said, “Oh God, please save this child at the earliest age.  Let them understand that they need a Savior.  Oh, Lord. Save them from their sin.”The second thing we prayed is, “Oh God, let them love you and let them grow up to love you with all of their heart and seek to be obedient to your Word.”And the third thing we prayed for is, “Oh God, give them a mate who loves you.”I prayed that prayer the very first day of their life and every day of their life since.  “God save them at an early age. Help them grow up to love you and God please let them find a mate who loves you.”God answered all three prayers.Are you listening to me this morning?  I prayed and I would not stop praying that prayer?  Are you praying?  Are you praying for your children? Are you praying for your mate?  Are you praying for your loved ones? Are you praying for your nation?  Are you praying anything specific?Maybe you want to get that blue card out again.  Don’t write your name on it.  Just write down there. Ok.  Here we go.  16^th of September, 2007, “God, I am going to learn to pray and I am going to read your Word and I am going to pray your promises and I am going to pray for my husband. I am going to pray for my children.  I am going to pray for myself.  Oh God, please take away the biting tongue.  Please take away the criticism.  Please take away the envy and jealousy.  Please take away this terrible disposition and criticism.  Lord, please help me not to make everybody...help me not to have a perfectionist mentality.  Lord, please help me.”Write it down.Would you bow your heads and close your eyes?“Call unto me, and I will answer thee, and shew thee great and mighty things, which thou knowest not,” he told Jeremiah.Nehemiah 1:1-11 (All Scripture references are from the New King James Version of the Bible unless indicated otherwise).Nehemiah 1:9Nehemiah 1:5-6Nehemiah 1:5Exodus 34:6Nehemiah 1:6-7Psalm 106:6Nehemiah 1:8-9Deuteronomy 4:29-31Nehemiah 1:10-11Philippians 4:6Ibid.2 Chronicles 7:14 (King James Version)1 Peter 5:5Jeremiah 33:3Jeremiah 33:3Luke 11:9-10Luke 18:11 Thessalonians 16-18Paraphrase of James 4:2Jeremiah 33:1 (King James Version)Page  PAGE 1 of  NUMPAGES 22

The First Step to Repairing A Broken Down Life

Sermon Transcript

“THE FIRST STEP TO REPAIRING A BROKEN DOWN LIFE”

Pastor Phil Winfield

Nehemiah 1:1-4; Lamentations 3:48-54 (KJV)

September 9, 2007

Grace Church of Des Moines, IA

4200 E. 25th StreetDes Moines, IA 50317

Website:  HYPERLINK "http://www.gracehome.com" http://www.gracehome.com

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You know, I mentioned that we are really going to emphasize prayer and I want to say that again that we are going to emphasize praying for our homes, our families, our own lives, our church, our nation, our culture.  Every great revival in history, world wide, has always started through prayer.  A lot of us like to think they start through preaching, but they don’t.  They start through prayer when some of God’s people get concerned.And what I am talking about as we get into this series is, is we are talking about the revival of individual Christians that will result in a revival of evangelism in the world and I want to say that very loud and clear that the evangelism of the world doesn’t depend on only going to out to evangelize.  It depends on Christians getting their own hearts right with God so that their light is bright enough and their influence is strong enough to make a difference in the world.I said something about prayer.  I’ve got to tell you a little story, share a story from my part of the country, from down South.  A fellow that I’m going to call Bubba—which that name fits most of us down South—a fellow we’ll call Bubba went to a revival meeting and listened to the preacher.  After a while the preacher asked that anyone had any need please come forward and let him pray over them.So, as their custom was, they made a line.  Bubba got in line.  And when it was his turn the preacher said, “Hey, Bubba, what do you want me to pray about with you today?”And Bubba said, “Preacher, I need you to pray for my hearing.”And so the preacher put one finger in one of Bubba’s ears.  He put the other hand on top of his head and he can tickle the angel’s feet.  He just really prayed for Bubba for a few minutes.  And finally he removed his finger.  He removed his hand and he said, “Bubba, how is your hearing now?”And Bubba said, “Well, I don’t know, preacher.  My hearing is not until next week.”So we are going to pray. I hope it will be more than that kind of prayer.  I’m not going to be teaching you now how to pray. I’m going to be giving you an opportunity to pray and challenging you to pray for your own self, your own family, your own needs or your church or your city, state and for your culture.Turn in your Bibles if you would, please, to the book of Nehemiah chapter one.Let’s try that again.  What are we going to do?  We open the Bible.  “Amen, Amen.”You say, “What’s that all about?”Well, if you haven’t been here, we have started doing this in relation to this series because, number one, they did it in the book of Nehemiah.  Number two, the word “Amen” means “so be it.”  It means “let it be done. That’s what I believe.”  And so we open up God’s Word and we say, “Amen,” to it because we want to be in obedience before we ever find out what it says.Stand to your feet.  I’m going to read you four verses from the book of Nehemiah.You say, “Pastor, we’re not going to make very much progress at four verses a week.”Well, I’m not going preach every verse in the book of Nehemiah though I encourage you to read every verse.  