Time To Give Thanks

Time To Give Thanks

By Phil Winfield

Bible Text: Nehemiah 12:27-47

Preached on: November 18, 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

I want a  younger father, Kevin.  Why don’t you come up here and help me pray.   I want somebody that represents our ladies.  I’m going to ask my wife this time.  Bonnie, won’t you come?  I had somebody else in the first service.  Just come right on up on the platform.  I need a deacon. Do I have a deacon who administers the giving of our church?  I don’t know if you have any...I had several in the first service. Do I have a deacon?  Warren?  Why don’t you come on up?  I need a young person. Let me see. They are all going to dive under the benches and I got to have one that would say, “Hey, I’ll come and pray.”  I need a volunteer from among the young people.  “ I will pray because God intends for my generation to be a part as well.”  So let me have one of the young people.  Somebody just...if you see one near you grab him by the nap of the neck and threw him out, will you?  Just kidding.  I do need one. I need one young person.  I can’t see from here or I would call you by name. Anybody?  One young person to pray.  I am beginning to doubt my youth.Ok, Kevin, pick one of your sons. They are coming up to pray.  Come on up.  I can’t see anybody so you will have to help me.What I want to do is I want to pray that what we do here today would be significant.  You know, the next generation is very, very important.  Do you know what?  What we are doing here is I am going to ask somebody who is...now, Phil, don’t get any ideas.  I am not telling you you got one foot on a banana peel and the other foot slipping.  I am not saying anything like that.  I am just going to say to you, you know, you have run most of your race.  I want you to pray for us as we make this kind of commitment, as we give this kind of offering for God to just look at our hearts and just to bless us and to help us keep being the church, the group of people that are going to lift up his name the way that we should, ok?And, Kevin, you represent the younger father and I want you to pray for your generation that we would keep doing this. I just want you to pray for young people. You just pray that your generation would do it. And Bonnie is going to pray for the women and this is one of our administrators here of the giving of Grace Church so I want...I want him to pray and  will pray as an elder at the end.  So let me grab a microphone. Here we go.Phil, as a father lead us in prayer.Phil:Our gracious heavenly Father, we are extremely grateful to you for your love, goodness and mercy upon us.  While we were yet sinners you died. Lord, when you were on the cross we were on your mind.  And we are grateful. We cannot repay you, Lord, for what you have done for us.  We just ask, dear God, that you will take our commitment to rear our children, to give of our substance that you have given to us, Lord, that your work might permeate the world and that others would come to know you as Lord and Savior.  Kevin:Father, I agree with pastor Phil that we need to dedicate our lives and our hearts and our minds to you again.  Lord, I am humbled by what I have experienced and I have seen today, the unity of this body bowing before you, the contriteness of heart that I have seen as people approach to sign a covenant reminding themselves that we need you, Lord.  And I pray as a father.  I need you every day to raise my sons, to love my wife. And I remember, Lord, you saved my marriage.  I praise you for that and that is why giving is so easy for me.  And I pray, Lord, that you remind us that it should be easy for all of us to give, not just the money, but just our lives because you have done so much for us.  So I thank you for this point in time where you can remind us of our need of you. Lord, cement it in our hearts.  May we never forget and may we love you, Lord, more and more each day.  Thank you, Lord, in Jesus’ name.  Corey:Dear heavenly Father, I come before you today and I pray that all these teenagers and young people in here, Lord, I ask that even though they wrote their name down on there, that piece of paper that you remind them every day going into the high schools and it’s just our generation is so wicked and it’s drawn from you. And, Lord, I ask that you would bring us close to you.  Have us just a revival.  We need a revival, Lord.  And I ask that you would keep us to our word and remind us when we sin and we don’t hold us...or I ask that you would hold us accountable to our covenant we have made today, Lord.  And just thank you for everything you have done, dying on the cross for us and...I don’t understand why you would lay...give your Son away just for us, but you did and I thank you.  Bonnie:Lord, we come to you today with humble hearts full of emotion because we love you.  I pray for the women in this church, including myself that you will make us pure and holy before you, that we will love our husbands with all of our hearts, that we would put our families and our children first as you gave us that role and responsibility.  Lord, may we look at our children as the future of tomorrow. Lord, I pray that you will forgive us for nagging, complaining, worry, fear. Help us to jump into your arms when problems come and know that you are going to help us.  I love these women.  Lord, help the women of Grace Church to reach out to others. Help us to have victory in our own lives so we can show the people in our neighborhood that you are real because you are.  You are great and holy. Help us to love one another and to be kind in our homes. Thank you so much for these precious women. Amen.Voice:Father, we come to you today.  Lord, we are so thankful that we have a giving Father.  Lord, we are thankful for this church.  Lord, we are thankful for the spirit of giving. Lord I just pray that you will bless this offering. Lord, we are so thankful that we have an opportunity to tell others of the truth in the world around us, Lord, that is preaching lies and deception, Lord, that we have the truth.  We have a Father that loved us, that sent his Son. Lord, I just pray for the leaders of this church, Lord, that we would be wise stewards of the money that comes in, Lord, that we can see the gospel, the light of the world.  Now, Lord, we just pray that you would be with us this day.  Amen.Phil Winfield:Father, the generations are represented. The genders are represented.  The offices are represented.  And we come before you this morning, Lord, to just humbly say that you are God and we are not.  And we give because we recognize just who you are and where everything comes from.  This covenant that we make today, Lord, is not just some cute idea that we wanted to do to have a nice service.  Oh, but these are such strong statements, Lord, about our families and about your day and about your house and about the gospel and about not neglecting so great salvation that you have given to us.Lord, as I hear young Corey pray and I hear him say that he needs to be accountable and the teenagers need to be accountable.  Oh, it gives me hope. Lord, I pray for this next generation.  I pray for our church to turn on the light of the gospel.  Keep it on and never let it flicker. Help us to preach the Word, love the lost, build up the saved, send out the missionaries and build your kingdom.  Not because we want recognition, but because we want your name to be made great.  We make this covenant in Jesus’ precious and holy name.  Amen. Amen.Can we give the Lord a hand for letting us give like we just did?Now, folks, I knew we were supposed to be done with my sermon in the next five minutes so I am going to have to just really give you a few thoughts this morning, but I don’t wan anybody going home nervous and just, you know, getting the hakes over their lunch because you didn’t get your blanks filled in.  So just please take out that little sheet if you will and I want to just say some things to you.In Luke chapter 17 and verse 11 there is a story told about how Jesus showed compassion on 10 lepers.  And those 10 lepers were so joyous to receive the blessing from Jesus to heal them, but only one of the 10 came back to be thankful. Only one said “Thanks.”  As we approach thanksgiving this week we need to make sure that we are not like those nine, but that we are very faithful to say, “Thank you, Lord Jesus.  Thank you for dying for our sins.  Thank you for giving us eternal life.”Chapters nine through 12 of the book of Nehemiah all go together and they are all part of the final celebration and the final singing and we are not going to do it this morning, but they gut part of the group on top of the wall, part of the group on the ground, part of the group in the temple and they sang antiphonal praise back and forth to each other.  And, oh, it was just wonderful as they sang and the celebrated and they worshipped together because building the wall wasn’t the final goal.  And I have got news for you.  I hope that your life is much better.  I hope that you have made progress.  I hope that you have made decisions. I pray that you are going forward.  I pray that things are better in your home and in your life.  But the ultimate goal of building your life, the ultimate goal of rebuilding your home is not so your home goes well.  I think people think that.  It is so that God’s name is glorified and magnified in your home.It is so important for us to love of our wives and love our children and to just rear them for the Lord. It is important for us to have joy and singing and happiness.  It is important for our lives to be in order so that his name can be made great.  They built a temple, they built a wall, they reestablished the city, but it wasn’t so they could brag about it. It was so that the name of God could be made great and known again.I have a great desire to see this church grow and to multiply and to start other churches and to send out more missionaries. But not for the sake of the name Grace Church or for any pastor or elder in it, but for the name of Jesus that the world would know that there is hope.These chapters are linked together and they should be read as a unit in order to know just exactly what there is to sing about and what there is to shout about and what there is to be happy about and usually I am one of those preachers from week to week that I kind...I am kind of like that guy that picks at the boil and tries to get it to pop. You know, I am kind of that guy that tries to really admonish you an exhort you and preach to you, but I don’t want to be that guy this morning.Do you know who I want to be this morning is, is that I want to be that person to encourage you and say that you have made some decisions. You have made some progress.  You have started moving ahead.  And I want to encourage you just to keep going.So what is there to sing about and what is there to rejoice about and what progress have we really made?  Well, first of all, we have confronted our situation.  You can write that down. They talked about that in chapter nine, verse 36 and 37.  They said, “We make a covenant. We write it.  We seal it.  Because of our sins we are...we are in bondage.”  And sin always puts people in bondage.And listen to me this morning.  Many of you have done step on.  You have faced your reality. You have faced your life.  You have faced the situation. And if you don’t do anything else  you have gotten a start.  That is progress. You have begun to move forward.We have confronted our situation. That was 9:36-37.  Something else we have done is we have confessed our sin.  That was chapter nine, verses one through three.  And do you know what they did? For one fourth part of the day, rather three hours they stood there and they listened to the Word of God being read.  And then after they listened to the law of God being read then they confessed their sins for three hours.Somebody said, “Well, I’m not that bad of a person.  It wouldn’t take me three hours to confess my sin.”Well, if you need help with your list just ask your spouse. She can...you know, one of them...you can help each other.  Make sure your list is long enough.They confessed their sins. They were rejoicing. They confronted their situation.  They confessed their sin.  They did something else. They considered their God; chapter nine, verse four through 31.  They thought about God. They thought about God in his goodness and his greatness.  And, you know, they rehearsed all of the great things that he had done. And I had have to tell you, standing up here in front of you this morning I have to tell you that we do really serve a great and awesome God, creator of heaven and earth. And the one who keeps your heart beating and the one who gives you hope for tomorrow and the one who has sent his Son to die for your sins to give you eternal life, we have a great and awesome God who is worthy of all attention and all praise.Can we give the Lord a hand?  He is great.  He is awesome. He has died for our sins.  We serve a great God.They considered. They confronted their situation. They confessed their sins. They considered their God and they committed to a covenant.  The covenant that they committed to had to do and it applied to marital and family matters. They understood that their religion wasn’t something that just happened over at church.  It wasn’t just limited to one day a week. It wasn’t put in a two hour time slot. Their relationship to God affected their marital and family matters. There were certain people that they were not supposed to marry. There were certain people they were not supposed to be involved with. And that is what part of this covenant that says, “I will guard my children from worldly influences.”It applies to marital and family maters.  Then, verse 31, it applies to social matters; the things that we do, the things we participate in, the entertainments that we allow ourselves.  All of these things come under the purview of: Is it holy?  Is it godly?  Does God approve?  We have committed to a covenant.And then I applies to financial matters. And, oh, I just wish I had all day to talk to you about how important it is to be faithful in financial giving. Number one, it honors God.  Number two, it will put your life in order. Number three, whenever we give, we give keep the light of the gospel on here and around the world. I am amazed.  I shared with Paul this week when people hopscotch from church to church to church to church. They just jump.  Whatever...whoever has got the new hottest thing going, whatever the new program is.  They just run over there.  Do you know why they do that?  Do you know why they jump from place to place to place? Because they have never put down roots to bear fruit themselves.  They have never got to a place where they understand that the ministry of this church and the missionaries around the world depend upon my faithfulness. They never understand that. Well, when we jump from place to place we put the gospel in danger of stopping.There is another one. It applies to spiritual matters.  It applies to my daily life; verses 32, 33, 34, 35, 36 and 39.  It applies to spiritual matters. There is a lot of people that think, “Well, you know, my Christianity is something I do on Sunday. And being a Christian is something I do over at that location.  And, you know, the Bible and God and reading and praying and singing, I mean, that is what we do over there. But, you know, hey.  Monday is just all about business.  Sunday can be about God, but Monday is about business.”I have got news for you. Every day is a holy day for Christians.  Every day is a day in which God is inspecting our life step by step, moment by moment.  He is watching. And I want to say to you that we are supposed to realize that our covenant applies to every day matters of spirituality.Somebody says to him, “Well, what you do over at church is church and what I do on Monday is business and business is business and church is church and never the twain shall meet.”People say all the time, you know, whenever they are having layoffs and mergers and cuts and, “Well, you know, it is nothing personal.  It is just business.”Well, the problem is, is that you do business with people and people are personal.How many of you have ever been into a bank or walked into a lending organization or walked into a place where you are trying to straighten out something and you felt like something that you felt like what was going on between you and them was personal even though they said it wasn’t? Would you raise your hand? It is that way, isn’t it?  It is always personal.And so it is spiritual matters.  We are singing because we have confronted our situation. We have confessed our sins.  We have considered our God and we have committed to a covenant. And they were celebrating for some reason.  What is the reason that we are celebrating?  We are celebrating progress.  Verse number 27, we are celebrating progress.You know, we are not very good at this part of it. We are...we are real good at, you know, pointing out what’s wrong and correcting and, you know, even our homes, you know, we have children come home from school. They bring a report card and there is an F or a D or a C maybe and we look at that and we say, “Well, man, you should do better.”We get all up in arms and we give lectures and we, you know, we scold and we set up study schedules and we do all these things because we want them to do better, but they might bring home an A and we say, “Oh, that’s great, glad you did that.”You know, yesterday, there were ball games going on all over the country and full grown men and full grown women went absolutely berserk when people kicked a big pigskin through a couple of uprights or went across the goal line. They just went out of their mind because somebody did something like that. They thought it was the creation of heaven and earth.  But your child can do their best and bring home a good grade or they can do something right and you know what we do lots of times with it?“Oh, that’s good.”You know, we get all excited when it is negative, but we never say anything positive.  I wish we had a bunch of people in this church that could get as excited about when their children do right as when they do wrong. Don’t you think we ought to be excited about the positive progress in the lives of our children?  Can you say amen to that?We ought to.  We ought to let them know about it. We ought to let them know when they have done well. And I want to stand up here as your pastor and I am going to tell you I have never been...I have never had the privilege that I have of being the pastor of this church.  You are called upon time and again to give and to do things like that and to help people when they are in trouble. But there have been two events over the last two weeks that have just been beyond anything I can even describe or imagine. What a privilege it is to work here and I commend you.  I bless you.  I tell you that the veterans...how many of you had something to do with the veteran’s day in some way singing or serving in some fashion?  Just put your hands up.  Just stick it right up there.  All over the auditorium.How many of you had something to do with share what you wear? Just raise your hand, something to do with it.  You brought in stuff.  Unbelievable.I want you to know that when we do events like this up to 50 to 60% of our church gets involved with hose kinds of things. And I don’t know of churches that have those kind of things going on.Somebody told me the other day.  He said, “Pastor Phil, I am going to have to find myself another church because you all just don’t love people over there.”And I go, “Huh?”Do you know what?  I am proud of you.  I am so thankful for you because of the way that you work.  And, you know, I am just a guy.  I, you know, I am just a fellow.  And if I see your labor of love and if I see your works of faith and your works of faith and your labor of love and your patience of hope like Paul talked about in Thessalonians.  If I see that, then what does God se because God sees every single person, motive and heart. And I just want you to know I am just so proud of you.  I am so thankful for you. And I want to tell you that if you have made any progress that is something to rejoice about.In these 10 weeks we have talked about the 10 issues.  We have looked at them and we have talked about them. We have talked about facing the reality of our life and prayer and position, making sure that we are praying knowing that God has us where we are.  We have talked about faith. We have talked about investigating and communicating the changes.  We talked about team work and tenacity. We have talked about integrity and focus and vigilance.  We talked about all of those things. And I want to tell you.  If you have made any progress at all, I salute you.  I praise God for you.  Listen. You need to celebrate any step forward.You say, “Well, pastor, I look around and I see these people in the church and, man, they know so much about the Bible and they have been around for years and they are teaching and they are doing this and I am just showing up and I don’t know what is going on. and I just feel so inept.”Do you know what?  That is step one.  You faced the reality of your situation and that is the first step of progress. Do you know what we need to do?  We need to learn to celebrate and rejoice whenever we have made any progress at all.I am looking at a bunch of people that are growing in Christ.  I am looking at a bunch of people that have an intense and growing desire for the Word of God and to know his Word and to become more like Jesus.  And I just want you to know I am thankful.  I am thankful for you.  I am thankful for your service.  I am thankful for your giving. I am thankful for your prayer.  I am thankful that you are looking at your life.  I am thankful...and I hear and have got a computer full of emails and I have got a drawer full of letters of people saying, “Pastor, you know what?  Thanks so much for that sermon because that is exactly what I needed.  And tell you what.  I am going to turn off that television and pay attention to my children.”And I am just so thrilled for the positive steps that you are taking.  And there is progress.How many of you would say, “Pastor, I do have to admit.  A few of these things have gotten my attention and I am trying”?  Would you raise your hand up?  Do you know what?  It is progress. Praise God for you. Celebrate your progress. Just be happy.  And just keep moving forward, keep going forward if you will.  Oh, don’t lose focus. If you don’t mention...if you don’t remember anything else from this series that we have had here, don’t lost focus.You say, “What is that all about?”Well, you remember what it was.  It was the thing where Nehemiah was up on the wall and he said, “I am doing a great work, I cannot come down.”  Boy, that has become the watch...that has become the watch phrase for me.Somebody said to me just this last week.  He said, “Pastor Phil, you know, I am concerned because you don’t get involved in this group and that over there and you are not getting involved enough in x.”And my pat answer is always: Do you know what? I feel like pastoring Grace Church and loving those people and teaching the Word of God and being available for them is a great work.  I am doing a great work and I just cannot come down. I just can’t do it.  And I believe that if you are a mother and if you love those children and you are trying to rear them for the Lord you are doing a great work. Don’t let anybody discourage you from it.And if you are a father and you are doing the best you can to make ends meet and you are doing everything you know to honor God with your first fruits and to love your family and you are doing the best you can, I am here to tell you:  You are doing a great work.  Do not come down.And if you are a businessman or your are a businesswoman and you started a business on godly foundations and principles and you said, “I am not going to cheat, I am not going to manipulate and I am not going to lie.” Others may outstrip you. They may get ahead of you. They may use all these things to out do you, but I want you to know that God is watching. You are doing a great work.  Do not come down. Don’t come back.  Don’t go back.  Don’t give up on the decisions that you have made to do the right thing.What I am saying to you is, keep moving forward.  Rejoice in the progress that you have made.  As you move forward in your Christian life you become a little bit more like Christ.You say, “Well, you know how I just wish I could be consistent. You know, I read the Bible.” You know, you keep talking about reading the Bible a little bit and praying over what you read and trying to apply it.  You say, “Pastor, I tell you what.  I wanted to do it every morning, but to tell you what?  I only read my Bible four times this week and three times I didn’t read it and I just feel like I am a failure.”Well praise God for four times when you weren’t doing it all before.“Well, pastor. I only read it twice this week.  I didn’t ever used to read it before, but I only read it twice this week and I feel like a failure.”It is progress.  You are moving forward.  I am just praying that God will give you a holy hunger and appetite for his Word and for his presence that nothing else will fill. And when you get to that place then you are never going to be able to fill up with anything else. You are going to want to be in God’s choice and just rejoice in him.You are making progress. You are moving forward.  You are going the right direction. And it is time that you were recognizing that God is making a difference in your life.I didn’t tell you you are rich or healthy or wealthy.  That is not what I am telling you. I am telling you if you are talking on more of the character of Christ, if you got your anger a little bit under control, if you are starting to stop and think what is the wise decision to make, if you are starting to stop and think about...now, before I react to what she said maybe I had better ask the question so that I understand what...let’s communicate. Let’s don’t argue.  Let’s communicate.  Let’s don’t debate.  And, boy, you are starting to think like that.D you know what you are doing?  You are growing.  You are moving forward.  Sometimes you take two steps forward and one step back. Well, that is one forward.  Praise God.  Keep going.You say, “What is your message today?”Well, it’s just...just keep going.  Just keep moving forward.  Just keep your eyes on the goal.  Keep your eyes on Jesus.Listen, I have to be just like the apostle Paul.  I don’t count myself that I have apprehended.  I have not become everything that God wants me to be.  I am not what I should be.  I am not all of what God has planned for me to be, but I am going in the right direction and what I can say is I am not what I used to be.How many of you can raise a hand to that?  I am not what I used to be. Praise the Lord.  Rejoice. Celebrate.I wish we could do this as a whole church, but we do have an institution in our country called Thanksgiving. Listen to this.  Chapter eight, verse nine.And Nehemiah, who was the governor, Ezra the priest and scribe, and the Levites who taught the people said to all the people, "This day is holy to the LORD your God; do not mourn nor weep." For all the people wept, when they heard the words of the Law. Then he said to them, "Go your way, eat the fat, drink the sweet, and send portions to those for whom nothing is prepared; for this day is holy to our LORD. Do not sorrow, for the joy of the LORD is your strength."  So the Levites quieted all the people, saying, "Be still, for the day is holy; do not be grieved."  And all the people went their way to eat and drink, to send portions and rejoice greatly, because they understood the words that were declared to them.How many of you have understood the preaching, the lessons and the Word of God that we have been talking about the last...you have understood what is going on, you have understood?  All right. Then rejoice.  Then rejoice because the Holy Spirit of God is active in your life and he has helped you to understand and apply.  It ought to be a written...do you know why they were happy?  Because they had the Word of God.  They understood the Word of God. They were able to apply the Word of God.  And I am going to tell you it is more precious than rubies and gold and silver and anything else you can pile up because without the Word of God you don’t have any message from God to know what to do with your life, how to solve your problems, what your future will be.  Rejoice.You say, “What do you want us to do?”I want you to go and just have a wonderful week.  I want you to look forward to Thanksgiving and I want you to be truly thankful.  I want you to...I want you to get the bird or get the ham or get the bird and the ham—like at our house—get the bird and the ham and a roast beef, too, probably, whatever.  Just get the meat.  Get it out there. Have people bring stuff.  Have a feast.  Set down at that table and before you say thank you for the big turkey say, “Thank you, God, for the progress.  Thank you for what I am learning. Thank you that my children are here. Thank you that we are together.  Thank you. Thank you for the freedom we have.”Instead of decrying what might be ebbing away in our country, instead of decrying those things, why don’t you exercise those freedoms that we are decrying?  Talk about Jesus. Thank God for what he has done for you. And you are making progress.Here is how I want to finish this today.  A couple more blanks.  Sing out your thanksgiving to God, 28 to 31.  Share God’s bounty.  We have done that.  Sign the covenant of the future faith.  We have done that.  But the best way that you could show gratitude to God if you are here this morning and I just want to zero in on you, if you are here and you are a believer in Jesus Christ the best way that you can say thank you to God is just daily thank him for your salvation.Are you thankful that you are saved?  Are you thankful that your sins are forgiven?  Are you thankful that heaven is your home? Are you thankful that you can get up every day and not worry about your eternal destiny because you have given your heart to Jesus and he has forgiven you your sins and given you eternal life?  Are you thankful for that?  Oh, get in the habit of daily gratitude for God’s goodness to you.The second thing, heads bowed and eyes closed, let me just ask you this question.  I talk to....Transcription by Audioposting: ( HYPERLINK "http://www.audioposting.com/transcription.php" www.audioposting.com/transcription.php)Nehemiah 8:9-12 (All Scripture quotations are from the New King James Version of the Bible unless otherwise indicated).Page  PAGE 11 of  NUMPAGES 11