I want to talk to you this morning about the first four verses, set the stage about what it’s all going to be about. Nehemiah chapter one, verse one.The words of Nehemiah the son of Hachaliah. It came to pass in the month of Chislev, in the twentieth year, as I was in Shushan the citadel, that Hanani one of my brethren came with men from Judah; and I asked them concerning the Jews who had escaped, who had survived the captivity, and concerning Jerusalem.  And they said to me, "The survivors who are left from the captivity in the province are there in great distress and reproach. The wall of Jerusalem is also broken down, and its gates are burned with fire."  So it was, when I heard these words, that I sat down and wept, and mourned for many days; I was fasting and praying before the God of heaven.Let me read that third and fourth verse to you again.  Here is what he saw. Here is how he reacted.And they said to me, "The survivors who are left from the captivity in the province are there in great distress and reproach. The wall of Jerusalem is also broken down, and its gates are burned with fire."  So it was, when I heard these words, that I sat down and wept, and mourned for many days; I was fasting and praying before the God of heaven.And speaking of prayer, let’s go to the Lord right now.Father, I ask you even at this moment of the outset of these studies that we are going to look at now about how to repair a broken down life and how to build for a successful life, Lord, I pray that you would just be with us and help us to understand the ministry of prayer and how important it is that we would pray sincerely from the heart like Nehemiah did whenever his eye affected his heart, whenever what he saw and what he understood and the reality he faced made all the difference in the world to him.Father, let reality sink in to each and every one of us today.  We ask it in Jesus’ name. Amen.  Would you be seated?In Nehemiah chapter one we start off a book that is a journal.  It is the journal of one of God’s servants.  Now, this man, I must say at the first, Nehemiah, is not a preacher.  He is not a prophet.  He is not a priest. He is not an official, vocational preacher or teacher of the Word of God.Last week I spoke from the book of Ezra.  And, folks, I very, very, very seldom do this, but if you were out of town for some reason and you did not hear the sermon last week from the book of Ezra I want to encourage you.  You can go online and listen at grachome.com to that sermon.  If not you can buy a copy of the sermon for a dollar right out here on the other side of this wall there at the desk you can pick it up.You say, “You think it was a great sermon?”Nope. I think it was an unbelievably true sermon.  And I think you need to hear the truth that I shared from this pulpit last week.  Besides that, it’s the foundation on which we are building this series that we are into right now.Now, the Jews take the book of Ezra and Nehemiah as just one book.  Let me say that again so you get it straight.  The Jews, even today, take the books of Ezra and Nehemiah.  In fact, 1 and 2 Chronicles are just one book.  It’s the Chronicles.  In fact, 1 Samuel through 2 Kings are one book. They are all included, but they just look at them as one book.  This book—Ezra, Nehemiah—to them was one book.  It has three major players, three very important individuals.The first one is a man by the name of Zerubbabel. He was sort of a builder.  He went back. He was a builder and a rallying sort of person that went back and built the temple back.  A little bit later a man by the name of Ezra came along. He was a scribe, a priest.  He went there and he rededicated the temple and started the worship.The man we are going to study and we are going to learn from is this man Nehemiah.  Nehemiah, as I said, was not a prophet, a preacher.  He had no religious vocation.  He was a regular civic individual.  He was a citizen.  He was a child of the kingdom of Israel living in a foreign place and God used him mightily.In 586 BC—you need to know this in order to understand the story—In 586 BC the city and the walls of the city of Jerusalem were destroyed exactly as the prophets had predicted at the Word of the Lord.  As well, God promised that after 70 years of captivity in Babylon, the Jews would begin to return.  They did exactly as he said.  Just as the Lord promised, they began returning in about 70 years, Jeremiah 25:8-11 tells the story.First a few came back and began building the temple. That was finished in 516 BC.  Fifty years later in 458 BC Ezra the scribe showed up.  He rededicated the temple.  They began to establish some worship, but in spite of it all there were very few and not very dedicated worshippers.  Lots of problems and opposition was everywhere. This glorious City of David where God had promised to make his abode among the people and from where he would bless the world was in total ruins.Sadly, the people of Jerusalem and Judah—listen to this—had become indifferent to the conditions of the city.  They were simply stepping around, stepping over the rubble of broken down walls and they just went right on living.  They were discouraged.  They were disheartened and they were disinterested.God’s answer to rebuild the walls and restore the glory was to revive the people and to bring in a man named Nehemiah to do exactly that.  And God always starts a revival and he always starts spiritual activity in the lives of individuals.  In this case he chose a man by the name of Nehemiah.Now, folks, don’t go to sleep on me as we get into this study.You say, “Temple?  Old Testament?  Rebuild walls?  What does that have to do with me? I’m trying to pay a mortgage.  I’m trying to keep my kids in school.  I’m trying to keep the wolf away from the door. I’m trying to keep a marriage together.  I’m trying to rear some children in a pagan society.  Why are you talking to me about broken down walls and temples?”Well, here’s what we need to understand this morning and that is, that is that God is not in the business today of building physical temples and rebuilding physical walls, though all of those are...the carpentry and the masonry business are very legitimate businesses.  But God is not dwelling in temples made with hands.  Let me say that to you again.  God is not interested in inhabiting physical temples.This, that we sit in today and enjoy, this blessing of a physical location and building where we can sit on padded pews with air condition or heat according to the season, with lighting and sound and all of these things, it is a wonderful tool, but it is not the treasure of this church, neither is it the temple, the place of the dwelling of God.This building is not a temple, but it is where the temple of God comes to meet because you are the temple of God.  Understand that.  This is not a temple. This is not a treasure.  This is a tool.Say it with me.  “This is not a temple. This is not a treasure. This is a tool.”  And you are the temple.  If you know, Jesus as your personal Savior, if the Holy Spirit of God lives in you then I am here to tell you that you are the temple, the dwelling place where God lives.Listen to 2 Corinthians 6:16.  It says that you and I are the temple of the living God.  Ephesians chapter two, verse 22 says you and I are being built up together and fashioned by God to be a dwelling place for God’s Spirit.  In a very real sense, you as individual, are the location of where God lives.  In a very real sense we are being formed and fashioned together as a body of believers so that the activity of the Holy Spirit will be more powerful and the influence more strong because we work together.  We go farther together than we go separate.And so just like Jerusalem was in a mess and the temple was unattended, today our lives are in a mess and our hearts are out of touch.Without going into it again, our culture is in a mess because our churches are full of people who have lost focus about what God really wants in our lives.We have judges doing what Robert Hanson did last week because we have Christians who have forgotten what it is all about.  We have stopped being leaders in the world. We have stopped showing our influence.And I want to say to you that God intends for his people to lead, to show the way, to give the light, to indicate the way that it should be.You say, “Are we supposed to take over government?”No.  But we are certainly supposed to, as citizens, stand up and be counted, let our voice be heard, tell the truth, shine the light and, sadly, as I said last week, our lives have become so dimmed and we have become so darkened.  The Christian light and witness of our lives have become so unusable to the Lord because of sin and because of getting into this world and because we are in love with the same things that the world is that the light has been dimmed.  And God intends for us to show leadership.And if you say, “Well, what is leadership?”Leadership is influence.  Folks, after many years in the pastorate I have to tell you that what happens is instead of influencing the world, the world spends a lot of time influencing us and we are beginning to look too much and act too much like the world.God wants us to live holy, sacrificial, loving lives that honor him and point people to Jesus.  But there is a lot of junk and trash in the average Christian life and the hope of light and direction from us is very, very dismal.  But that’s where we start.We are setting out in Nehemiah on this 52 day journey to stop the despair and to start the repairs.  And I want to help you grow.  I have been praying about this and preparing for this for months. I have it in my heart.  I want you to...if you are a believer in Jesus—and I invite you, if you are not a believer today, you can get on board.  You can trust Christ to be your Lord and Savior.  You can have your eternal destiny settled here and now.  You can become the child of God by putting your faith and trust in Jesus.  But I want to say to you that our believers...and you ought to...you want to be like Jesus?  You want to be useful to the Lord in this world?   Well, I want to say to you that’s exactly what I have been praying for and how I have been trying to prepare to help you.I pray all the time.  “Father, please let the people of Grace Church be like trees planted by the rivers of water that bring forth their fruit in their season.”  That’s Psalms chapter one.  I pray for you people. I pray for you to be fruitful.  It is one thing to be faithful. That’s good.  It’s an even better thing to be fruitful.Do you know that’s what God wants of us?  The Bible says it is required of stewards that we be faithful, faithful in our homes, faithful with our children, faithful with our marriages.  But beyond that John 15 says that we are to be fruitful.  “I have chosen you that you go forth and bear fruit, more fruit and much fruit.”  