Spiritual Maintenance for a Rebuilt Life

Sermon Transcript

“SPIRITUAL MAINTENANCE FOR A REBUILT LIFE”

Pastor Phil Winfield

Nehemiah 6:5-7:3; 8, 9

November 4, 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

Nehemiah chapter six, if you would, please.  And what do you say when we say, “Open the Word of God.”? Amen and amen.I am going to read two verses, just two verses.  Stand to your feet and let me share God’s Word.  The Bible says in chapter six and verse number 15 it says:So the wall was finished on the twenty–fifth day of Elul, in fifty–two days.    And it happened, when all our enemies heard of it, and all the nations around us saw these things, that they were very disheartened in their own eyes; for they perceived that this work was done by our God.And I want you to know that the one we always want to give credit for whatever goes on here at Grace Church or any other thing that has to do with our ministry, we want to give all praise and honor to the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and to his Father, our God.  Can you say amen to that?  Amen.  To God be the glory.Father, add your blessing to the preaching and teaching of your Word this morning. We ask it in Jesus’ name. AmenYou may be seated.  Let me share with you, quickly, spiritual maintenance for a rebuilt life.  Now, I don’t have time to go through all of the building blocks.  You can read them. They are right up there.  But we come to number nine at the top left and it says vigilance. We have to be vigilant in our Christianity. And the obstacle to vigilance is always negligence. And so we come close now to the end of the journey from ruins to repair of our life, our homes.  We pray for our culture as well.And the big question that comes up is why.  Why have we done this? Why was it so important to take this series an to talk about repairing our lives?  Why was it so important to get refocused and get our eyes on Jesus?  Why?  Well, it is very important.  The biggest reason we find spelled out plainly in the book, Nehemiah 2:17 says, “Come and let us build the wall of Jerusalem, that we may no longer be a reproach.”  God intended for us, he made us, he designed us before the foundation of the world, he created us with a purpose, that purpose is to glorify him.  You were made for God’s pleasure.  It is so important for us to understand that we are not our own.  If you are a believer you are not your own.  You were bought with a price.  You belong to your heavenly Father in heaven above. A price has been paid.  And God had a plan. He has a plan.And so the why of doing this is for the glory of God. Your home is about the glory of God.  Your life is about the glory of God. The way you interact with the world is about the glory of God.  This church is about the glory of God.  And God intends to get the glory among his people.And if you don’t think that’s so you need to read Revelation chapter four and five real slow and find out exactly what we are going to be doing in eternity as we lay prostrate before him to begin and we give him the praise and honor and glory and cry, “Holy, holy, holy, Lord God almighty.”And the second question that comes along not only is why, but how. You know, we are really good at telling people what they ought to do, but telling people how to do what they ought to do is a different thing.  And this morning we are talking about spiritual maintenance. We are talking about spiritual maintenance for a rebuilt life.  Keep things going.  How do you do that?Well, there are no quick ingredients. There is no easy way to do it. We are not building physical buildings, we are building our spiritual house.  We are building our lives up, a habitation for the Lord.  And the recipe for vigilance is not new. The ingredients to be what God wants you to be is not new.  It has never been new. They are always the same.Let me start by giving...by answering that question of how to do it by asking a question. And the question is:  Have you ever notice din life how it seems like everything degenerates?  No matter what the advertising, now matter what the propaganda, things degenerate. Things run down.  Things wear out.I had a neighbor long ago that was replacing his maintenance free siding.  How many of you know what I am talking about?  How many of you have ever been promised something was going to last for x amount of time and it just didn’t turn out that way and it wasn’t so maintenance free?  How many of you drive cars with maintenance free batteries?  Well, they go dead just the like rest of them do.  The only thing is that when they are maintenance free you can’t add anything to them. They are just dead.  You just get rid of them and start over again.So maintenance free, well, it just doesn’t work that way.Well, what happens to your house at home if you don’t stay on top of things?  What happens to your furnace if you don’t get it checked out and tuned up?  What happens to the air conditioning unit if you don’t have it checked out and add freeon or whatever they add from time to time?  What happens in your house if you just live in it, just, you know, just turn the lights on, go on about living, you never paint it, you never caulk the windows, you never do anything, you just keep on going. What happens to your house?  It degenerates.  It begins to fall apart. Things quit working.Well, it is going to degenerate over time no matter what you do, but you can sure go a lot longer if you are doing maintenance.How about your automobile?  How does your automobile do if you just buy it?  You go in.  You buy that brand new automobile and it is just perfect. You drive it off the lot.  And there is more to it, folks, than just putting gas in it. We all know that, but sometimes, you know, we just don’t pay attention and we get busy thinking about everything else and the old line is that if it ain’t don’t try to fix it. Well, that’s a good statement. If it ain’t broke you can’t fix it.  But you can sure, dead sure, better be maintaining it.I remember when I was working at southern lumber company when I was a boy.  There was a guy who bought himself a new Chevy Vega.  How many or you remember the Chevy Vega?  All I got to do is say that and people go, “Oh.”Fort Pinto and Chevy Vega.  Boy, they were something, weren’t they?This guy bought a Chevy Vega and he loved it and about six months after he bought it said, “The thing leaks oil.”I said, “It does?”He says, “Yeah, it is always leaking oil. I am always adding it to it and so on and so forth.And, well, he got busy. He got tired of checking it. And one day he came in and he said, “You know what?  That thing doesn’t leak oil anymore.”And about two days later said, “Yes, and it doesn’t run any more either.”Maintenance. You have to do maintenance.How about your health?  Uh, oh.  What if you don’t watch what you eat, you don’t get any exercise?By the way, somebody wants to know why Americans are having so much trouble with their weight it is the sedentary life style that we live. We have got a gadget for everything and we love to sit and do this, that and the other and you don’t even want to step across the room to turn on the television. You do it by remote.  They have got a remote for everything now.And so we are sedentary.  What if we never get a check up?Somebody says, “Pastor, you have stopped preaching and gone to meddling?”I know that.  I know that.There is tremendous value, folks, to have a daily regiment that you follow for good health.  Not long ago I had to go get measured for a tux.  I went into the place there and the guy, you know, they get the little measuring thing and you hold your arms up and measure around here, measure around here. And I found...here is what I found out when he measured me for that tux that my measurements are exactly the same right now as they were when I was 32.  Now, don’t laugh.  Hold on.  Just wait. The measurements are the same.  The only difference is that my waist measurement is now my chest measurement and my chest measurement is now waste measurement.Somebody said, “Pastor Phil has got Dunlap Disease.”What’s that?  His belly has done lapped over his belt.Oh, boy.  Exercise is cumulative.  If you don’t exercise but once a month it won’t make much difference in what happens to you.Spiritual exercise is cumulative.  Spiritual discipline in your life is cumulative.  Maintenance on your spiritual life is cumulative.  And it is important.You know, somebody might say, “Well, I can miss church and it won’t bother me.  I can miss an early morning prayer time and I will be ok.  Pastor, I just, you know, I just don’t like to be legalistic about things.”Well, we’re legalistic about sleeping, brushing our teeth, eating. We are legalistic about so many other things.“Pastor, I just don’t want this...I don’t want to have...I don’t want to have my nose tied to the grindstone of reading and studying God’s Word and meditation and prayer and I just don’t want to... I don’t want that kind of Christianity.  I’ll tell you what I want.  I want something where I come in on Sunday and you just charge us up and give us a warm fuzzy and I go on my way and just have a good time and as I run down during the week I come back and get charged upFolks, you can get charged up more in 20 minute by yourself on your face in front of the Lord than you can by anything I will ever say from this pulpit.Spiritual maintenance is cumulative.  Exercise is cumulative. If you want to run a marathon you had better not go out the first day you start getting ready and run 26.2 miles, should you, Karen?   You shouldn’t do that.  No.  You better build up to it.You know, many of us would love to be spiritual. We would love to have spiritual aptitude.   We would love to know God’s will.  We would love to know his Word.  We would love to be the Father we should be, the mother we should be, the parent. We would love all of these things, but you know how you become what you ought to be as you begin by taking small steps today and you just start doing the things that you know to do.  Let me give you some thoughts today from God’s Word.In order to maintain the repairs you make in your life you have to be vigilant.  And so what is the building block for today?  Vigilance.  Say it with me.  Vigilance.  You have got to be watching.  You have got to be always alert.  You have got to be always doing the things that are important for you to grow.You may not notice the difference if you skip a day or two in your Christian life or three.  You may not even notice it when you exercise that your body has gone down. But you just let that habit continue and things will happen.Here is what we need to do in order to be vigilant at Christian living.  Write these things down.Number one, give God’s Word priority.  Give God’s Word priority in your life.  It has to have first place. You must have time for God and for his Word. There are no short cuts to spirituality.  And being ready to do battle with the enemies of your Christianity and to build the good qualities of your Christian character. it takes daily vigilance and we must be doing it and we must revere the Word of God.Listen to chapter eight now.  I am going to just scamper through several chapters here as this event is all leading up to a celebration. And chapter eight and verse four says this. “So Ezra the scribe stood on a platform of wood which they had made for the purpose.”You say, “Well, where did preaching come from and the pulpit and all that stuff?”This is where we find it in the Bible that preachers stand behind pulpits to preach, just like right here.  Here it is.  “So Ezra the scribe stood on a platform of wood which they had made for the purpose; and beside him, at his right hand, stood Mattithiah, Shema, Anaiah, Urijah, Hilkiah, and Maaseiah; and at his left hand Pedaiah, Mishael...” and all these other guys.Verse five: “And Ezra opened the book in the sight of all the people, for he was standing above all the people; and when he opened it, all the people stood up.”Do you ever wonder why I have you stand when we read the Words?  There it is.“And Ezra blessed the LORD, the great God. Then all the people answered...” What does it say?  “‘Amen, amen!’ while lifting up their hands.”Now, I know a lot of us Baptists, we could just never...we could just never come to grips with that whole idea, but, boy, the Bible is so clear. They lifted their hands and they said, “Amen, amen!” They surrendered.  Do you know what that is all about?  I surrender.  God is in charge.  Just surrender.  And that is what they did.  And they lifted up their hands and they said, “Amen.”  And then they bowed their heads and they worshipped the Lord with their faces to the ground and that was before the preacher eve said a word.  All he did was open up the Bible and they just knew that they were about to hear from God.Oh, do you know what has happened in our nation?  People don’t revere the Word of God.  Do you know what has happened in our churches?  It is that the Word of God has taken a back seat to all kinds of things.  Do you know what has happened in our Christian lives?  Psychology and psychiatry and pop information has taken the place of the Word of God in our Christian homes and I am here to tell you there is no short cut to spirituality. The daily intake of the Word of God on a regular basis, a little bit.  Here a little, there a little, line on line, precept on precept, just adding a little bit to what you knew yesterday, help asking God to teach it to you.  It will make you stronger and stronger and stronger and wiser and more intelligent. And it will make you the mother you want to be, the father you want to be.  It will encourage you when you are discouraged.  It will lift you up when you are down.  It will give you hope when you think you are hopeless.  The Word of God is strong in your life.Listen to the Word.  Reverence the Word of God. Give it proper respect.No, we do not worship ink on paper.  That is not what we do.  I don’t worship the paper of this book or the ink.  But in a symbolic way I will tell you this that I don’t mistreat it.  I never lay my Bible on the floor.  On my desk I don’t set other books on top of my Bible. I put my Bible on top.You say, “Well, is that important?  Is God mad at me if I don’t...?”No, he is not.  But I am telling you there is things that I do in my own personal life that I can always...I always open the Bible in the morning and I kiss it before I read it and I say, “Oh, why do you do that?  That is so silly.”  Because I want to tell God that I esteem his Word above anything else in my life.  There is nothing that compares to what he has to say because I get a chance to hear from the God of the universe.No, we don’t worship ink on white paper. We worship the living God who is behind what he said in this Word.You are going to have to revere and reverence the Word of God.  Number...letter B there on your outline write, “We are going to have to read the Word of God.”  You are going to have to read it.Folks, it is one thing to hear others talk about what they have read like me.  It is another thing to read it yourself and meditate on it.  You are going to have to read it.  Give it proper attention.I have got to hurry.Everybody came and they stood still in front of the water gate and they listened to the Word of God read.  Back in Ezra they stood in a pouring down rainstorm and listened to the Word of God being read.  They just couldn’t go. They had to hear what God’s Word had to say.You know, I always check the weather at Grace to find out what the attendance is going to be because I can predict the attendance on the basis of the weather.You say, “What is the best weather?”Slightly inclement.You say, “Well, what do you mean?”A little bit of rain or a little bit of cold or a little bit of snow is better than anything. The attendance is always up.  But if it is a beautiful day and it is warm, people find something else they would like to do on a beautiful day.  If it is extremely cold and if it is very inclement, oh, I better not take myself and put me and my family in danger.I always pray for just a little rain, just a little cold weather because I want you to be here.  Oh, we have got to make sure that we read and revere the Word of God.Then the next one, write it down.  Rejoice in the Word.  Look at chapter eight and verse nine.  Nehemiah “And Nehemiah, who was the governor, Ezra the priest and scribe, and the Levites who taught the people said to all the people, ‘This day is holy to the LORD your God; do not mourn nor weep.’ For all the people wept, when they heard the words of the Law.”Why?  Because it convicted them.Then he said to them, "Go your way, eat the fat, drink the sweet, and send portions to those for whom nothing is prepared; for this day is holy to our LORD. Do not sorrow, for the joy of the LORD is your strength."  So the Levites quieted all the people, saying, "Be still, for the day is holy; do not be grieved."  And all the people went their way to eat and drink, to send portions and rejoice greatly, because they understood the words that were declared to them.Why?  Because they understood the words that were given them.What makes you happy>?  What is it that gives you great joy?  Does it make you happy?  Listen folks. I must have 25 copies of the Bible.  And then I must have 50 different Bibles on my computer. I have the Word of God.  It is available to me.  I can read it any time I want to. Not only can I read it, but God has given me the wherewithal to have an education enough to understand what it is saying.  In addition, he has given me the Holy Spirit to lead me and guide me in all truth so that when I read it I can understand it.  And when somebody says something that is not true it immediately comes to mind because the Bible has told me what it is that I am supposed to believe.  And let them say what they will.  I match it up with the Word of God.And do you know what gives me great rejoicing?  Is to know that I have the Word of God.  I don’t have to run and hide.  I don’t have to go into some catacomb and read it.  I can read it anywhere I want to.  I can take it anywhere.I love to go down to the Des Moines public library down there by Starbucks, take my Bible in and sit down and right among all those books and just lay this thing down there and just read it.You say, “Why would you do that?”Well, because this is a free land and I helped pay for that library.Oh, you are going to have to give priority to the Word of God in your life. Away with the Christianity that is only...listen. We had a Midwest Quartet Convention here this week and those folks just had a wonderful time.  But do you know them theme of all of their singing didn’t come out of their head.  It came on truths from the Word of God.  All of our singing, all of our praying, all of our rejoicing, all of the hope, all of the future, everything we hold dear is based on what God has said.  Don’t you think we ought to see what he said?Read it.  Read it.  Rejoice in it.  React to it.Chapter eight, verse 13...faith seems to be a hard concept for us to grasp when we speak of spiritual things.  In this story they soon found out that an ancient festival called the feast of tabernacles had been undone for many years and that put them in fear.  They didn’t do a study of cultural relevance. They just obeyed. And faith for us is the same as it has been for all time.  Faith is hearing God and obeying his command.You say, “Pastor, what is faith?”You know, we draw all of these pictures. Faith is hearing what God has said and obeying without fear of the consequence because the consequences are up to him.  And the bible says that he has determined good for us.  And we don’t have to see how everything works out.  We need to get a word from the Lord and obey it.I am amazed at Abraham the great prophet, the great priest, the great leader of the Jews that when God said, “Abraham you are going to have a son,” and then through a miraculous birth when he was old and his wife Sarah was too old to bear children she had a son and his name was Isaac. And they took Isaac and he was growing and one day God said to Abraham, “Abraham, take your son, your only son Isaac and I want you to go to a mountain where I am going to show you and I want you to sacrifice your son.”And what did Abraham do?  Did he argue?  Did he complain? Did he fight with him?He didn’t do any of those things.  He got his son. He got the fire.  He got the sacrificial tools.  And he started on his way to a mountain.Do you understand Abraham?  There was no way he could know how that was going to turn out.  But what he did was hear God and obey his voice.Oh, if Christianity could come to the place where we hear God and obey his voice.  Just hear him and obey.Not only have you got to give God’s Word priority, number two, you have to take your sin seriously.  We are talking about spiritual maintenance.  What is going to reveal your sin more than anything else on earth?  The activity of the Holy Spirit in response to his Word as you read it.  Nothing ever convicts me in my life like just simply seeing something in God’s Word, having the Holy Spirit say, “Ok, smart Aleck.   You preach to other people. You talk to other people, now what about you?  How about that person that you have offended?  That sharp tongue that you use?  How about that unforgiveness that you are showing?”  And God, through the Holy Spirit, makes me be reconciled with my brothers, my sisters, my wife, my family, my coworkers, the people around me.Take your sin seriously. And, you know, we live in a day and age where sin is in style. It is in vogue.  It is it.  Man, I mean sin is in.I have told you before about what used to be a church in Chicago that is now a vicious vice filled discotheque that goes all night long and has a big sign over the door.  It says, “Come sin with us nightly.”We wonder how God can allow so many things to go on that are so wicked in our nation right under our noses.  How can the patience of God go on and on and on?  God holds his people far more accountable than he holds those that are not his people.Judgment starts always at the house of God with his own people.  God judged the Jews way before he ever judges the pagans. Do you understand that?  He judges us.Chapter nine, verse one says, “Now on the twenty–fourth day of this month the children of Israel were assembled with fasting, in sackcloth, and with dust on their heads.” That was a symbol of humility.Then those of Israelite lineage separated themselves from all foreigners; and they stood and confessed their sins and the iniquities of their fathers.  