God has chosen us to be faithful and fruitful. And I am praying for you that your roots will go down deep by the rivers of the Word of God and by the river of his love and by the river of his grace so that your lives become strong.I am telling you. The winds of our world, the culture around us, the things that are being pumped into us and told to us are wearing down our witness.Well, I’m praying for you. And I want to teach you and help you through this series to be strong and to be ready to rebuild and just to lay claim and stake to your own life and to your own family.I want you to write on your Scripture sheet there, you’ve got a place to write it down.  Here is something I want you to think about as we launch.  A clear vision of the state of our lives and homes will make us see what is, what could be and what should be and what we will be if we will but seek and obey God.Here is the way we are going to do this series. Every week I am going to come in and we are going to add another building block to our wall.  This is going to be, when we get done with it, it is going to be a great big wall. And right now the very first building block that I want to talk to you about...this is what I want you to know.When you leave here today you say, “Well, what did pastor Phil want us to know when we left?”I want you to know that step one, the very first thing that has got to happen at taking a look at your life, your family, your city, nation, your state and your culture, the very first thing we have to do is face reality.  There are a lot of us that like to just go on thinking that things are not as bad.  These things that were stated up here on the platform that are actual stories from the news right off the television, right over the radio and through the press, these are true stories.  But we had this eternal optimistic point of view.“Oh, it’s not all that bad, not my problem. It will all turn out.  I can’t do anything about it.  I just got to go on with my life.”And you know what?  We need to face reality.  The truth is that just as there are disasters going on in our culture, there are disasters going on in our own personal lives.I am praying for the Church of Jesus Christ called Grace.  I am praying for our church to grow. I am praying for our witness to become strong. I am praying for God to make us what he wants us to be.The first step, right it down.  Change begins when we take an honest look at our problems.  Will you write that down?  Change begins when we take an honest look at our problems.I heard about a guy that lived at the foot of Pike’s Peak for 50 years.  A traveler came along who got lost.  And when he got lost he was looking for his way.  He saw an old cabin up there and he came to see the old man that had lived there all these years.  He said, “Hey, I’m lost. I’m looking for how to get where I’m going. And, by the way, that sure is a big mountain.”And the old guy spit some tobacco and said, “What mountain?”He had gotten used to it.Change happens when we take a fresh look, an honest look at what is going on in our lives, in our culture.We can do several things.  Here is what we do.  We do one of several things with the things that...the problems that wreck our lives and thwart God’s plan. The first thing we can do is we can ignore a problem. Like a lady I heard about that had a mole on her back that started to become irritated.  She thought that she was just rubbing it with her clothing and that it would be ok.Her husband said, “Go to the doctor.”She wouldn’t.  Six months later it was a melanoma. It killed her in three weeks.We can just ignore problems.  We can be indifferent to problems.The people of Jerusalem had gotten used to the rubble.  They had gotten to the place where they could just walk around it.  They didn’t see it anymore. You know, it was just...you know, they were there.  They were living there.  It was the mundane life, every day just going through the...you know...up in the morning, go to work, step around the junk.  You know, some of us have got garages like that.“I need to clean that garage.  I need to clean that garage. I need garage.  I need to clean...”And ,boy, it’s been going on that way for 15 years and you’re still just stepping right around it.  You don’t even see it anymore.You say, “What about that mess out there?”You say, “What mess?  What’s she talking about?”We get used to it.  We get indifferent to it.  We become accustomed to it.  Just like we become accustomed to the anger in our lives.  We become accustomed to the envy. We become accustomed to the lust.  We become accustomed to the culture.  We become accustomed to what we see around us because, “Well, it’s just been that way.  I can’t do anything about it.  I’m just one person.  What am I going to do?”We get used to what is going on in our own life, our own house, our own neighborhood.  We just get used to it and we say, “What can we do?”Change begins when we take an honest look at our problems.  You know, in verse three Nehemiah got a report and he let it affect him.  Obviously the people who were living in Jerusalem were affected when they first got there, when they first looked at it. They tried for a little while, but they couldn’t seem to get anything done.  Nobody could work together.  They didn’t get it done.  They didn’t get the city going again.  And so they became indifferent to their problems.There is a little city called Chosica in Peru, real close to where we used to live. And going up the mountains we would go through there and in 1970 there was an earthquake there that was much larger than the one that was just down there a few weeks ago.  In 1970 on May 31^st at 3:30 in the afternoon an earthquake came that just simply rocked that entire nation, killed 75,000 to 80,000.  They can’t even determine the number.  But it was an unbelievable earthquake.Well, one of the little cites that was affected was a city called Chosica.  And this city, some great big boulders came down, crashed through houses, landed in the middle of streets and they just...these boulders, giant, enormous rocks, as big as houses, you know.  And it just broke up all of their communications and all of their water systems and everything.Well, they stood around waiting on the federal government to fix it, waited on foreign governments to come fix it. They got on TV shows and told how bad it was. They all just decided, “Well, I guess nobody is going to do it.”  They weren’t going to do anything themselves.  And so what did they do?  They just went on living their lives.In fact, you can to go to Chosica in the department of Hunin right now in Peru.  You can go to Chosica and you can find houses, shacks and businesses built next to, around and on top of the rocks that fell in 1970.Why?  They got used to it.You know what?  People are building their lives on junk just like that.  Some of us here this morning are trying to build our lives on faulty foundations because it is the junk of our lives.  You see, we’ve gotten used to the fact, “Well, I get angry. I get mad and I just...I get all...I just get all bent out of shape and that’s just the way I am and she’s just going to have to get used to it or my kids are just going to have to get used to it.  I can’t do anything about it.  I’m an angry man.”Or, “I’m a drunkard.” Or “I’m this or I’m that.  My grandfather was a drunk and my great grandfather was a drunk.  They are all drunks.  We drink.”And we just say, “That’s the way it is.” And just...we have to look at our problems.You know what?  We can ignore a problem. We can be indifferent to a problem. We can be insensitive to the problem. We can get to the place where we have just given up and we don’t feel the pain anymore.  We can’t see how it is hurting us.  Lots of times self destructive habits like anger, rage, addictions to substances because the normal way of life and we don’t even notice it.  We’re not honest.  We can’t tell the truth. We’re addicted to things that are just ruining us and we don’t feel it anymore.  We don’t worry about it.  The next thing is we can’t see how it is hurting our family either, our relationships, our church, our culture.  We don’t see how we are hurting anybody.  We just think we can do anything we want to.  We think we’re...you know, even though we do what Achan did that cost his whole family, we can do what we want to and, hey, it’s nobody’s business but mine.Boy, there’s no such thing as that.Here is where Nehemiah was so impressive.  He actually lived...he was far removed from the location of the problem, around 1000 miles away.  Folks, 1000 miles then, that was quite a trip.  That was quite a journey.  It wasn’t like going across the street. There were not busses, no cars, no trains, no airplanes.  He was going to get there on a camel if he got there and he was going to cross very dangerous territory to do it.He was far removed from the location of the problem, but he still felt it.  He was sensitive to it.Even though you might not be suffering with the weight of a problem, the ones you are supposed to love and care about are suffering with you and your problems.  Do you know that?The person that throws up his hands and says, “Oh, I’m just the way I am.  You know, it’s my business.  It doesn’t matter. People ought to just leave me alone, do their thing.  I’ll do my thing.”You know what?  We suffer with each other.I’ve said this before.  Man’s law nor God’s law will make you address your own problems, but love will.No wonder Paul said that the greatest of all the gifts is love.  He said, “Faith, hope and love. The greatest of these is love.  It lasts.”Jesus said to love one another.John wrote an epistle, the first epistle of John.  John, that little book there toward the end of the Bible has five chapters in it, the greatest treatise on love you will ever read.  He said in that book, “Don’t love in world only, but love in deed.”  Do something about your love.  Do it in deed and in truth.Jesus said to love one another and that’s where we begin this series.  As we begin it we talk about addressing our real problems in our lives, I want to tell you that love will motivate you to take action.  Love will motivate you when duty will not.  People that are in love with God will serve God far longer and with far greater dedication that people than are only serving out of duty.Now, if you are a husband today your duty is to love, to cherish, to take care of and protect and provide for your family, your wife.  If you are a mother, you are a wife, it is your duty to love your husband and your children.  If you are a child, it is your duty to be the person, to be a young obedient child. That is your duty.But I am going to tell you that duty runs short, but love never does.  If you are in love with God and you are in love with him and you are in love with your family and you are in love with those that are around you and if love overrides everything else, then you will do what you are supposed to do for their benefit and for your own.The second thing is, change comes when we take personal responsibility for our problems.  That’s the second thing.  Change comes when we take personal responsibility for our problems.You see, Nehemiah was a long way from the situation.  