And they stood up in their place and read from the Book of the Law of the LORD their God for one–fourth of the day; and for another fourth they confessed and worshiped the LORD their God.They read the Word of God and they did something with what they read.  They read what God said and then they confessed where they had erred.  That is what they did. Revival came because they understood the reading of the Word of God and then they confessed.So what do we do when we take our sin seriously?  One, we confess our sins.  Confess your sin.  Confession of sin is evidence of a true inner working of God’s Word since it is like a mirror and it shows us where we are and where we are out of order. The only property response is confession.The Bible says that God’s Word is like a mirror and it is says that it is not a wise person who looks into God’s Word and then just turns around and goes the other way without taking any action.  He says, “But a person who takes a lingering look into the Word of God will be like the man who looks into a mirror and as he looks into a mirror it identifies what is wrong.  It casts light on what is wrong in his life.  And so he deals with it because he has looked into the perfect law and liberty of God.”Confess your sins.  And the next thing it says: Claim your forgiveness. We come, again, to that great verse in the Bible.You say, “Well, is there any hope?  I am just such a big sinner and I am a believer in Jesus but I have erred.  I have gone the wrong way.  I have taken the wrong path.  Is there any hope?”The Bible says so clearly in 1 John chapter one, “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”  Bu tit hinges on confession.  Confession is not saying, “God, if I have done anything wrong.” That is not it.  “Lord, if I offended anybody, forgive me.”  How many times do we do that?  “Lord, you know...If I...”But, see, that is not the confession that needs to happen.  We need to say, “Lord, I know what you are talking to me about and there may be many other things, but right now you have drawn this person to mind, that event, that deed, that sin.   I am thinking about that one. That is what I need to confess.”We confess our sins.  And he is faithful.Number three, very quickly. We have to make a covenant personally.  Say now, say again?  Make a covenant personally.You mean is that any kind of kin to commitment?Yes, it is.  We give God’s Word priority. We take our sin seriously and then we make a covenant personally.Look at chapter nine.  Chapter nine, verse five begins a rehearsal of the history of the Jews and all of their good things God had done and all of the bad things they had done and all of the rebellions. And here is how they summed it up in verse number 336 of chapter nine.Here we are, servants today! And the land that You gave to our fathers, To eat its fruit and its bounty, Here we are, servants in it!  And it yields much increase to the kings You have set over us, Because of our sins; Also they have dominion over our bodies and our cattle At their pleasure; And we are in great distress.  And because of all this, We make a sure covenant, and write it; Our leaders, our Levites, and our priests seal it.And he goes on to talk about all the things that they promised that they would do. They made a covenant.  They did it before the Lord.  They did it publicly.  They did it personally and they wrote it out. They wrote out what that covenant was going to be.The people rehearsed the story of God.  They as a people had been very negligent concerning keeping God’s law. They thought that he really didn’t mean it.  They thought that the warnings of the prophets and the warnings of the priests had fallen on deaf ears and they thought that it just wasn’t important.  And we just, you know, you just can’t take God seriously. And when God says the soul that sinneth it will die, he doesn’t really mean that and when God says everyone of us will give an account of himself to the Lord for the deeds done in the body, we just don’t believe that. We...oh, no.  He is a good God.  He his a loving God. He is a kind God.  He is an old God.  He is a gray haired God.  He is a long bearded God.  He is like a doting grandfather. That is what many people have in their mind about God.But I want you to know that from age to hage he is the same and he hasn’t aged one day in all of his history because he knows no time, no limit. He is above and beyond, outside of all of what we know as time.  And God, our Father, in heaven and his Son Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever and he is the one that has eyes like a flame of fire and he is the one whose feet are like burnished brass coming in judgment and he is the one that can see right through all of our flimsy excuses.  He knows everything about our life.   He sees right through us.“You mean that is the God of heaven?”Oh, yeah.  He is not the big daddy upstairs that the world today would like you to think that he is. He is a three times holy God dwelling in inaccessible light, sitting on an eternal throne.  And I have got news for you.  Everything is just fine in his presence not matter what is happening on earth.They stood there in their own land that now produced goods. But they had to give it away to foreign powers.How much of our lives are eaten up in terms of time, effort and money by the world around us and very little is left with which to glorify God.  Our time, our talent, our money...it is eaten up and nothing is left to give to God.  And so what do we have to do?  Well, we have to remember our past negligence, face the facts, as we have said, remember our past negligence and then resign yourself to present diligence. Oh, if I could teach anything from this pulpit it is to be a diligent Christian, to be diligent in business, to be diligent parents, to be diligent husbands and wives, to be diligent in showing your affection one for another, to be diligent at teaching your children.  Be diligent in reading your Bible.  Be diligent.  Be disciplined.You say, “Oh, that is a word we don’t like anymore.”I know we don’t like it and our world is showing it. Be diligent. Be disciplined. Just do those things that you know are the right things that, folks, you cannot continue to stir in the same ingredients and get a different product in your life.  You keep stirring in lack of diligence and lack of discipline.  You keep stirring in lack of care and apathy.  Put apathy and put nonchalant attitude, just put all of that in there and that laissez faire attitude that we...just keep putting it in there. We are going to keep getting the same results.You have got to change the ingredients.  What is the number one ingredient?  Add to your faith, with all diligence, add to your faith virtue, to your virtue knowledge and all of these things in 2 Peter chapter one.  It takes diligence.You say, “You mean there is something for me to do in the Christian life?”Yes.“You mean in order to grow and to be more like Jesus I have to do something?”Yes.  You can’t save yourself.  Jesus saves you alone.  He won’t grow you.  You are going to have to grow as he helps you, as you diligently obey the Word of God.Resign yourself to diligence. The best way to assure a good tomorrow is to do the right thing today.  And the sum of your daily choices, however insignificant, they are the building, they are the building that you are building to live in tomorrow.  You have heard the statement made, “You have made your bed, now sleep in it?”  All of us are making our beds for tomorrow and we will sleep in them by the choices that we make today.Diligence.Number three, rededicate yourself to future vigilance, future vigilance.  Past...ask for forgiveness for your past negligence. Resign yourself to present diligence.  Rededicate yourself to future vigilance.You say, “Well, don’t...aren’t we supposed to trust each other?”Yeah.You say, “Pastor, do you trust yourself?”No.How many of you men in here today you know that there are certain areas of your life that you dare not give yourself any slack because you should not trust yourself?  Just raise your hand up.  Oh, no.  You can’t give yourself any slack.  You can’t leave a foothold for Satan.  You can’t leave room for Satan to build a beachhead in your life.  You can’t do that.  You have got to be vigilant, always watching.And when do we do it?  Well, we do it privately in our hearts.  And I have got so much to say, but time is gone.  We do it privately in our hearts.  We do it principally in our home.What does that mean?  Well, the first place and the most important place besides in our own heart that we give diligence to these kinds of things is in our home.  Our homes ought to be the one place on earth where the peace of God rules and reigns.  It ought to be the one place on earth where God has his will.  We may not be able to control the world around us, but we can certainly control what goes on inside of the four walls of our home when it comes to loving one another and caring for one another and giving diligence to those things that are important.Do it privately. Do it principally.  And we are talking about signing a covenant and we need to do it publicly in church.  They made this document and they signed it that they would obey God’s Word.It is interesting what was included in this document. Here, out of all of the history of the Jews—and, by the way, when you come to the end of the book of Nehemiah and Esther, that is all of the chronology of the Jews of the Old Testament.  That’s it.  It ends right therein the book of Esther.  And Esther happens before Nehemiah, so basically we are coming to the end of it.Malachi is going to start writing his last book in the Old Testament here in just a little while.All right. Now watch this.  They made a document and they signed it and chapter 10, verse 28 through 39—and I am not going to read that lengthy passage, but you really need to read that passage.  And here is a summary of what they said. They made a document and they signed it publicly there before Ezra, before Nehemiah, before the priests, before the Levites, before the rulers, each and every person. Here is what they find.  Number one, young and old signed it; chapter 10 verses 28 and 29.   Young and old alike signed it.  The second thing, they would not offer up their children to pagans.Oh, if Christians...if we could just get a hold of that, not to offer up our children to the pagan world around us, understanding that the world is bent on the destruction of your family and of your children. They are bent on ruining your life and ruining your children.  Every attack against a husband and a wife and a family to destroy that home, every illicit affair or even a thought of having one is an attack on the children of your home.They decided that they would not offer up their children. They promised. They covenanted.  They wrote it down. They committed themselves. They would not offer up their children to pagans.They decided something else, that they would honor the Lord on the sabbath, verse number 31.  They were no longer going to make sabbath another money making day, another day just to...You say, “Now, pastor, do we have a New Testament sabbath?”No, but the principle of a New Testament rest is just as important as the Old Testament sabbath.  They had a sabbath in which they did no servile work. They had a sabbath that was holy to the Lord. They had a day that they rested. Their animals rested. They rested. They trusted God for their income, for them to be able to be able to get going again when it came to six o’clock on Saturday afternoon.  They had a time to do that.You say, “Do we have a New Testament sabbath?”No, but we do have a New Testament Lord’s Day.  I’m going to make half this crowd mad right now.  God didn’t bring me here to this church to tickle your feet or to make you happy.  He brought me here to tell you the truth.  And I am going to tell you something else.  I have said it before, I will say it again.“Pastor, if you keep preaching like this you are going to empty out this church.”God has not called me to fill the pews.  He has called me to fill the pulpit.Now, let me tell you something.  If you make a round ball or an oblong ball the god of your family on Sunday your children, one day, will have a hard time making the distinction that they should be in church on Sunday.The gods of softball, the gods of basketball, the gods of football and the gods or organized sports have taken over the Lord’s Day.You say, “Well, is there a sin in that?”I’m not going to tell you it is a sin, but if you remember that cumulative effect thing I was talking about?  You miss this Sunday. Then you miss another Sunday. Then you miss another Sunday.  And pretty soon the kids that are 10 or 12 years old are going, “ Huh.  Well, if we ain’t got ball going on we go to church.”And you wonder why when they grow up that the local New Testament church doesn’t mean anything to them and they are distanced not only from the church, but from Word of God and the people of God and their best friends have nothing to do with God.  They have everything to do with this world.It is mighty quiet.They would honor the Lord on the sabbath many of the things we can talk about. They would never again abandon the house of God by leaving it unsupplied and in ill repair.  Verse32 to 34.  They made a promise.  “We are never going to leave the house of God unsupplied or ill prepared.  We are never going to abandon...We are going to make sure that there is food in the house of God so that the priests of God can do their work.”Let me just tell you a little secret.  I just want to tell you something.  Our offerings in this church are running about $6000 a week behind what the offerings of this time last year were running.You say, “Pastor, people don’t like your preaching.”Well, that may be true.  But in order to keep the house of God supplied for the work of God and for missionaries to remain supported, the people of God have got to be dedicated, committed, covenanted to keep the house of God prepared and supplied so that the work of God can go forth.Do you know one of the reasons we want to pay off t his debt on this building?  Because it would release $240,000 a year for more ministry.How many of you would like to see $240,000 of more ministry going on at Grace Church?  Would you just raise your hand?All right. Let’s pay off this building.Listen to me this morning.  They would never again abandon the house of God by leaving it unsupplied and in ill repair.  They would be faithful in giving their first fruits and tithes, verse 35 to 38.  They would give and they would participate and not neglect the house of God.  That is what their commitment was.  It was so simple.They made a commitment. They signed it.  We are not going to do this anymore. We are not going to leave these things undone. They wrote it out.Our objective goes far beyond a smooth ride from here to eternity.  It goes to the point of our creation in the first place.  We were made for the glory of God and we are better able to worship God and magnify the Lord with a restored heart and a restored life.  Are you restored?  Are you revived in your heart? Have you come to the place where you are functioning as a believer?  Are you growing in grace?  Have you put aside those things that are disturbing you?  Are you gotten rid of some distractions? Have you focused on why God laid hold of you in the first place? Have you begun to focus on what is important in your life as a father, what’s important in your life as a mother, what’s important in your life as a husband or wife?What is important in your life is your home. What is important in your life is that you are a member of a local New Testament church.  Have you refocused?  All right. If you have refocused, if you have gotten rid of distractions, all right, then dedicate yourself to it.  Commit to it.  Covenant to it.  Write it down.You say, “Pastor, you are leading up to something.”Two weeks from today we are going to have a giant piece of paper up front. And across the tope it is going to say, “our covenant.” And what we want to do is when we come up and give our one month for the master offering, I am going to give you an opportunity to just sign on this piece of paper.  Just write your name.You say, “What are you going to do?  Are you going to put it out there on that memorial?”No.  It will probably get thrown away eventually. But we are going to give you a copy to put in your Bible.  We want you to take it with you.  And it is going to have these things listed out here.  And this is what I am going to do.  I am going to do these things as a believer, as a follower of the Lord Jesus Christ. This is the thing.  I am not going to let these sermons come and go without coming to a decision, making a promise.You say, “Pastor, do you think we ought to make covenants and promises like that?”You know, they did that all the way through the Bible. They did it over and over and over.Heads are bowed and eyes are closed.  I want to ask you something.  The Bible says in Hebrews chapter two, verse three, it says, “How shall we escape if we neglect so great a salvation, which at the first began to be spoken by the Lord, and was confirmed to us by those who heard Him?”  How shall we escape?There are those of us that know the Lord Jesus here this morning and God has given us salvation full and free and we are his children and we are ion the road to heaven, but that seems to be enough. That seems to be...well, that’s it.  But we have just not completely understood that he saved us for a purpose.  He saved us so that we could be lights.  He saved us so that we could be salt. He saved us so that we could be the instrument, the messenger in our families so that our families could come to know him and love him.  He saved us so that in our communities and in our neighborhoods and in our schools and our workplaces, he saved us so that we could be the wall building kind of people, strong, built on the foundation of the Lord Jesus Christ and built up with all of these character traits. He saved us so that we could help make a difference in the world in which we live.Are you making a difference, my dear Christian brother, or has this great salvation been a subject of neglect?You are so important to the great plan of God.  God has invested so much in you and you are so incredibly important.  God wants you and he wants me to live out this so great salvation.Maybe you are here this morning and you say, “Well, I have never been saved.  I have never asked Jesus to be my Lord and Savior.”Well, I want to say that there is no escape for the person who neglects so great a salvation.  This salvation that was first preached by the prophets and the apostles and has been passed down all the way to me.  And so when I stand and say that Jesus is the Savior of the world, that God sent his Son into the world to die for sinners and when I tell you that he will save you from your sin and I say believe on him today and he will let you be born into his family and forever be his child, when I say that to you today I am saying it to you just as if the prophets and the apostles were saying it to you and you dare not neglect so great salvation.Don’t be negligent.  If you have never called on Jesus pray a prayer just like this.Father, God, I am a sinner.  I am separate from you.  None of these building blocks can happen in my life until I am your child.  I have recognized and confess my sin.  I believe, Jesus, that you died for me.  I ask you to save me today.  Come into my heart. Receive me to yourself.  I receive you as my Lord and Master.  I commit from this day forward the safe keeping of my soul into your hands.  I trust you today, Jesus.  Thank you for saving me.  And, Father, I ask that you would bless each and every person here. Help us now, Father, help us as we try to understand, as we try to apply. Lord, what is so interesting about the passage is the great rejoicing that happened. They were tempted to mourn. They were tempted to grieve.  But they were told to rejoice because they had understood the preaching and teaching of your Word.  Now they did something about it.God, help us to do something with what we are learning. We ask this in the precious name of Jesus, Amen. If you called on the Lord Jesus to be your Lord and Savior today welcome to the family of God and to the first day of the rest of your eternity.  Amen.I want you to take that little card and write on there, “Today I trusted Jesus.”  It’s write on a place to check. Write your name on it and if you have any other needs, prayers or cares write them on those cards right now.  We want to talk to you about it. And if you trusted Jesus to be your Lord and Savior and you said, “Today is the day,” I want you to come up here and I want to give you something out of one of these little boxes here that will help you in your new journey as you are serving the Lord.And then I want to say to each and every one of you that are the children of God.  In two weeks I want you between now and then...You know what is happening next week with Jeff Struker.  In two weeks we are going to have a tremendous celebration. We are going to have a tremendous time of giving and celebration and a covenant service together.  I want you to be here.  I want you to be here with bells on and happy in the service of the Lord that day and we are going to have a good time.Now, here is what I want to ask you a question.  Are you glad to live in a country where you have the Word of God?  Can you say, “Amen?”  All right. Let me ask you...before you clap let me ask you another one.  Are you glad that you are able to actually come to a church where they actually talk about the Word of God?  Can you say Amen to that one?  All right, number three.  Listen to this.  Can you rejoice in your heart that you understand what God’s Word actually...there’s a lot of people that read it and don’t have a clue.  But if you can understand what it means and just like they did...he said, “Because you have understood the Word of the Lord it should be a cause of great rejoicing.”  Have you understood the teaching in the book of Nehemiah?Nehemiah 6:15-16 (All Scripture quotations are from the New King James Version of the Bible unless otherwise indicated)Nehemiah 2:17Revelation 4:8Nehemiah 8:4IbidNehemiah 8:5Nehemiah 8:6Ibid.Nehemiah 8:9Nehemiah 8:10-12Nehemiah 9:1Nehemiah 9:2-31 John 1:9Nehemiah 9:36-38Hebrews 2:3Page  PAGE 2 of  NUMPAGES 18