He could have thought, “Wow, that’s bad news about the people in Jerusalem, but what can I do about it.  I wasn’t there.  I didn’t do it.  Not my problem.”Think about it.“If I was there I would do something. I’m not there. You know, I can’t...it’s just not my problem.”He could go on and we could say, “Not...my anger doesn’t bother me. I can drink if I want to.  So what?  I like to gamble.  Big deal.  It doesn’t hurt anybody else.”Really?I was in this town when they were trying to decide whether they were going to put Prairie Meadows out there.  He said, “Pastor, are you a friend of Prairie Meadows?  Is Prairie Meadows a friend of the family?”I was here when they were trying to get that going and I heard Tom Coates and others, he was the guy with consumer credit and many others that stood up there and gave a warning.  They said, “You know, the day right now in the state of Iowa, Iowa is number three in the nation on personal individual savings.  This is a saving state.  People in the state of Iowa save for the future.  They put away a little bit for a rainy day.  They save for the future. We fear that if Prairie Meadows and the places like that come in we are no longer going to be a saving state.  We are going to be an indebted state, a bankrupt state.”Would you like to know?  We were number three in the nation in savings.  Would you like to know where we are in this year, 2007?  Number 47.“Well, gambling, it doesn’t...”Listen. I just want to say to you:  When you make choices and you choose things it does make a difference.  We have to take responsibility for our lives and for what is going on.“I wasn’t there.  I didn’t do it.  Not my problem.”We have to take responsibility.  You see, he was responsible because he was associated.  He was part of the situation.  He was a Jew.  Right now he is living...you know where he was?  He was sitting next to the king of the world.  Artaxerxes was the king of the world. And here is this man, a cup bearer. He was an attaché, if you put it that way today, of the king of the world, highly trusted, had a plush job.  He didn’t even have to work all the time.  All he did was he tasted the wine for the king.  He protected the king.  He had the king’s interest.Now, I want you to listen to me for a moment.  He lived in a foreign nation.  He was serving in a foreign nation.  But he was concerned about where he really belonged.Let me go to the next point.  Write this down.  Change comes when we take time to recognize the failures that led to the problems, the failures that led to the problems.Now, it wasn’t so much a failure in the personal life of this individual.  It was the failure of the people, the Jews.I want you read verse one and you will see what I am talking about.   “The words of Nehemiah the son of Hachaliah. It came to pass in the month of Chislev,” roughly November, “in the twentieth year, as I was in Shushan the citadel.”Now he is in Shushan the citadel which is in modern day Iran.  At that time Iraq and Iran were combined and they made up, largely, what was Babylon.  Today it’s interesting today.  All of the land where we are dealing with and the things, all the news is coming...this is...we’re talking about old Babylon, old Persian empire. That’s what we’re talking about right now today, all of these events, the same...it’s amazing. We’re still dealing with the same thing.“I was in Shushan the citadel.”You say, “Big deal.  So he was in Shushan.  What’s  that got do with?”Well, it has a lot to do with the fact that these people, he and all of his people had been carried away into captivity.  They were not in Jerusalem. They were not in Israel, the land that God had given to them, in order to be a light and in order to point people to God, in order to give the example of the great God and tell who God was.No. They had failed miserably at what God’s calling was for them. And where were they?  They found themselves in another kingdom. They found themselves completely away. And what were the reasons? What were the failures?Well, the failures were and the reason they had been carried away into captivity was that they forgot the Lord, they forgot his law and they forgot to live out their purpose.You say, “How do you know that?”Well, because Deuteronomy chapter 11 made this warning.  Right before...they are on the plains of Moab. They are getting ready to go in and take Canaan. This is way back when they are just now going into Canaan for the first time.  They have come up out of Egypt.  They don’t have anything except the things that they brought with them from Egypt and here is what God says to them very clearly.  He says, “Joshua, you tell these people, you tell them, ‘Do not forget the Lord your God.’  He says, ‘When you go into Canaan and you move into houses that you didn’t build and you take over lands that you did not purchase and I give you all of these fruitful places and your flocks begin to increase and your herds begin to increase and when you become very, very affluent and when you have lots of goods and all of your bank accounts begin to grow and when you become very affluent here is the danger.  You are going to forget your Lord.  You are going to forget his law and you are going to forget the purpose of your life.’”Do you know where we are today?  We have forgotten the Lord.  We have forgotten his law.  We have forgotten the purpose for our lives.  