Life Buildings Number 1 Priority

Life Buildings Number 1 Priority

By Phil Winfield

Bible Text: Sunday, October 28, 2007

Preached on: Nehemiah 6:1-14

Grace Church of Des Moines, IA

4200 E. 25th StreetDes Moines, IA 50317

Website:  http://www.gracehome.com

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

...so long. I just want to make sure everybody just keeps remembering what we are trying to do at Grace Church. And if you are here and you are our guest today, please, just, you know...you know, you could just sit there and put your brain in idle for a minute because, I mean, we are crazy over here and we just sort of do this from time to time to, you know, push the reset button, make sure we know what is going on here.So what are we about at Grace Church?  Here is what we are about. I just want to...I will get your participation in just a second, but just hold on. What are we about?  Well, what we really want to do is we want to bring people into God’s family. That’s really what we would love to do.  We would like to share Christ with people in the workplace, in the neighborhood and we want to bring people into God’s family because being a part of God’s family is wonderful.Is that right?  Yes or no. I mean, it really is.  Being a child of God is wonderful.  It is wonderful because it determines our eternal destination. We are going to go to heaven to be with him forever because he let us be born in his family.And then, something else we want to do—we don’t want to be spiritual babies all of our lives—and so not only do we wan to bring people into God’s family, but we want to build people up.  We want to help them grow.  And so we encourage one another. We do al those one anothers of Scriptures.  We try to love each other, encourage each other, admonish each other and help each other. And the biggest thing we do is bother each other.And you say, “Well, what do you mean bother?”Well, we bother you until you get involved in some sort of Bible study or small group.  We just bother each other.  Why?  Because it is in those small groups and Bible studies and Bible classes at any time that they go on here and there are some going on right now at the Church. In those Bible classes you are able to get to know people, do life together.  You are able to be built up.  And so we bring people into God’s family and we build people up in God’s family.And then we have a signal for this that makes no sense except that it is repetitive.  And that is, we try to prepare people for service in God’s family.You say, “You mean when people come over here you actually want them to do something?”Yes.  We want you to come and just give your best to the body of Christ.  Find out how God has wired you up, what he has given you, what you enjoy and just plug in and serve God here at Grace Church.  And so we are trying to prepare you to serve.And then the last thing we want to do is we want to send you out into the world. Folks, this is not a religious club.  Can I say that?  That is not what we are trying to do here.  This is not about, you know, getting together with a bunch of folks we like and patting each other on the back.  And if you are looking for a perfect church, if you are looking for a place where everybody is all that they ought to be, please keep looking because this is not the church. You know, we are just not perfect. But here is what we are.  We have a perfect Savior and we are trying to learn to become more like him. Can you say, “Amen” to that?  That is who we are trying to emulate is Jesus.So what do we do?  Well, help me now. We try to bring people in to God’s family and we try to build people up in God’s family.  And we try to prepare people for service in God’s family so that we can send people out from God’s family so that we can bring people into God’s family, build people up in God’s family, prepare people for service in God’s family and send people out and do it over and over and over again. And we do that for the audience of one. And who is it that we do all of what we do for?  The Lord Jesus Christ.  Can we give the Lord a hand this morning? Praise the Lord.  Just praise the Lord.Would you be seated?  God bless you.Well, I am going to just get right into this this morning.  There is so much going on. The one month for the master offering is just around the corner. We are going to give you a flyer this afternoon on the way out trying to encourage you to come to this prayer time, not really a banner waving, shouting, hooting, hollering time, but a prayer time, a solemn prayer time at the Maple Street Missionary Baptist Church.  I urge you, I just implore you to participate.  I will say more about that at the end of the hour.Here is what we have been doing. We have been studying in the book of Nehemiah. And in your worship folder, if you will open that, you have a Scripture sheet that you need that you can fill out as we go this morning and try to help you just remember and apply some of the information that is there.  Likewise there is this yellow sheet of paper that everyone needs to take out and if you are our regular attender at Grace Church and what you want to do is just let us know about prayer needs or praises or whatever.  Fill that out on this card.  Just write it in there and let us know what they are and we will pray and praise with you and try to be a blessing to you.  And then also on the other side, if you are our guest today, we welcome you.  We have a little packet with two CDs in it.  We want you to pick up going through those doors going out into the main atrium. There is an information area and you can pick up a CD with a full Bible on it, with some Bible study helps and also a message from the church with some music.  And we sure would like you to have one of those.   Get that out. Hold it out. Fill it out and then when we pass...we ask for them at the end of the hour. You will be able to turn those in.Well, here is what we have been doing is studying Nehemiah.  And as we have done...as we have studied this book we have been talking about how to build a successful life and how to rebuild a broken down life.  That is what the subject matter has been. And so we found out in the book of Nehemiah that we could break it down kind of like building blocks, building a wall, rebuilding the walls of Jerusalem is what Nehemiah was doing. And we can build the walls of our life, not walls to keep people out so much as building the structure of our lives so that we can serve the Lord and so that we can have God’s blessing.The first thing that Nehemiah had to do when he heard about the disastrous situation of Jerusalem, he had to face reality. Well, we do, too.  We have got to face things as they are.  We have got to look at our life and quit hiding our head in the sand. We have to say yep, there are problem situations, hurts, hang-ups, habits.  Stuff is going on that really, really keep me in bad shape and I need to deal with them in my life.  Face reality.Then we need to pray.  And we are in position to pray all the time.Somebody says, “Well, where is the right place to pray?”Anywhere, everywhere, all the time is the right place to pray.  God has put us at the right place.  It is always the right time.  After we begin that we have to go forth by faith because it is a fearful thing to deal with the issues of your life.  You deal with the issues of your life, the problems of your life, the people of your life.  Sometimes it can get pretty dicey, pretty scary. So what are we supposed to do?  We are supposed to go forth in faith. Faith conquers fear.  Faith is not the absence of fear.  Faith is moving forward in spite of the fears.So we have got faith and then the fourth thing is investigation and communication.  We have got to look at the nitty gritty details of how do we get in this situation. What led me to this place?  Look at it. Face it. Be honest. And then communicate to our heavenly Father and to our families and those nearest to us. Communicate with them about what we are trying to do.Number five, team work.  You alone can face you problem, but no one alone can fix their problems.  You need people. You need other people to come along side to encourage, to help and to give you some just reason to go on.The next one, number six, we looked at it, was the word “tenacity.”  And that is all about getting your life going and getting things on the right track again. You build that wall up, but, boy, when it comes to about...you get just about half way to the goal, half way to finishing the project and, man, attacks come and difficulties get great and it is easy to get discouraged at the half way point.  And so what we do is we just recommit to what we are doing and we keep going with tenacity.  Many marathoners run 26 miles, but they don’t run the 0.2.  We just keep going. You have got to just keep going and trusting that the Lord is going to see you through.Number seven, last week the building block was integrity and integrity is that solid...no...there is nothing false, solid, honest, complete and whole attitude that a person is supposed to have.  Integrity is the opposite of duplicity.  No one can get excited about helping somebody that is trying to give a face and show to other people that they are trying to do right while in the shadows they continue to allow themselves to do all sorts of wrong. And so that is what we are supposed to do. Do it with integrity.Now you can see the one that has been added and that is the top one up on the right hand side and it is the word focus.  And to be honest with you I have been looking forward to this sermon and to this passage of Scripture as much as any the entire time that we have been looking.  The key building block today is focus. The name of what I want to talk about is “Life Buildings Number One Priority.” And there are just...we just want to make sure we get the priorities in our life right.Now, the greatest enemy of the best of God’s best for you in your life is usually not the opposite of God’s best.  It is usually not a devilish attack.  It is usually not a frontal attack by Satan to sin, usually when we are trying to do our best, God or the devil comes along and supplies us with something good.And so the biggest enemy, the greatest enemy of the best is usually just a glorious opportunity to do something else that may seem to be good.  These folks had been...they had put up with all kinds of things. They had put up with derision, mocking, ridicule from the outside, disinformation about their purposes. They had put up with discouragement from without. They had put up with danger from attack. They had put up with internal division. They had conquered all of these things and now then, the come to this whole situation of distractions, being distracted from doing God’s work and doing God’s will and rebuilding your life.And so what I want to talk to you today about is how to keep going, how to keep going and how to keep doing the great work that God has given you.Now, I want you to take your Bibles and open them up to Nehemiah chapter six and all God’s people said, “Amen, amen,” which means “so be it.”  In Nehemiah six, verse one, stand to your feet, let me read you a few verses of the Word of God.Now it happened when Sanballat, Tobiah, Geshem the Arab, and the rest of our enemies heard that I had rebuilt the wall, and that there were no breaks left in it (though at that time I had not hung the doors in the gates), that Sanballat and Geshem sent to me, saying, "Come, let us meet together among the villages in the plain of Ono."When he heard the word “Ono,” he should have said, “Oh, no.”But they thought to do me harm.  So I sent messengers to them, saying, "I am doing a great work, so that I cannot come down. Why should the work cease while I leave it and go down to you?"  But they sent me this message four times, and I answered them in the same manner.And then I want you to drop down to verse number 10.Afterward I came to the house of Shemaiah the son of Delaiah, the son of Mehetabel, who was a secret informer; and he said, "Let us meet together in the house of God, within the temple, and let us close the doors of the temple, for they are coming to kill you; indeed, at night they will come to kill you."  And I said, "Should such a man as I flee? And who is there such as I who would go into the temple to save his life? I will not go in!"   Then I perceived that God had not sent him at all, but that he pronounced this prophecy against me because Tobiah and Sanballat had hired him.  For this reason he was hired, that I should be afraid and act that way and sin, so that they might have cause for an evil report, that they might reproach me.  My God, remember Tobiah and Sanballat, according to these their works, and the prophetess Noadiah and the rest of the prophets who would have made me afraid.Look at verse 15. “So the wall was finished on the twenty–fifth day of Elul, in fifty–two days.  What a wonderful, unbelievable story.  What they could not do in 130 plus years they were able to come in under the power of the Holy Spirit and do in 52 days.Now I want to say to you what God might be able to do in your life in 52 days if we were to bow ourselves and humble ourselves before him and seek his face and seek his will and yield to his plans and proddings in our life would be absolutely amazing. And I want to announce to everybody that his here this morning that your life is not a happenstance. It is not an incident. It is not a coincidence.  You are not here because somebody else isn’t here. I am here to tell you that God loves you and he has a plan for your life. There is a reason for your existence and because of that you need to hook on to it.  You need to find out what it is that God has for you.And I am here to tell you that there may be illegitimate parents in the world, but there is no such thing as an illegitimate child.  Every person, every single individual is somebody that God loves and knows about and Jesus died for.  And I am here to tell you this morning that if you listen to what I am saying about what God wants you to do in your life, it will help you immensely. I am going to give you one phrase this morning. If you can carry this phrase with you then all of our Nehemiah series will have been worth it.  And it is this one phrase.  “I am doing a great work.  I cannot come down. I am doing a great work and I cannot come down.”   Say that with me. “I am doing a great work and I cannot come down.”Father, add your blessing to the preaching and teaching of your Word. We ask it in Jesus’ precious name.  Amen.Would you be seated?So how do you keep going when you are doing a great work?  Make sure you underline that verse in your Bible. Put a star by it, an asterisk or something.  Make sure that you have that as a verse that you want to remember.  And I am doing a great work.  I cannot come down.Well, how do you keep doing the great work that God has called you to do?  And, by that, I mean that every one of you has an assignment. Every one of you has a task. If you are a mother God is intending for you to live the life of a mother. And if you are father he doesn’t want you to be slack and negligent in your fatherhood. If you are a husband, if you are a wife, if you are a leader, if you are a boss, whatever it is that God has given you to do, whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all of your might.  The Bible intends for us to be focused on the priorities of life and life buildings number one priority is that you stay focused on what it is that God has for you and me to do.And so how do I keep going doing the great work?  How do I stay on task? If I am rebuilding my life, if I am building my life, if I am mothering my children, if I am fathering my children, if I am rearing them, if I am loving my husband, loving my wife, how do I keep doing it?  How can I remain?  Focus and do not let distractions get you off of what is they priority in your life.The first thing you need to do, write it down on your Scripture sheet, make sure that your cause is great.  And I have loved reading through the book of Nehemiah time and again and I hope you have.  Any cursory reading and you are going to hear Nehemiah say that God is an awesome and great God. And I am here to tell you that our God is great and he is awesome.I get a little tired of the Islamic people yelling that Allah is great and yelling it for days on end and doing it incessantly. And some of us, we haven’t got enough passion to ever say anything about the greatness of our God and the true God, the one God, the one who made heaven and earth and everything in it.  And I want you to know that God is great and the causes of God and the purposes of God in our life are tremendous.  Make sure that what you are doing in your life is a great cause. Make sure you are giving yourself to a great cause that is worthy of the effort.Wouldn’t it be a terrible thing to give a tremendous part of your life to something that had no lasting value?  Wouldn’t it have been terrible if you would have invested in Enron two weeks before the revelations came out?  Wouldn’t it be terrible if you had been steam fitter and pipe fitter on the Titanic a month before it went down?  In other words, only God can put us on the right track working on the right thing so that we are not doing things that have no eternal value.Psalm 127 says this. It says, “Unless the LORD builds the house, They labor in vain who build it.” There is a lot of buildings getting built. There’s a lot of things going on.  There is a lot of projects, aspirations and dreams out there that people give their life to that aren’t going to amount to anything at the end of time. And so I have got some questions for you. Is the thing that  occupies your time and your effort, the thing that has your attention and your dedication, is it something that God wants to be done?  Ask yourself that question.  Is the thing that I am just giving all of myself to...?Now, be careful. Working a job and taking care of the bills and taking care of your family is something that God wants done.  I mean, we can go on and on with those types of every day things that we do that are very, very important, but many times there is a desire out there, there is a goal out there, there is something that we are working on that is not the wall that God wants built.Listen to 1 Corinthians 3:11.  The Bible says:For no other foundation can anyone lay than that which is laid, [and that] is Jesus Christ.  Now if anyone builds [and we are all building] on this foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw, each one’s work will become clear; for the Day will declare it.What day?  Judgment day.because it will be revealed by fire; and the fire will test each one’s work, of what sort it is.  If anyone’s work which he has built on it endures, he will receive a reward.  If anyone’s work is burned, he will suffer loss; but he himself will be saved, yet so as through fire.And so the point is that everything we are doing in life, we are building stuff. And the Bible says that it falls in six categories. There is going to be gold, silver and precious stone and there is going to be wood, hay and stubble. And they are not going to be water tested.  They are not going to be air tested.  They are going to be fire tested.  The Bible says he is going to put everything that we do through the test of the fir and find out what comes back on the other side.You say, “Pastor, is that literal?”I don’t have any idea if there is going to be a big furnace and he is going to put all our works in there, but so that we can understand the severity of the testing and that there is no way that we are going to be able to pull the wool over God’s eyes and make him think that we really were serving him with all of our heart when the truth was that what we were doing was indulging ourselves with all of our heart and all of our lusts, we can’t pull the wool over his eye. He is going to judge everything.  He is going to put it through, as it were, a test of fire.And so the question comes:  Are you working on your assignment?You say, “Well, what is my assignment?”Well, it is pretty obvious. If you are married and you have children that is your assignment .Your assignment is loving and rearing those children.You say, “What about.…well, is there...?”Well, if you are married and you have a wife, she is your assignment.  And if you have a husband he is your assignment. And if you have a task that is your assignment. And if you have been given the good graces of God to have a job or a business and you are working on it then you shouldn’t sluff off and be undisciplined in it. It is your assignment.  Are we doing those things that are priorities in our life?Let me say a word to my teenage friends that are here this morning, those that are in school. And you might think, well, I really have lost it. You know, I have lost my hair.  Maybe his mind came out with his hair or something like that or whatever.  I want to say to you this morning that if you have an assignment, then you should work on it with all of your heart.  Make sure that the priorities of your life are the priorities of your life and don’t get distracted.  Are you in high school?  I know this is going to just blow your mind.  Are you in high school right now and you are going to school?  The objective of going to high school over there is to make good grades so that you might be able to go into college and be able to get a head start when you get there.Good grades are a good idea.  How many of you parents know that to be a fact?  It is a fact.  Say, “Amen.”  Amen.  It is a fact. You need to do the best that you can do.You say, “Well, what do you mean?”I mean, if x box is causing your grades to fall then put away x box until the weekend and study.  And if game boy or whatever, you name it. If hanging out on the corner and shooting spit wads at the street lights is what is keeping you from being able to do what you are supposed to do, put it aside and understand that you have a priority in life. And if you are a student, your priority is very simple.  Serve God.  Isn’t it simple?  I mean, serve God by doing the best you can in school.You say, “You mean I am serving God by doing my best in school?”Absolutely. I wan to say to everybody in this room, it is a sin to do less then your best.  It is wrong to do less than your best at anything.Now, listen to me this morning. We are supposed to look at our assignments as God given. And we are supposed to do them.  And what is it that stops us from doing the best we can do? What is it that keeps us from being able to stay on task and what makes us lose our focus? Distractions. And those distractions come.Are you getting ready for the test that God is getting ready to give?  God is going to test us.  You know, boiler makers used to, years ago when buildings were heated by giant boiler systems—and some of them still are—a boiler maker had to make a boiler, a great big steam canister, he would have to make that boiler with all of his mechanical parts, but the way that that thing would be tested was is that he would take that boiler and he had to stand there beside that boiler, he had to run it to the max, let it stay at its maximum pressure, let it build up the steam and pressure inside because that was going to...what was going to pump the heat all through the buildings and all those kind of things. And so he would have to stand there by that boiler for a certain period of time under extreme pressure and he had to stand there by it.  In other words, he couldn’t send somebody else to do his test for him.  He couldn’t do that. He had to go and stand by the boiler, go through the system, let the pressure be on. And then if that thing...if he would stand there and it would pass that test, then it was ready to be put into service. He had to stand the pressure test.  Boiler makers were that way.Do you know that God expects us...he is going to put us to the test one day?  The things of our life that we have been working on, the works, the things that we thought were so important, he is going to put them all out there and he is going to put them to the test and we are going to have to stand by them.There are going to be many Christians, I believe, who are going to be very embarrassed about what they gave their life to, what they gave their heart to.  Oh, we need to look at our priorities and understand it.You know, this passage of Scripture is teaching us this if it is teaching us anything. Make sure that what we are doing is a great work.  Make sure it is worthy of your time. Is the work that you are doing, the thing that you dedicated to, is it worthy of the effort?  Is there anything eternal about it? Does it involve your family?  Does it enhance your Christian testimony? Is there any service to other people?  All of these godly things that God wants for us.  Is there a way that God can be glorified in it?  How many people spend their lives trying to find a way to get the spot light on them?  That is not the objective of life, folks.  The objective is not to leave our name imprinted on some building somewhere or not to leave a legacy of money so they can name a building after us. What we are supposed to be doing is trying to throw all of the light on the Lord Jesus Christ and magnify him with our lives. Can I have an amen?That is what we are supposed to do.  We are supposed to put the light and the emphasis on him.  Is there a way God can be glorified?  And is the wall you are building with your life, your time, your talent, your treasure, is it a wall that God wants built?The second thing.  In order to keep going in the building process, make sure your communication is very clear.Nehemiah clearly communicated the reason for his concern and the plans he had to restore the walls.  Now, he had first got all disturbed when he was still in Persia.  He makes the trip and he shows up and he looks at the details of the situation, how dire the situation is and what does he do?  He says, “Wow.”  He said, “This is really bad.”And what he did was is he told about the great God that had directed him and all of the provisions and how he intended to rebuild that wall and to reestablish the name of God and the glory of God in that place. He communicated clearly to everyone. It was a very clear goal.I have a question for you. Do your family members know what is important to you?You say, “Well, of course they do. I talk about it all the time.  I mean, they ought to know .I mean, I do this, that and the other.”Well, really?  Do they really know what is important to you?  Can they tell what is important to you by the passion you have for it?  Are you passionate about your family?  Are you passionate about your children?  Are you passionate about their future?  Are you passionate?  Do you have any time...I mean, do you get stirred up in your soul about the well being and the future of your family?  Do you have any passion about that or is your passion all wrapped up in getting those extra hours at work or an extra ticket to a ball game?  What is your passion about?Are you consistent?You say, “What is that about?”Well, you know, we can try to communicate with our words what we think is so very important.  But if our life is so up and down, I mean, we just...you know, even series is like this.  We will have a series.  And we’ll sing Pam.  I tell you what.  I have got to get with this whole thing of life building. And so we make a...you know, we write down some things and we get started and, boy, something else comes along and there is some other great idea and, you know, and so we get side tracked. We are up one day. We are down the next.  Yeah, we are in church for this month but we are out for the next two months. And we are in church for these six weeks, but we are out of church...we are on and off.  We are up and down.  We are in and out.  We are hot and cold. Our family doesn’t know what we are passionate about.Consistency. Does your family...are you communicating...man, oh, man, oh father, oh leader?  Mother are you communicating? Child, teenager, young person, the people who know you?  Are you communicating what is important to you by the consistency of your life?Oh, it is so very important. How about your commitment? Have you made commitment that has cost you anything toward what you believe is important in life and can it be told by how you spend your money?You say, “What?”Sadly, you will find out what Christians really value not by what they say, but by how they spend their money. My checkbook today reveals a whole lot about me as far as what my values are.  It is not wrong to take care of your family and to pay your bills.  That is an honorable and godly thing to do and don’t even interpret that I mean that the only thing you do with your checkbook is write checks to Grace Church. That is not what it is about.  But you look at the things that occupy a great portion of your salary, of your income, you are going to find out what is very, very important to you. It is important.  Can your family, do your friends, do the people around you know by the way that you live your life?  Do your friends and close relatives know what is primary?  Do they know what you really are trying to accomplish?The next thing is after that is you need to make sure that you are completely alert. Oh, how important this is.Sanballat, Tobiah and Geshem used every trick in the book to stop their work. I mean, they tried ridicule. They tried external...they tried putting him in danger. They laughed at them. They wrote letters. They said the king was against them.  I mean, they did all kinds of things to discourage them and to try to get them to stop. They had to be alert.I want to say to you as your pastor, and I want to say to you that are fathers and mothers and those of you that are building your families and your lives, I want you to know that you can never put down the trowel of building in order to pick up the sword to defend yourself.  It is not like that. On this situation they had to have a trowel in one hand and they had to have a sword in the other because they didn’t know from one minute to the next whether they were going to lay another brick or whether they were going to slay and attack the enemy. They didn’t know.You know, it is that way in your life. You never stop building.  You never stop battling. You never stop trying to encourage...you know, I know some people...Jonathan was in the first service and we got a kick out of this one.  I said, “I know some people that think if they have got their teenager up to 14 years old, man, I have got them up to 14 years old and they are just doing so good and everything is great and I am just going to...I am just going to relax.  I am just going to back off a little bit and everything is just going to be ok.”Just about the time you back off is just about the time Satan is going to step up his attack.So you build and you battle.  You are vigilant.  You are watching. You are always watching. You build your life.  You do the right things. You never let up.  You keep your priorities where they are supposed to be, but you never let up on what you are doing.Folks, take all of the vacations you want from your work place. Take no vacations from your spiritual life. Don’t ever let your guard down spiritually. Don’t ever say, “Well, I’m just going to take the next six weeks off from trying to pray and read my Bible or going to church.  I am just going to take six...I just need a break.”Well, it is in that break time that Satan is going to attack you like you have never seen in your entire life.  It is building and battling.I love this story. One day there were 132,000 Midianites that decided that they were going to overrun and attack the children of Israel.  Ten thousand knee knocking, quivering Israelites showed up in order to try to defend the land of Israel against these 132,000 marauding Midianites that had been invading. And this little short fellow from the tribe of Benjamin that God called a might man of valor and warrior who was scared to death himself was called and sanctioned and sent out by God to lead a revolt against those people.He first of all came to those 10,000 people and he said, “It is too many people.  All of you that are scared and want to go home, go home.”  It reduced greatly their force so it as 10,000 against 132,000, now it is way less than that.God looked down and said, “It is still far too many people.  These people aren’t dedicated to me.  I need to reduce this some more.”So what did he do?  He said, “All right. Send everybody down to the river.” When they get down to the river he said, “I want you to have them get a drink of water and the way they get a drink of the water is the way that I am going to know who it is that is supposed to be the one that is going to be able to serve me.”There were two groups.  One group got down there and they got right down on their knees just like this. They were...evidently they had been working out and all that kind of stuff and they were hot and they were thirsty so they get down in there and just...You say, “Pastor, that is not very dignified.”I have never been accused of that, so don’t worry.  So just...they are just drinking like that.Then there was another group that bowed down. Here is what they did.  They got down on one knee like that and they put their hand down in the water and they brought the water up to their mouth like this.Which group do you think God chose?  The second, the one doing this.  Why?  Because they were always alert.Can I tell you that just about the time you think you have got your spiritual life licked and that you think you are beyond any difficulty, that is just the time the devil is going to attract you. The Bible says so clearly don’t...if any man thinks he stands, if any man thinks he has got it licked, he better take heed lest he what?And so we have to always be alert. We have to watch out because we are going to be attacked. Don’t ever make the assumption that you are done. Don’t ever make the assumption that you have arrived and that the devil has gone on vacation. He is not going to come back and try to cause you trouble.2 Corinthians 2:11 says that we are not ignorant of his devices.  He is tricky.Ephesians 4:14 says that even men that are serving him are cunning and crafty and they are plotting and they are deceitful.Ephesians 6:11 says, “Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the wiles [the cunning, the trickiness] of the devil.”Satan even tried this with Jesus.  He tried to get Jesus to take a short cut from the cradle to the crown. That is what he did.  He said, “Jesus,” he said, “I know who you are.”  He said, “You are powerful and you are strong and you are all knowing and all of that.   Listen. You don’t need to bother with this whole, you know, going to the cross thing and all that dying and, man, it is going to hurt a lot.  And you know that.  You made them. And here just make yourself some bread out of these stones or while you are at it why don’t you go up to the top of this temple here and throw yourself down. And come on. Just bow down and worship me and I will let you be the king of the world. And we will just short cut this whole thing.”He tried to side track Jesus on the way to the cross.  I’m telling you. He will do everything he can to distract you from life’s priority, from focusing on what God has for you to do.  Make sure you are constantly alert.The next thing is make sure you are constantly praying. Verse nine is interesting.  It says in verse nine, right at the end.  He says, “But now, O God, strengthen my hands.”Nehemiah has prayed all during this book. Everywhere you look in this story Nehemiah was praying.  He prayed first. He prayed second.  He prayed to his God before, during and after every...each and every step of the journey. He just kept on praying.  And the key to prayer is to live it constantly. Never hang up the phone line to God.I said this so many times now I can’t count it.  But I want to say to you that the time to learn how to pray is not in a crisis.  We don’t learn...we should not be waiting for a crisis to learn how to get to know our God. You don’t get to know God at a crisis.  You better get to know him ahead of time.Here is what I am saying to you.  What I am saying to you is that your daily walk with the Lord, a little bit of reading, a little bit of prayer and getting in God’s presence, seeking his will, seeking his direction, seeking his guidance, putting all of your plans before him and saying, “God, whatever plans are yours, you let them happen.  Whatever plans are not good, you take them away.”  You put that all... If you don’t do that then you are not ready to serve God.And I want you to know if we just get in the habit of prayer and listen, this man Nehemiah knew something about living in the presence of God in prayer long before he was able to shoot up his quick arrows of prayer in a moment of crisis.I am saying to you this morning, an arrow of prayer is only as effective as the fellowship you have.I have a group of men that I have grown to just deeply love and respect.  I love everyone here at Grace Church but I don’t know everyone to the same degree I know other people.  But there is a group of men that I know really well. And you know what?  If I am in trouble, those guys are going to come running.  If they are in trouble, I am going to come running. Why?  Well, I would help anybody. I would do anything I could.  But the energy and the passion with which I run to those people that I know really well is different than the energy and the passion that I run to people that I just don’t know at all.Do you know why? Because I am just a human. Well, God is not a human. He is God and he shows his love and compassion every day to every body. The fact that you are breathing and I am breathing is a mercy of God. So here is what I want you to know, the people who know God the best because they daily live in his presence, are the ones that are going to have power with God in prayer when the crisis comes.  I want to encourage you, once again, get to know your God.  Stay in constant contact with the Lord.  Jesus said, “We ought to always pray and not to faint.”  Luke 11:9 says we ought to ask, seek, knock and never quit doing it.  So we spend time with God in prayer, we are more able to run to him in a crisis.Now, I want our gentlemen to bring my illustration. You probably have been wondering what this scaffold set here is for this morning. Well, I have got some guys who are going to bring it down here.  Everything is ok, folks.  Don’t...we are practiced.  I mean, we know what we are going to do here so let us just move a couple of things around.What I want to say to you, the last point this morning is—and it is the most important—and that is make sure that you are completely focused on what it is that God wants you to do. What is the priority of your life?  What is it?  All right. You find out what that priority is and, of course, we know becoming more like Jesus is a priority.  But you find out what that priority is and you just lock eyes on it.  And don’t become distracted.  Don’t become enamored with the world. Don’t fall in love with the stuff that is around you.As I was envisioning this story I could just imagine what was going on there.Now, fellows, when you get that thing in place, please lock the wheels. I do not want to go skating down this middle aisle here, ok?  That will be great. Wonderful. This is...this is good.I got to imagining this wall. They are going to build this wall in Jerusalem. And so if you think about that, I mean, can’t you just see a bunch of eucalyptus poles and stuff where there have made little wooden, you know, little wooden ladders and they have leaned those up and then they have made themselves some scaffolding all around.  I mean, if you have seen the state capital from time to time, it seems like every time I look down there they have got scaffolding up around about half of that thing, putting something on it, working on it.  That is what they do.Well, on this wall there had to be some kind of way for them to get up to the top area and to do the work that they were going to do. So they had to be able to get up there.Well, perhaps they used something like this.  And this is what I am going to use this morning and to illustrate what is going on.Here is the scenario.  What happened is Sanballat and Tobiah, as he got closer and closer to getting this wall finished.…Yeah, there we go.  See, I’m fine. Hi, Bon.  My momma was here I would say, “Momma, look how tall I am.”As Sanballat and Tobiah saw that everything but the gates were up, they knew. “Well, we can’t lick him by criticism. We can’t lick him, you know, we are not going to be able to stop them by laughing at them. We are not going to be able to stop them by putting them in danger. They are just cruising right along.  Tell you what we will do. We will just get him to come down and have détente.  We will get him to just come down and we will get him to come off that wall and we will sit down and we will chat.  And we will...what we will do is we will just have a talk and we will get him distracted.  Maybe we can give him a badge or something.  All right. We will just honor him and say, “Hey, man. You have got us beat.  You licked us. We are going to give you some recognition for what you have done.”So they go up to Nehemiah and they tell him, “Nehemiah, come on down now.  You have got us beat.  You have got us whipped, you know.  We can’t stop you. Come on down now and let’s just have a talk.  Let’s talk about this.”Nehemiah made a statement.  He said to them, he said, “I am doing a great work.  I cannot come down.”And, ladies and gentlemen, I want you to understand, I started off by saying that there is no greater enemy of what is best for us than something that is just good or ok. One of the biggest jokes of our day and outright lies is that you can do everything and you can have everything. You can’t. You cant’ be super man, super dad, super husband, super golfer, hunter, fisher, financial guru and the best of everything and have everything.  You can’t spend all the time you want doing everything you want and at the same time take care of home fires and take care of your wife and children.If you are a mother you cannot be everywhere at one time.  Now, women come closer to omnipresence than anyone I know, but you can’t.  You can’t be super mom...you just can’t. You cannot do everything.Here is what I want to say to you, just like I said to the kids a few moments ago that your job description as a child is to do the best you can at being a good child, obeying your parents and doing your best at school. Don’t let the extra curricular.... How many students go away their first year of college, they get there and while the world opens up, the opportunities are limitless and oh, wow, how much fun can I have?  And then all of the sudden reality sets in when those letters start coming in to their mail box saying, “Failure, failure, failure...and they get a reality check about why they went to school in the first place.We have to understand that if we are going to do those things that God is going to recognize and God is going to reward and that is going to...those things that are good for us and our families, then what we have to do is get focused and stay on the wall.I am doing a great work.  I cannot come down.That was the answer that he told him in that situation.What are you really doing?  Nehemiah wasn’t building a reputation. He wasn’t seeking for personal glory. He had one thing and one thing only in mind and that was finishing the wall and restoring worship to his God. It...what had not been able to be done in 130 years he was able to accomplish in 52 days.  Are you listening to me?Some of you folks are out there, “Well, I’d...boy, I’d get started on renovation in my life and getting a revival and I would do... I would do...you know, I would do this, pastor, but, you know, I have been going in this direction so long nothing could ever...I have been trying to fight alcohol...I have been an angry person for so long, I have been so unkind to my wife, I have been just an irresponsible mom, my house looks like a disaster area, it looks like 9/11 at my house.  I mean, pastor, I just...”Listen.  I want to say something to you. If Jerusalem’s walls that they had stepped over and stepped around for 130 years, if it could be fixed in 52 days, I am here to tell you there is nothing in your life that God, with God’s help and with focus God cannot change.“Amen, pastor Phil. That is good preaching.”Are you listening this morning?I am doing a great work.  I cannot come down.That is exactly what Nehemiah said.What are you working on today?  Are you rebuilding a life?  If you are rebuilding a life, then get on that wall and watch out for distractions. Do not come down. Focus on what it is that God is doing.  Ask yourself a question. Is this the wise thing to do?  Is this opportunity, is this new activity, is this new thing...is this the wise thing for me to do in light of my past history, in light of my present circumstance, in light of my future aspirations and hopes and the growth that I want to see?  Is this the wise thing to do?Rebuilding a life, rebuilding a marriage.You say, “Well, I have been working on it and things are a whole lot better. I think I can slack off.”Nobody can slack off.You know, I want to just say something.  My wife is down here. She is sitting right here on the front in the green shirt, sweater, right down here on the front.  My...our kids are all grown and you all know our children. They come to church here and serve the Lord. Who knows how long we will be able to have the wonderful privilege of living in the same city with them?  Who knows what God may do with all of them, but they have grown up and they have married people and they love the Lord. And Bonnie and I, quite honestly, are at that, you know, empty nest thing in our life.  I love my wife.  But do you know what?  As those kids...as the child rearing years come to an end, or at least that hands on day to day, you know, making sure the clothes are clean and all that stuff and making sure the dental bills are paid and you name it and braces and blah, blah, blah.  I look across the table and I see my wife sitting over there and I say, “Boy, I’d really like to get to know you.” That is really what I am saying.  You know, why don’t you tell me about yourself?  It’s almost like that, isn’t it?Those of you that have young children and you are in the child rearing years, oh, I want to say to you, make sure that the home fires are burning and that you are more in love with your mate than you have ever been because I want to tell you when you get to the end of the child rearing years there is nothing that Satan would like to do more than to level his guns on you and take away your testimony at that time in your life.I am committed in my heart as your pastor, I am committed in my heart to the very depth of my being to romance and love my wife more than I ever have in my entire life.  You know why?  Because I am building a great work and I am not going to come down.Do you understand that?You say, “Pastor, do you work at the church non stop?”Nope. I do not work at the church non stop.You say, “Are you always doing something for the people of Grace Church?”I am always doing something for the people of Grace Church.  And one of those things I am doing for the people of Grace Church is trying to model a good marriage in loving my wife and my wife loves me.Are you listening to me this morning?I am doing a great work. I cannot come down.My time is getting away.  I could preach on this for a week.  I could stand up here until two this afternoon just talking about this. I want to say to you this morning. Are you rearing some children?  Are you a mother here this morning and you have heard it?  You have made a decision.  You have either said I am going to be a stay at home mom and I am going to rear my children or you said, “If I work outside the home I am going to drop them off at school and then I am going to be there when they get home from school and that is what I am going to do and this is the commitment I make.”Maybe you have made that commitment and you have heard things like, “Well, she couldn’t really make it out in the real world anyway. She really can’t work.”Let me tell you a little something this morning.  And I don’t care what anybody says under any circumstance.  If you get up on that wall of rearing your children and God has led you to do that, then you say to them in your own heart, “I am doing a great work.  I cannot come down.”Do you understand where I am going with this this morning?Are you a man and you are trying to start a business and God helped you and you had a vision and an idea and you opened up a business and you are working on that business, but now then glorious opportunities are arising to expand here or there or go some other place. And you haven’t even got the first one off the floor yet.Listen. Get it in your mind. You can’t do everything. You can’t be everywhere.I am doing a great work.  I cannot come down.You are rebuilding your marriage. Are you rearing your children? Are you trying to make a statement in your workplace? Are you trying to be a good employee?  Don’t be discouraged by those that would say, “Hey, don’t work hard. You are going to make us all look bad.”  You are doing a great work.  You cannot come down.I am doing a great work...Say that with me.  I am doing a great work.  I cannot come down.If you could learn that phrase and when opportunities arise or when temptations come if you could have that cemented in your heart. Oh, no.  I know what the devil is trying to do here.  He wants me side tracked. He wants me distracted. He doesn’t want me to stay the course and do what I know God wants me to do as a mother, a wife...as he wants me to do as a husband, a father, as he wants me to do as a worker, an employee, a boss, as he wants me to do as a Christian, a Church member, a Sunday school teacher, as he wants me to do here in this place or as a citizen.  I am doing a great work.  I cannot come down.Oh, if you could get that in your hear this morning.I am doing a great work.Stay focused on what is important in life.Hebrews chapter 12, verse one and two tells us that there is two things that can get us off track faster than anything else.  One of them only Jesus can take care of.  One of them is our responsibility. The Bible says in the New Testament that he likens this whole thing of wall building to running a race.  He says that every one of us needs to lay aside the weights and the sin that does so easily distract and sidetrack us and run the race that God has for us with patience.There are two things that will stop you at your wall building efforts in your life. Number one, what will stop you is weight and I don’t mean physical weight, although that is a good idea to get rid of that, too.Listen to me this morning.  Whatever you add to your life and whatever temptations come along that detract form or distract from what the primary issues of your life are at the time that you are at in your life, those are weights.  And you can’t run a good race when you are weighted down.  And so you need to watch out for whose responsibility is it to be very careful about the weights.  Well, you pray for the wisdom of God and then you make good choices on the basis of what is wise for me in light of my past, in light of my future and what my future hopes are. What is the wise thing for me to do?But the second thing is sin.You say, “Well, what about that?”Well, I am here to tell you that we are supposed to resist the devil and he will flee from us.  But when it comes to dealing with sin and the penalty of sin there is only one person who can take that sin away. So what we do is we give our sin to Jesus and we commit ourself to the race.  Do you understand that?  We commit ourself to the wall. We give our sin to Jesus and we commit ourself to the wall.Are you here this morning and you have never been born into the family of God?  Are you here and you have never put all of your care on him?  1 Peter chapter five.  Cast all your care on him because he cares for you. Have you never come to that Matthew 11:28 verse that says, “But now, O God, strengthen my hands.”?  Have you never really lived out John 3:16, “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.”  Have you never said, “Jesus, save me?”  Are you trying by religion? Are you trying by some liturgy?  Are you trying by good works to please God, to cancel out your sin?  It will never happen.  The only way that sin is taken away is by God showing his love toward us in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us.It happened to me when I was 12 years old. I understood so clearly that I was a sinner and that my good works meant nothing.  My Sunday school attendance meant nothing. My Bible memorization meant absolutely nothing as far as canceling out my sin. And I heard a gospel message.  It pricked my heart and pulled at me. And I went home and said, “Daddy, I want to be saved.” And Daddy knelt down at the couch and read to me John 3:16 and he said, “Do you believe that Jesus can take your sin away and that he died for you and that he rose again?  Do you believe?”  And I did.  And I have never been sorry that I did.You see, the two things that will get you side tracked in life, number one is your sin. And, number two, listen, are the weights that we add in our life.I am speaking to two groups of people this morning. The first group is those that are believers in Jesus Christ and you are on the wall of life and you are building and you are battling and you are moving forward and you are doing the best you can and distractions come along. And you know exactly what I am talking about.And you need to hear exactly what I have said this morning and you  need to put it in practice in your life to be able to say, “I am doing a great work. I cannot come down.”From time to time, not more than time to time, quite often, the phone rings and so and so says, “Well, pastor Phil, we would like you to come over and preach here or there or go to this church or go to that church and we would like you to do this, that or the other. And in my mind I am thinking, well, you know, I have been given a call of almighty God to be here for the people of Grace Church and to be available for them when they are sick and to marry their children and to just be a part of their life and God has called me to do this. And I cannot tell you how many times, right while they are asking me to do these kind of things...And it would be a fine and good thing to do.  But while I am thinking about it, this verse of Scripture goes across my mind and I think I am doing a great work. I cannot come down.  And I want you to know that I am here to pastor this church because I am doing a great work and I will not come down. This is what I am doing.Do you understand what I am saying?Are you a believer in Jesus Christ this morning?  Then grab hold of whatever it is that God...for the reason for which God grabbed hold of you. Whatever he has called you to, whatever your assignment is and most of those assignments are normal assignments.  Be a good mother.  Be a good father.  Be a good husband.  Be a good wife.  Grab hold of that thing.  Put your focus on it and then determine in your heart: I am doing a great work. I will not come down.For this nation, this city, this state needs a bunch of families that have committed to the great work of just simply being a loving, caring, godly lighthouse as a family.Are you hear today and you don’t know Jesus? I invite you.Would you bow your heads and close your eyes?  I said I wasn’t coming down off the wall, but I am.  I am doing a great work.  I cannot come down.Heads are bowed.  Eyes are closed.Transcription by Audioposting: ( HYPERLINK "http://www.audioposting.com/transcription.php" www.audioposting.com/transcription.php)Nehemiah 6:1 (All Scripture references are from the New King James Version of the Bible unless otherwise indicated)Nehemiah 6:2-4Nehemiah 6:10-14Nehemiah 6:15Psalm 127:11 Corinthians 3:11-121 Corinthians 3:13-15Ephesians 6:11Nehemiah 6:9Matthew 11:28John 3:16Page  PAGE 1 of  NUMPAGES 21