That is exactly where we are in the United States of America and we wonder why our culture is crumbling.I said this last week that if Satan is the god of this world then his sign, his symbol is the dollar sign. And Christians are just as guilty of falling down at the altar of the dollar bill. That’s the bottom line on everything.  I make all my choices on the basis of the dollar bill, where I’ll live, where I’ll go, what I’ll do.  And because of that we’re in a culture that cannot tell the difference between a male and a female, cannot tell the difference between a fetus and a baby, cannot tell the difference between life and death.  Folks, we can’t tell the difference between right and wrong.You say, “Well, what have we done?”We have done exactly what they did.  We have gotten wealthy.  We have gotten affluent.Oh, you say, “Well, I just wish I was part of that wealthy...”Listen to me. If you got here any other way but walking on your two legs this morning you are wealthy compared to 95% of the rest of the world.  If you had your own bed last night you’re wealthy.  If you know what you are having for dinner today you are wealthy compared to a great part of this world.“You are going to become wealthy. Your flocks, your herds are going to increase. And when you get there you are going to be tempted to indulge.  You are going to forget about your Lord.  You are going to forget about his law.  You are going to forget about the purpose for your life.”He warned them.  They did it.  And they go carried away into captivity.You know, what’s interesting about this whole story—and I have just got to finish—what is interesting about this whole story is that Nehemiah was faced with this whole issue of sitting next to the king of the world in a plush, comfy job. And the problems were a long way away form him.You know, we are like that. There is stuff going on in New York, stuff in foreign countries and all that and wow. And this is just terrible.  But I’m fine.  You know, I’m doing ok.Nehemiah was sitting next to the king of the world with one of the best jobs in that entire kingdom, but here is the whole point: We, as Christians, are doing everything we can to become comfortable in a kingdom to which we do not belong.  We do not belong to this world.  We do not...listen. If you are a child of God this world is not your home. You are only passing through.  Your treasure is laid up up there beyond the blue.Do you see what I’m saying?  Our home is in heaven. We are ambassadors for another kingdom. We are not here to set up ourselves in this kingdom. We are ambassadors for that kingdom. We are not here to see how well we can ride from the cradle to the grave. We are not here just for comfort and convenience. We are not here to pile it up, stack it away. That’s not why we are here.We are here in this world because this world needs a witness.  The lost people of this world need to see that somebody knows the truth.“Pastor, are you against personal ownership of property?”Of course not.“Are you against stuff, things?”No.  I’ve got a house. I’ve got a car.  But it’s all God’s.  It’s for him, whatever he wants to use it for.I can give you illustrations.Let me finish by just reading this last thing.  Write it down on your sheet there.  Here is the last one:  Change comes when we take all of our problems to God in humble faith.Whenever we are ready to lay down this first block, foundational block of the wall, facing reality, when we say, “Ok, I know that I don’t have the privilege of comparing myself to other people, I have to compare myself to Jesus.  I know that I have fallen short of the glory of God because I am a sinner.  Therefore I know that I need to change. I need to get serious about God and his Word and living this life and loving my fellow man and serving my generation according to the will of God.  I need to understand my purpose.  God put me here for his pleasure.  God put me here for his purpose.  God put me here for his glory.  God put me here to fellowship with him.  That is what I am here for and to point others in that direction.”Now, when we understand that then what do we do?  Well, we take our anger, our addictions, our broken lives, our misdirected steps, all of the problems that we...we take all of that stuff and we go to God in prayer.Look at your verse number four. “So it was, when I heard these words, that I sat down and wept, and mourned for many days; I was fasting and praying before the God of heaven.”Notice what he did.  He wept.  He mourned.  He prayed.  He fasted.  It’s real simple, isn’t it?  He wept. He mourned.  He prayed.  He fasted.  He didn’t say, “Now, I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep.  And if I day before I wake I pray the Lord my soul to take.  God bless you and mom and dad and brothers and sisters and amen.  Let’s have a great day tomorrow.”  No, no.That’s great for little children. But that’s not who we are.Oh, have you taken a real good look at your life?  Have you taken a good look at your family?You say, “Well, my family is doing really good.”Well how about your culture?  How about your brother’s family?  Have you looked?  Have you paid attention to what is going on?  Do you know what they are teaching in your schools? Are you aware that they don’t... that education is not the point anymore?  It’s indoctrination.  Do you understand?I’m tired of it. I don’t know about you.  I am tired of education being put on the shelf and indoctrination to a world view becoming the most important thing that they think they are supposed to teach at the public school and the state schools and the private schools and everywhere else.It’s not about indoctrination into the point of view which is diversity. That is the biggest word in the world today, did you know that?  