How to Regain Respect

Sermon Transcript

“HOW TO REGAIN RESPECT”

Pastor Phil Winfield

Nehemiah 5:1-19

October 21, 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 are in the book of Nehemiah.  We have been laying down the building blocks of a rebuilt life, of a reclaimed life.  And I want you to look at them with me for just a minute. We have them right up here and the wall is kind of taking shape.  When we get done we are going to have a completed wall.  The very first number one there that we had to do if we are going to rebuild our life is we have got to face the reality of it.  We have got to look at our situation with honesty and we have to see what are those things in my life that are a hindrance to my testimony as a Christian and the growth of my family and of my influence over other people?  What is the reality?An after we face the reality then we have to go and recognize that the next stop is to pray.  I can never emphasize that enough.  We do more than pray, but we never do anything before we pray.  Pray first.  Pray early.  Pray often.  Pray continually as Nehemiah has given that example in the Scriptures.  And recognize your position as you pray.In other words, Nehemiah was in the best place on earth to effect change and to be able to make a difference for the Jewish people. He was sitting next to the king of the world. You and I can never make the assumption that if I was just here or there, if I only had this situation or that characteristic, if I could just make this change or that, that I...if and then I would be able to do something.Nope.  God knows who you are, where you are, the ability you have.  He has placed you right where he wants you to be for you to be able to make the changes that need to happen in your own life.  Prayer and position.Number three takes faith. There is fear in any step of change.  In any step that we take in our Christian life there is the element of fear.  And so number three, there says that the way that you combat fear is with faith.And you say, “Well, what is faith?”Well, faith is certainly not the absence of fear.  Faith is hanging on to God’s Word in his promises and it is marching forward in spite of fear. Then, number four, we have got to do a thorough investigation.  Nehemiah showed up after he had made this several month long trip.  He came to Jerusalem and the first thing he did was rest.  He rested for three days.  We talked about this.  Some of you guys just need a nap.  I am going to get one this afternoon. It is a Sunday afternoon ritual.You need a nap. You need some rest. But after you do that, after you get your wits about you need to take a real good look at the detail.  You face the reality, yes, it is a big problem, but what are the details?  What are the habits?  What are the hang-ups?  What are the decisions? What are the choices that we make daily that lead to the difficulties of our life?  We investigate.  Once we nail it down we communicate to our spouse, our friend, our neighbor, whoever it is, our coworker, our relatives, our friends, our church associates.  We let them know what we are working on and seek some help.Then number five comes along there and that is team work.  You know, I made this statement and it is so true.  That is that you alone must face your reality, but you alone cannot fix your problems. It takes a team.  It takes a group of people to come together and work in concert.  So team work, we team up together, we team up with our family and friends and we thank them for their participation.Last week we looked at number six, a word I really love, the word tenacity. And it is not because of our power, but God gives us the power if we dedicate ourselves to the task. They had the wall built to the half height. They had built that wall up to the half height and just about the half way point.  The further discouragements and difficulties came. They were attacked from their enemies on all sides. The work was hard and even people within the camp began to complain and say, “It is too hard. The work is too big. We just need to stop.”  But a tenacious person, one who keeps their eye on the goal and keeps going, that person can get the job done, tenacity.Now we come to number seven.  And the key building block today is the building block of integrity. And I want you to know that each one of these we are digging out right out of these passages of Scripture.  And this building block of integrity is so very, very important.On the 52 day journey toward a successful life we are identifying the blocks. This is the seventh.  It is the word “integrity.”Today this integrity has a meaning that we all understand. That is, it has that obvious meaning of being completely honest, not at all duplicitous and totally ethical.  We understand that.  To be a person or a man of integrity, a woman of integrity means that we are not hiding anything.  We are not saying one thing and doing another. We are not living a hypocritical life.  We are not trying to wear a mask to fool people.  There is nothing more discouraging to people that are trying to help you change and help you in your life and you the same with others as to find out that you are doing al the work and the labor, but they are not helping themselves, that when you turn your back they are going right back the same way that they have been.  So it takes integrity.But just as it is with many words, sometimes we don’t go to the root of the situation.  The etymology of the word “integrity” is very interesting in what it really means.  And the word “integrity” at its base etymology means “completely sound, solid, whole and complete.” There are no cracks, no hollowness and there is nothing that is hidden.You have to understand that we are building a wall and as you build a wall with stones you want stones that have integrity.What does that mean?Well, if you were building your house you would not want to build your house with termite eaten wood or lumber and you would not want to be using any kind of bricks that were nothing but powder and as soon as you put any pressure on them they come apart. They need to be full of integrity.  You want to build with integrity.Let me give you an illustration. In the 80s there was a man in our country.  His name was Jim Bakker.  He was one of the most famous and easily recognized figures on the landscape of televangelism.  He was a very likable and seemingly honest man that had the attention of millions of viewers almost on a daily basis.  His star rose very quickly. His fame was huge.  His influence was impressive.  The problem was that Jim Bakker had no integrity at that time.  He was saying one thing and he was doing another. He was calling for sacrifice on the part of God’s people for many good causes while he himself was living in such luxury and opulence that it would make Cleopatra blush. He had no integrity and because of that he had lost all moral authority. He was a shooting star and today that star is extinguished.  Integrity.At the top of your sheet you have got a phrase that I wrote myself as kind of a summary of everything I am trying to say today.  And I wan to make sure that you get it and don’t miss it.  And here is the statement:  Building a successful life requires integrity because integrity is the cornerstone of moral authority.And you say, “Well, just exactly what do you mean by moral authority?”Well, let me give you a good Bible example.  Jesus said one day when he was teaching, he said to those who would correct other people, he said, “Now listen.”  He said, “Don’t be a hypocrite and start taking the speck out of your brother’s eye while you still have a beam or a log in your own eye.”  He said, “ You get rid of your own hypocrisy and the log in your eye. Then you will be able to see clearly to help the other person.”You know what it is talking about.  How many of you have had somebody that you know is not living anywhere up to the standards that they are trying to impose on you yet they are trying to correct you and it really irritates you because you know they have no moral authority?  Would you just raise your hand up?  You know what I am talking about, no moral authority.Now, let me just go on and just make it real simple.  A person who...a father who was staying and living the life of a drunk can’t say anything to his children if they go out and they start drinking.  And a person whose life is full of anger and he is just fiercely angry at everybody and everything all the time, can’t get up set with his children or upset with anybody in his family if they show those same signs of anger.You see, we can’t cancel out our words by the walk of our life.  We just can’t do that.We have politicians today that are running on a platform of helping the impoverished while they live the life of the King of Siam.  Folks, they have no moral authority.  Nobody trusts them. They are only politicking. And a lot of us live a life of politics.  We try to do the politics in other people.  We try to make people believe that we are changed, we are changed people, we are trying to go a new direction, but we are always making provisions for our habit, making provisions for our anger, making provisions for our envy, making provisions for our hang ups and hurts and we are not allowing the truth to be told.Well, that is exactly what is going on in chapter five of the book of Nehemiah.  And I have given you a lengthy introduction, but you have to have the foundation to understand.  What was going on in the previous chapters was that they had assembled. They had built the team. They began to build the wall.  But when we get to chapter five they found out that there was not just opposition from the enemy.  There was not just discouragement from within, but what we find out is that there are people within their own crowd that are actually taking advantage of the situation.There is not anything that is more despicable, as far as I am concerned, that when everyone is suffering, when misery is going on, people are making sacrifices, to find out that somebody is enriching themselves at the expense of somebody else’s misery.Am I the only one or does that really get your goat for people to enrich themselves when other people are miserable and they are making themselves rich at the base of their misery?  Well, that’s what’s happening.Stand to your feet if you would.  Listen to the Word of God and here we are in Nehemiah chapter five and let’s do this. When we open the book of the Word of God what do we say?  Amen, amen.  Excellent.And there was a great outcry of the people and their wives against their Jewish brethren.  For there were those who said, "We, our sons, and our daughters are many; therefore let us get grain, that we may eat and live."  There were also some who said, "We have mortgaged our lands and vineyards and houses, that we might buy grain because of the famine."  There were also those who said, "We have borrowed money for the king’s tax on our lands and vineyards.  "Yet now our flesh is as the flesh of our brethren, our children as their children; and indeed we are forcing our sons and our daughters to be slaves, and some of our daughters have been brought into slavery. It is not in our power to redeem them, for other men have our lands and vineyards."  And I became very angry.…Remember, this is the journal of Nehemiah.And I became very angry when I heard their outcry and these words.  After serious thought, I rebuked the nobles and rulers, and said to them, "Each of you is exacting usury  [That’s an Old Testament word there for interest] from his brother.”  So I called a great assembly against them.  And I said to them, "According to our ability we have redeemed our Jewish brethren who were sold to the nations. Now indeed, will you even sell your brethren? Or should they be sold to us?" Then they were silenced and found nothing to say.Oh, what a statement.  “The were silenced and found nothing to say.”This is not the main point of the sermon, but I want to say to you that there is going to be a moment of silence once day when words will escape everyone because at the feet of Jesus everybody is going to bow and we are going to confess without ay choice that he is Lord to the glory of the Father and here is something else. When he tells us about opportunities missed, when he tells us about sins committed, when he tells us about forgiveness not granted and when he tells us about those souls that we could have shared with that we didn’t, we are not going to give excuses. We are not going to give reasons. There is going to be nothing but silence in the face of Jesus because he can see all that we might say.Well, here is what happened.After serious thought, I rebuked the nobles and rulers, and said to them, "Each of you is exacting usury from his brother." So I called a great assembly against them.  And I said to them, "According to our ability we have redeemed our Jewish brethren who were sold to the nations. Now indeed, will you even sell your brethren? Or should they be sold to us?" Then they were silenced and found nothing to say.  Then I said, "What you are doing is not good. Should you not walk in the fear of our God because of the reproach of the nations, our enemies?  I also, with my brethren and my servants, am lending them money and grain. Please, let us stop this usury!  Restore now to them, even this day, their lands, their vineyards, their olive groves, and their houses, also a hundredth of the money and the grain, the new wine and the oil, that you have charged them."  So they said, "We will restore it, and will require nothing from them; we will do as you say." Then I called the priests, and required an oath from them that they would do according to this promise.  Then I shook out the fold of my garment and said [Look at how vivid this is] "So may God shake out each man from his house, and from his property, who does not perform this promise. Even thus may he be shaken out and emptied." And all the assembly said, "Amen!" and praised the LORD. Then the people did according to this promise.”And, Father, add your blessing to the preaching and teaching of your Word in Jesus’ name.  Amen.Would you be seated?You see, the people were upset especially the women.  You have seen any of the women in the Middle East maybe on a television broadcast after the various bombings. You will see the women wailing and beating their chest and screaming.  That is the connotation in the Hebrew here of just wailing and screaming. And why the women?Well, because the women would have been most closely associated with the hunger that was going on. Their men would come to them after their work on the wall and they would say, “What is there to eat?”  And they would say, “We have eaten it all.  It is all gone.”And so they are crying out against these people in their midst who are making merchandise of them, who are taking their misery and making it an opportunity for personal gain.Well, this is exactly what was going on. These nobles—and I am not sure exactly who they were,  but there were nobles and the leaders of the people, probably the same ones that didn’t want to lay their shoulders to the work back there in chapter three, verse six, they didn’t want to get their hands dirty.  The reason they didn’t is they were sitting back trying to figure out a way to make a buck on this situation out of the misery of other people.  And, of course, there is nothing more discouraging and upsetting than that.Well, when you set out in life to start over, to turn the page and to begin again to repair the walls, it is crucial that you do so with integrity. And, by the way, your personal reformation will not last in your life unless it begins with life in the first place.This series in the book of Nehemiah has been a very clear series preaching to the saints, preaching to those of you that name the name of Jesus.  I have been trying to help you and encourage you at picking up the pieces and making sure that you are going the right direction and growing in your life.  But I want to say something to you this morning that if you listen to the preaching and the teaching and you don’t get anything out of it, it is not moving you or motivating you to grow and to make choices and decisions to help you, well, perhaps it is because you don’t have life at all.  And I want to say this to you.  Many people think that the answer to their problems is religion, the answer to their problems is reformation, the answer to their problems in life is turning over a new leaf or, perhaps, some liturgical Christian participation such as baptism or the Lord’s Supper.  And we look for the answer in all these different places. But I want to tell you that the Bible says that until a person comes to the Lord Jesus and gives him their heart and his life it is not a question of aren’t you good enough or are you bad.  It is a question of are you alive or are you dead.The Bible says in Ephesians chapter two that we were dead in trespasses and sins.  And if you are here today and you have never come to Jesus to put down the first foundation stone of your life, if he has not become the chief cornerstone of your life, if you have never said, “Lord, save me from my sin,” then no other stone can be laid. They are all hollow. None of them will last.  They are all termite eaten lumbers and timbers.  It won’t make any difference because you have to build your life on Jesus. To do otherwise is to build it on sinking sand.Have you ever in your life trusted Jesus Christ to be your Lord and Savior?  Have you ever said to him, “I am a sinner and I am separated from you, God, but I believe Jesus, your Son, died for me and today I trust you.”  Have you done it?  Have you put all of your hopes and aspirations?  Have you put your eternal destiny in the hands of Jesus?  Well, without Jesus, without knowing him and building your life on him, you are building a life on shifting sand.One of the things we want to do most is to restore respect in our life and that is what this sermon is all about.  We want people to respect us.  We want people to take us seriously.  And we want to be able to have moral authority and we want to be able to give advice and opinions and have people take note.But when we say one thing and we do another, like these guys were doing, they were just, you know, they were giving verbal assent, but around the back side they were enriching themselves and letting other people handle the real work.  When we say one thing and we do another we have no moral authority.Let me ask you a question.  Have you ever heard this statement?  “Don’t do as I do.  Do as I say to do?”  How many of you have ever heard that statement?  How many of you that statement makes you mad when somebody tells you that?  “Don’t do as I do.  Do as I do.”“Never mind that I am angry in the home, son.  Don’t you be angry.”“Never mind that I have got myself completely out of control and have no self control. You have self control.”“Never mind that I...”In other words, “Don’t pay any attention to the way I am living.  You just do what I say.”Guess what?  It just won’t work because you have no moral authority.  Many people today, both on the public scene and also in private homes, are giving dictums and giving out all kinds of instructions to other people, but because you are living two lives and you have this huge opposition of duplicity, that is two faced, living two lives, saying one thing and doing another.  People know.  Your family knows you have no moral authority.Well, I tell you.  If you can regain respect in life, it is a wonderful thing.  To have people to be able to look at you and look at you with confidence and know that your word is your bond?  To know that when you say something you mean it and when you promise something you complete it.  If it is at all possible you do it.  I tell you.  Even the world, even the lost world that doesn’t even know our Lord has a great appreciation for integrity, amen?  They do.  Everybody knows that a man of integrity ,a woman of integrity is respectable and they are worthy of respect.  And they respect it.And so I want you to see some things this morning. Write them down quickly.  Here is what I want you to see from those first few verses.  We read them about the crying out.  And the first thing we have to see is respect is repaired, number one, when you own your problems.  Respect is repaired when you own your problems.And you say, “Pastor, what do you mean by that?”Well, just very simply that we don’t just dismiss our problems. We looked at that when we got to face reality.  We can’t just say, “Oh, it’s not a real problem.” You may be having a problem with my problem, but my problem is not a problem for me. It’s a problem for me. Therefore it is not a problem.”  So we dismiss it.“You may not like the way I am.  I have been this way all my life,” somebody might say.  “Well, you know what?  You knew that when you married me or you knew that a long time ago.  When are you going to...what’s going to get through to you that  I am who I am and that’s all there is to it?”Spoken like a person who is a self centered person who is indulgent and is serving themselves as the king of the world and not someone who is growing in grace as the Lord Jesus would want us to do.Don’t dismiss your problem.  Number two, don’t down play your problem. It’s really not a big thing.  How many of you have had this growing up?  I think we have all tried it at one time or another.  We try to down play the problem.  You wanted to seek permission to do something that was against family policy in your home?  By the way, families, it is good.  Have family policies and let them be you policies and don’t let them fluctuate according to what everybody else is doing. But how many of you tried this when you were a kid?  You went to your mom and your dad and you wanted to do this, that or the other and it was just totally against family policy and you tried this. You said, “Well, hey, daddy, everybody else is doing it.  Why it’s not such a bad thing. Yeah, I only got a D minus on that test, but so did everybody else.”  You know, that never did seem to work with my mother.  It just never worked.How many of you have ever heard this?  I know you have heard it, but we will do things like this.  When we were young we would say, “Well, everybody else is doing it.”  And they would say, “I don’t care if the entire world is doing it.  You are not going to do it.”  And they always followed it up with this question.  Everybody knows it.  “If everybody in the world was jumping off the bridge are you going to go jump off, too?”  Bridge, cliff, I mean everybody uses that.  You know, we don’t want to hear it in the life of other people, but do you know what we do?  We use the same excuses.  It takes away our moral authority. We have got a hollow spot in the building block of our life.  You are building on a hollow log.  You are using termite eaten wood to try to say something to others that you are not willing to abide by yourself.  That is what this is all about.Don’t dismiss your problems. Don’t down play your problem.  And, boy, this is the biggest statement of the day.  Don’t donate your problems.You say, “Donate?”Yeah, you know how lots of folks, “I’m just so messed up.  I’ve got so many problems.  I just don’t...can you please help me?”We come over. We give this...we want to give this problem to somebody else.  Wash our hands of it.  Let them have the problem and then we turn around and go make new problems.  Don’t donate your problems.Let me talk to you moms and dads, you mommas and daddies for just a minute.  Please allow your children to suffer the consequences of their behavior.  Let me say that again very clearly.  Please allow your children to suffer the consequences of their behavior whether they are consequences administered by you or if they are consequences administered at school.  Now, obviously you have to make a judgment about what it is they are trying to get.  If they are trying to get them to deny God and to stomp on the Bible at school and they won’t do it, well, God bless them.  Come tell me about it and I’ll bend down and kiss their big toe.  But just here is the point.  In general terms when they have done something and they have misbehaved or they have shown extreme pride or disobedience and they have done it, do not be a part of that army of people to go trotting off down to the school, go trotting off to some authority.  Don’t trot up to pastor Jonathan’s office or pastor Josh’s office.  Don’t go running up there defending your child when you know that your child has done exactly what they said, created a problem.  They spoke to you about it and all you did was try to shift the...let me just share who the people are in this world that are maladjusted, do not know how to behave and never do take responsibility in their life.  Their parents never let them suffer the consequences of the choices and decisions that they made.“Amen, pastor Phil.  That really is good preaching.  God bless you.  Amen.”Don’t donate your problems.Psalm 51:3: “For I acknowledge my transgressions, And my sin is always before me.”  Maybe that is why David was a man after God’s own heart.  He wasn’t sinless, but when he sinned and God put his finger on it he said, “Yep, I’m wrong.  I am wrong.”Proverbs 28:13: “He who covers his sins will not prosper, But whoever confesses and forsakes them will have mercy.”Galatians chapter six, please turn there in your Bible. I don’t usually do this.  I like to stay in one passage, but you really need to see this this morning.  It came up in my small group last week in my home. We discussed it, talked about it and I said, “Wow.  How appropriate for this illustration here.”  Oh, we need to understand that we have to own our problems. They are our problems and we have to own them.Chapter six of Galatians in the New Testament, right before the book of Ephesian says, “Brethren, if a man is overtaken in any trespass, you who are spiritual restore such a one in a spirit of gentleness, considering yourself lest you also be tempted.”Be real careful when a Christian brother, a wife, a son, a daughter is caught in some sort of sin or offense. Don’t get proud and all, you know, high and mighty and all those kind of things because the Bible says, “If any man thinks he stands let him take heed lest he what?”  Fall.Spirit of gentleness and consider,” but look at what it says in verse two.  “Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.”  That is interesting. Drop down to verse five.  “For each one shall bear his own load.”  That’s interesting.  It sounds like a contradiction.It is not a contradiction.  In English we only have one way to express that, but in Greek and many other languages as well, there is more than one way to express that.  The very first one says, “Bear one another’s burdens.” What does that mean?That means when in your life you have an overpowering, crushing burden, you have a load that is impossible for one person to bear, then the Christian brotherhood is supposed to come together and help you carry that load. That is what we are supposed to do.  We are supposed to bear one another’s burdens.  When it is a crushing, overbearing, overwhelming need we come along side one another and we help one another.But it says there in verse number five, “But each one will carry his own burden or his own load.”  It is a different word all together.  It is as if we are carrying a back pack.  You see, If you go on a walk or you go on a trip or you go on a trek or you go on a hike in the mountains and everybody needs their day pack so that they will have the things that they need, everybody is responsible to carry their own burden and to take off.  And so what you do is if somebody with a big heart doesn’t come along and start taking off everybody’s backpacks and putting them on themselves because before you know it they can’t carry their own backpack nor what everybody else is doing. And so one person walks along with out any burden and they are just donating their burden to everybody else and everybody else is carrying it.And I wan tot say to you today that we have built a generation, we have built a society, we are building a government in which no one is ever expected to carry their own load.Well, do not let it be said of you as a Christian because even the world recognizes when a person will not carry their own load.  You see, we are supposed to carry our own load.  But if there comes a huge overpowering crushing load, then we come alongside. We help one another.  We lighten the load.  We strengthen weak knees and weary hands. That is what we are supposed to do.  We have done that here at this church. We continue to do it day in and day out.  But what we do is we recognize that God made everyone a burden bearer. And we are supposed to not donate our problems, our difficulties and daily tasks to other people.The second thing you have to do—and I have to hasten—you pay the price.  Verses one through five.  You just can’t pass on the cost and effort of rebuilding to others.There is a phrase that we use.  So and so gets off scott free.  If you think about that somebody says, “Well, that must be from the...it must have been some story in Scotland, you know, you get off scott free.”No, a scott is a tax.  And they did use it in the British Empire, but there was no such thing as scott free living.  Everybody had to pay a tax.  Everybody had to do it.  So you paid the price.Perhaps those people of chapter three, verse six, that did not want to lay their shoulders to the work, perhaps they were scheming of, they were too busy scheming of how they could make an extra buck out of this situation.What we see here is they wanted the wall built. They wanted things fixed, but they didn’t want it to cost them any effort.  They didn’t want it to cost them any money.  If they could work this thing and milk this thing they could actually enhance their own situation out of it.Now, folks, that is extremely discouraging.  You have got a family. And that family comes together to love and to support one in the family that is going the wrong direction. Perhaps they have become some sort of an addict or they have become dependent upon a substance or maybe they have developed some sort of attitude in their life or they have developed...or they have just made some poor choices and it has cost them dearly.  And the rest of the family comes along to support, to help. And then some friends come along to support and to help. And that person who is receiving all the help and gaining all the benefits sees the advantage. And he realizes that, “Wow, what I can do here is I can just sit back and relax because somebody else is going to take care of this.”  Or he even tries to take advantage of.…We have to pay the price.Look at your passage of Scripture.  Nehemiah five.  I want you to see exactly what is going on here.  I want you to see the best description of this day and age that you will ever read.  Let me show it to you here.  It says here, the very first thing, write it on your Scripture sheet, “A crumbling life costs other people.”Sometimes we just can’t remember.  We think what I do is what I do and it is nobody else’s business.  It only hurts me.  There is no such thing as that. There is no such thing as living and making decisions that only affect you.  It is impossible.  In a home, in a family, in a society, in a church, in an organization what we do affects other people.Now watch this.  I want you to see that a crumbling life costs other people.  Look at verse number three.  “There were also some who said, ‘We have mortgaged our lands.’”  Would you underline that in your Bible?  “We have mortgaged.  We have mortgaged our land.Do you know what we are doing today? The decisions that we make, the choices that we make, the irresponsibility that we show, the refusal to bear our burdens to be people of integrity...do you know what happens?  We are mortgaging the future of our families, our nation, our culture.  That is what we are doing.  We are mortgaging our future.Look at verse number four. We are doing something else. “There were also those who said, ‘We have borrowed money for the king’s tax on our lands and vineyards.’”  We have mortgaged our future, we have borrowed for the present.  In order to get by we are borrowing.  Do you get where we are going here?You say, “Well that just sounds like the way the government is doing it right now.  I mean with social security and all these. They are just borrowing on tomorrow to pay for today.”Well, yeah, we can put it in a great big picture like that and we could talk about that all day long. But the truth is that when a person in their individual life likes to have total indulgence and total self will and they just want to do what they want to do and they don’t care who it costs.  Do you know what you are doing?  You are fulfilling that Old Testament passage Scripture that says that God visits the sins of the fathers on the children to the third and fourth generation because an alcoholic is more apt to have an alcoholic son than a person who is not an alcoholic.  And a person who uses drugs is more apt to have children who use drugs than a person who doesn’t. Do you understand the point?  In other words, we are mortgaging the future, we are spending tomorrow’s money today and we are borrowing to do it.  We are borrowing our children’s lives. We are dooming them in the future. We are planning a path for them. Oh, it is so important, isn’t it, to make your choices wisely.  The example that you set is so hugely important.Do you know that it takes about four generations for somebody to come along and break the cycle?  That is pretty much the way it is.  I mean, homes and families just kind of follow the same cycle until somebody comes along and God in his grace and mercy reaches down and touches a heart.“No, no, no, no, no.  I’m not going through that cycle of divorce and remarriage, divorce and remarriage, no, no, no, no.  I am going to wait. I am going to find the one God wants for me. I am going to keep myself pure.”Somebody else says, “Nope.  I am going to say no to alcohol, no to drugs, no to illicit sex.”Oh that God would give us some people with integrity that would make up their minds and their hearts and give themselves, some young people, some teenagers that would say, “I don’t care what has happened in the past in my family. Right here and right now, beginning today I am going to be a man, a woman, a boy, a girl of integrity.  You are not going to hear me say one thing and see my live something else.”Do you understand?  We are mortgaging the future.  We are borrowing from the present. Look at verse number five. “Yet now our flesh is as the flesh of our brethren, our children as their children; and indeed we are forcing our sons and our daughters to be slaves.”The choices we make can enslave the future generations.  Oh. Wow.  What a picture of the year 2007 in which we live.  Oh, we need to pay attention.You say, “Well, I can’t do anything about it.”No.  You may not be able to fix the entire picture around you of the government, but do you know how we are going to do...do you know how we are going to have the greatest impact?  One person at a time, one family at a time.  Start making decisions and making choices.  Don’t be duplicitous.  Don’t be a person that says one thing and takes advantage of the people around you and continues going the wrong direction.  You pay the price.Third, you appreciate people.  Verses one through five talks about these people that were sacrificing while some where riding scott free.  We appreciate the love of people, the labor of people, the long term commitment of people.  Oh, my soul.  How could it be that a family, a wife or a husband or a child or somebody that comes along loves us and cares for us and helps us and makes excuses for us and does all the things that they do to try to help us and show us that they love us and that they are patient.  And yet we just continually take advantage of those people.  If you want to have respect, if you want to be respected in this life you are going to have to pay the price.  You are going to have to own your problems.  You are going to have to appreciate people.The fourth thing, write it down. If you want to be respected in life you respect other people.  Do you know that respect demands respect?  Did you know that when we respect other people that that is a respectable thing to do?  Did you know that if you would have for people to respect you and to show you some sort of deference that you are going to have to respect and show other people that kind of...?  Write these things down. Respectable people respect people.  That’s all there is to it.  If you are going to be respectable, you are going to show respect.  Respectable people reject disrespect.You know, these kids today and young people and you say, “There he goes...”  Old people, whatever, you know, 25, 50 year. It doesn’t make any difference.  But this generation of people that is ready to take out a knife and stab somebody, slice somebody, shoot somebody, you know...[?]...that kind of stuff.What is that? That hasn’t got anything to do... you wouldn’t know respect if it slapped you in the lips.  I got the worst spankings of my life for riding my bicycle across my neighbor’s yard.“Well, I think your mother was overreacting.”Do you know what?  My whole life I have respected other people because my mother beat the everlasting...she wore herself out until her tongue was hanging out. She said, “No son of mine is going to disrespect his neighbor like that.”  Man, she...I mean she is only about that big.  She nearly killed me.  I was 13 years old and she laid into me like a chicken on a June bug.  You have never seen anything like it in your life.You say, “Well, that was over reacting.”Do you know what?  Do you know that all of my life I have had the habit of respecting the people that are around me and I don’t...I just don’t...you know, I’m not perfect. I am a sinner.  I get angry. You know, I do everything everybody else does, but God be my witness I wish you the best.  I am not going to do things to hurt you or your property. I am not going to get an advantage in my life by making a disadvantage for you because I respect you. What happened to respectable people also giving respect?  You respect peoples’ property.  You respect peoples’ things. You respect peoples’ time.I am going to be honest with you.  People make appointments with me all the time and they just never show up.  I mean they just make an appointment.“Well, pastor I just couldn’t come in.”“Oh, I got it all worked out.  Forgot to call you.”I just want to slap the fire out of somebody does that.  My momma is coming out of me when that, you know...Respectable people respect people.  You want to regain respect?  Be respectable.  Have integrity and people will respect you. It is just real simple.  Respectable people respect people.Respectable people respond to respect. Something else we do if you want to regain the respect of your life and that is you go the extra mile.  You can’t just talk repentance you must walk it.  This is so interesting here.  You know, Nehemiah is a case study in how to confront people. He was really good at it.  I don’t know whether he just enjoyed it or whether, you know, God just used him. I don’t know anybody that loves confrontation, but sometimes, you know, you just have to face up to the situation with people you love.  And I want to tell you the most loving thing you can do for somebody that you know is being duplicitous, they are saying one thing and doing another, is to look them right in the eye, put your arm around them and say, “Listen. I got to tell you.  I love you and because I love you I want to talk to you about this.  This is not right.”You say, “Well, how did Nehemiah do it?”Look at verse number six.  “And I became very angry.”You say, “Well, that doesn’t sound very loving and kind.  That doesn’t sound like this lily livered sissy type Christianity that we are all...”No it isn’t.The outline: Point one.  Get angry.  Now, some of you guys are really enjoying this right now, but wait until point two, all right?  Get angry.“Boy that sounds like somebody...I’m going to give somebody a piece of my mind.”Be careful you won’t have much left.  Get angry.  He did.  Look at verse number six. “And I became very angry when I heard their outcry and these words.”“But, pastor, Christians are never supposed to lose their cool.”Well, you’re right. If you mean to get angry for no cause or to get angry because things don’t go your way or you can’t have it all your way all the time.  We are not supposed to do that.  We are supposed to be kind, peaceable, loving, all of those things.  But the biggest problem today is that Christians never get angry at anything.  We never get angry.You know, I have told you just a few minutes ago, I told about going and signing this thing right here. I mean, it ought to make us worried.  It ought to make us concerned. It ought to make us care enough to want to show up over there and bow our heads in prayer to almighty God and to take the first step of prayer in the situation.  But as soon as I put this thing over with...there are a lot of guys, “Oh, there’s a ball game going on.  I got to go watch that ball game.  I’m not going to be able to be there.”Well, I got to be frank.  It is irritating to me, greatly, that we want great things to happen, but we are not willing to bow our knee and pray and then get up and do something to serve the Lord and make things happen.Listen to me.  We are supposed to get angry from time to time.  Folks, you cannot love flowers if you don’t hate weeds.  You can’t love right if you don’t loathe wrong. You cannot love God and be indifferent towards the devil.  Get angry at sin.  Get angry at unrighteousness.  Get angry at exploitation.And many times an irresponsible person stays that way because he was facilitated instead of lovingly corrected by somebody speaking the truth in love.  We are supposed to do that.“What do you do next, pastor?  How do you confront somebody?”Well, get the facts.  Look at verse number seven.  Here is how you temper that “get angry verse.  Verse seven, first three words, “After serious thought.”You say, “What does that mean?”Well, he got angry, but he didn’t blow up.  He got angry, but he didn’t just go punch people. Now, he does that in chapter 13.  We’ll get there and talk about that later.  He didn’t just explode.  He got angry and then he gave it some serious thought. He tempered it.  He said,  “Now, I have got to think about this.  He said, “Now, is this just me or is it just the way I am looking at it or am I trying to be too controlling?  Do I expect too much?”  He thought it over.  He said, “No.”  He said, “To be honest, these dudes over here are enriching themselves at the sacrifice of other people and there is not enough food.  They are mortgaging our future.  They are borrowing for today and they are ruining the future of our children.  They are selling them into slavery.”He says, “Oh, no, no, no.  I am not over reacting.”What did he do next?  After you get angry then you get the facts, then you get in their face.You say, “Really?”Yeah, in Christian love.  Would you look at verse number seven?  “After serious thought, I rebuked the nobles and rulers, and said to them, ‘Each of you is exacting usury from his brother.’ So I called a great assembly against them.”  He didn’t just accuse them in private.  He made it a public thing.  He said, “I’m going to let you...I’m just going to let you see the people that you are affecting with your life.”Wouldn’t it be something if we could just line up all of the people of our lives that have been affected by the choices and decisions we have made and let them all speak their peace?  Wow.  That is what he did.And then the next thing is you can’t just make a promise.  You have got to perform your promise.  Verse 13 is huge.  “Then I shook out the fold of my garment and said, ‘So may God shake out each man from his house, and from his property, who does not perform this promise.’”It is one thing to have an emotional decision. It is one thing to make a big decision.“Oh, I am just going to turn around.”Did you know there is a whole lot of men who have beat the ever loving fool out of their wives in a drunken rage or because of anger.  They beat them up, came to their senses, came back begging forgiveness. “Oh, it will never happen again. I am going to be a...”And what do they do?  The do it again and again and again.  Partly because they don’t know Jesus and have never been changed from the inside out and partly because that was as far as they intended to carry it in the first place just to get past the moment.You can’t just make a promise. There has to be a performance.  To have moral authority and respect you have to keep your promises.  This is a very vivid illustration of the attitude that some people have that continually takes advantage while making promises to change.  Well, promises, promises, they don’t mean anything without fulfillment and practical application.Nehemiah wasn’t satisfied with the promise of new direction.  He wanted to see the performance in the daily life. And, folks, you can never be guaranteed a reward by doing all of these things.  In the last part of this chapter here it talks about how that Nehemiah himself was the example of integrity.  He didn’t tell the others to make sacrifices and he wasn’t willing to make one himself.  He didn’t say, “Let’s built the wall, but it is not going to cost me anything.”  He refused the allotment of a governor and he had been appointed governor. And he refused the allotment. In fact, he took no money from them and he still fed 150 people at his table every day to make sure that he made up for the shortfall.They were perilous times.  It was very difficult.  He made tremendous sacrifices.  And because of his sacrifice he had a voice.  Because he was not duplicitous people listened to what he said.What could they say to the person living such a life of sacrifice?They could not deny him. They listened to his words.Regaining respect starts with integrity and that means to be whole.  Some people are trying to do this without even being alive spiritually. And the Bible says until our sins are forgiven we are dead in our trespasses and our sins.Would you bow your heads and close your eyes?  Point seven.  Integrity, wholeness, completeness, solid on the inside, no façade, no cracks, no hollowness.  We are who we say we are.Do you want people to just sacrifice for you and help you and encourage you and come along side of you in your life?  Do you want that husband or that wife to forgive you and then help you? Do you want your children to forgive you, receive you and help you?  Do you want your mother, your father, your brother, your sister, you Christian family? Then tell the truth.You will know the truth and the truth will set you what?  Free.Heads are bowed and eyes are closed.  Are you here this morning and you would say, “I have to be truthful.  I do not know Jesus as my Lord and Savior.”Nehemiah 5:1-6 (All Scripture quotations are from the New King James Version of the Bible unless otherwise indicated).Nehemiah 5:6-8Nehemiah 5:8Nehemiah 5:6-13Psalm 51:3Proverbs 28:13Galatians 6:1Galatians 6:2Galatians 6:5Galatians 6:2Nehemiah 5:3Nehemiah 5:4Nehemiah 5:5Nehemiah 5:6Ibid.Nehemiah 5:7Nehemiah 5:13Page  PAGE 18 of  NUMPAGES 18