Diversity, tolerant. We have got to be diverse.  We have got to be tolerant. We have got to accept, just accept the pedophiles. Accept murder. Accept rape.  Accept incest.  Just accept it. Don’t just accept it, give your confirmation.Folks, I don’t want to do that.  God doesn’t want us to do that.  God wants us to tell the truth.  Be right. Live the light.  And tell the world what’s going on.Well, how is it going to...it’s not going to...we are not going to change anything, not in our own heart.  We are not going to change anything in our own heart by making a proclamation.  We are not going to change anything in our culture by getting a sign and marching down at the state house.  That’s not going to change it.What is going to change it? It is going to change when Christians get serious, diagnose their situation, weep, mourn, pray and fast.Keith Harrison is a friend of mine. He is a pastor in Illinois now, but back about 20 years when we were both trying to go to the mission field he became sick with Chrohn’s disease.  Keith is a gypsy. I mean, literally born of a gypsy family that has roots in Romania and in places like that in southern France. And was literally born to a gypsy family.He had many relatives that were hanged.  He had relatives that had the guillotine used on them way back to a time. He could tell you all these stories.Keith Harrison, as a young teenage boy played basketball at a gymnasium one night, was approached by a young fellow that invited him to church.  He went to church with him, took him out afterwards, bought him an ice cream and told him about Jesus.Keith didn’t believe immediately, but within three of four weeks he could never get away from that witness.  He went and found that young man, asked him could he go to his church.  He went to his church.  Keith got saved.  He loved the thought.  He couldn’t believe that God could save anybody, even a person born to a gypsy family that had murderers and homicidal maniacs in their history and he just couldn’t believe it.  But he got saved.And then he found out that God could actually use him and so he gave his heart to the Lord to do anything he wanted.  He decided,  “All right.  You want me to be a missionary?  I will.”He married a girl. They had some children. We were in the deputation mode at the same time.  He was going to Argentina and we were going to Peru.  And I will never forget.  Word comes that Keith Harrison is sick now. He is in the hospital. He is weighed at 83 pounds.  He is in the hospital. He is near death.  Keith had been there for weeks and weeks and he couldn’t do anything. And there he lay.People were trying to encourage him.  Visitors would come to see him.  Pastors had prayed over him. All the things that you would like to do and nothing seemed to just get him going. They just couldn’t get him over the hump of this disease.Many of you here know of it.  We have people in our church that have it to a lesser degree.Keith said, “I was laying there in my bed.” And he says, “I looked up from that hole. I looked up from that pit.  I looked up from that pit that I was and it looked like that there was no hope. I was in despair.  I wasn’t going to be able to fulfill the calling of God in my life and I said to my God, laying there looking up, ‘God, the only place I can look is up.  You are the only hope.  You called me to be your missionary, to be your emissary. And God I know you didn’t save me just to let me die like this.’”And so Keith called on the Lord to heal him.  “And, God, if you heal me I will be your missionary. I will be your man.  God, if you can bring me up out of this hole of despair, this place where I know that I...if you can do that, God, then I am going to live this life for you.”God raised Keith up off of that bed. He and his wife, two years later, did go to Argentina. They served there for 13 years. He is pastoring in Burbenay, Illinois as I stand here this morning preaching the gospel. And I am here to tell you that there is no hole of despair, there is no situation that is so bleak, there is no culture that is so corrupted, there is no family that is so disintegrated, there is no marriage that has gone so far...I’m telling you there is no situation that God is not interested in helping if we will do one thing.What does it say?  Face reality.What is it I want you to remember when you leave today?  I want you to remember one thing.  Face reality.Say it with me, “Face reality.”Take a good look at your life, a good look at your family, a good look at your children, your home and your culture.  Take a good look at it.Would you bow your heads and close your eyes?The last conclusion statement is: Change never happens until we admit there is a problem.  Is there a problem?  Let me pray for you.Father, I want to pray as we begin this Nehemiah series, Lord, that we would just be honest with ourselves.  Lord, help us not to hide, not to pretend, not to step over and around the situations of our lives.  Help us not shift the blame. Help us not try to get somebody else to just be responsible for us, but, Lord, help us to look ourselves square in the eye and look our problems square in the eye and help us, Lord, to face them.  Lord, I pray that you would work in our hearts.Nehemiah 1:1-4 (All Scripture references are from the New King James Version of the Bible unless otherwise indicated).Nehemiah 1:3,4Nehemiah 1:1Ibid.Nehemiah 1:4Sermon Transcript – September 9, 2007 Page  PAGE   * MERGEFORMAT 1 of 17