Defeat Discouragement

Sermon Transcript

“DEFEATING DISCOURAGEMENT”

Pastor Phil Winfield

Nehemiah 4:1-23

October 14, 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

I want to talk to you about defeating discouragement from Nehemiah chapter four. And in order to do that we had better take a peak right up here and realize that as we have studied this book of Nehemiah and we have talked about building the walls of our life or building for a successful life, many of us have had to go back and rebuild our walls.  Others are young and they are just building their life. We are trying to help them.  But everybody here, whether you are an older Christian or a younger Christian or whether you don’t even know the Lord at all, we have to face the fact that in front of us there are always issues at work.  There are always circumstances that are happening. We need to always be on guard and building our life for success.And the way that we looked at this with Nehemiah was first we had to face the reality of our life, take a real honest look, what is going on in my life.  What is right?  Are things going well?  Do we have our head in the sand like an ostrich or are we actually...are we actually facing the truth?Then after we understood that we have to face reality, there was the idea of prayer. And when do we pray?  Well, we pray before we do anything else in our life. And so we pray recognizing that God has put is in position just like he did Nehemiah. We are in the right position to take action. And that first action we take is always prayer.Third, if we are going to make progress we have to proceed through the fear by faith. Fear is always there.  It is always difficult. When you start facing the truth about your life and the truth about your needs and the truth about your church, truth about your community, it is always a fearful thing because we know that any time we stir the water it makes mud. And we know that any time we push the mud is going to push back.  And so we have to face our fears with faith. And faith is not the absence of fear. Faith is going on instead of our fears.Then we had to investigate and communicate.  You say, “Well, what was that all about?  I forgot.”  Well, there are many details that have to do with how we got ourselves in the situations we are in in our life.  So we have to address them.  We have got to begin untying some of the knots.  We have to start taking these things to the Lord in prayer and seeing how God can begin to work things out.  So we investigate and then we communicate to those that we love the most and those that love us and care. This is what I am attempting to do.  Here is the direction that I am going and I want you to know about it so that you can help me in doing that.And during that lesson and that sermon I made a statement that may be one of the weightier statements of everything I say the whole time and that is that we alone, I alone, must face my problems.  I alone must face my problems, but I alone cannot fix my problems.  We need the help of God.  We need the help of other believers.  We need the help of our family members.  We need support. And so that is what that is about.And then, number five, that was so well illustrated this morning by the small group, we need teamwork. A team is always better than an individual and two people working alone can’t get as much done as two people working together.  And a three fold cord is not easily broken, Proverbs tells us.  And so we are supposed to work together.Now, we come to week number six.  And, folks, we are on the downhill side of this study. This is number six. Numbers six, seven and eight, I believe, are the most important messages of the entire series.  Tune in, listen and I believe God is really going to make an impact.They key building block for today that I want you to remember, the word that I want you to carry with you when you leave is the word “tenacity.”You say, “Pastor, is tenacity a Bible word?”Nope, but it sure is a Bible principle and it is a Bible foundation.  It takes tenacity.You say, “Well, what’s tenacity?”Tenacity is what my rottweiler dogs had in Peru.  My rottweilers would get a hold of something. If they got a hold of it that was the end of it.  I had a dog named Blitz and Blitz was a rottweiler and she loved to play and her play toy was a full sized car tire.  And you think I’m kidding, but I’m not kidding.Now, it was a worn tire.  I’m not going to make you think it was a Mack truck tire with full tread. No it was a tire, but a full size car tire and it was worn.That crazy dog could bite it right in the tread, crunch it down and you did not get it away from her.  That was all there was to it.  And we dragged that dog all over the place.  One time we were robbed and she got a hold of somebody.  Boy, I’d hate to see the person that she got a hold of.But anyway, tenacity.  Get a hold of something and just hold on.  Get working on something and just not let up.  Tenaciousness, tenacity.  And that is the word that you need to remember this morning.  And it is an idea.  It is a thought and it is an absolute necessity.  It is a building block in your life that you have got to have.  So tenacity.Let me read it to you beginning in verse number one.  Here is what God’s Word says.But it so happened, when Sanballat heard that we were rebuilding the wall, that he was furious and very indignant, and mocked the Jews.  And he spoke before his brethren and the army of Samaria, and said, "What are these feeble Jews doing? Will they fortify themselves? Will they offer sacrifices? Will they complete it in a day? Will they revive the stones from the heaps of rubbish––stones that are burned?"  Now Tobiah the Ammonite was beside him, and he said, "Whatever they build, if even a fox goes up on it, he will break down their stone wall."Now that was a lie. The thing was nine to 12 feet wide and a fox is not going to knock it down.Hear, O our God, for we are despised; turn their reproach on their own heads, and give them as plunder to a land of captivity!  Do not cover their iniquity, and do not let their sin be blotted out from before You; for they have provoked You to anger before the builders.  So we built the wall, and the entire wall was joined together up to half its height, for the people had a mind to work.Now it happened, when Sanballat, Tobiah, the Arabs, the Ammonites, and the Ashdodites [notice that the crowd against them is growing. They are stirring others. When they] heard that the walls of Jerusalem were being restored and the gaps were beginning to be closed, that they became very angry, and all of them conspired together to come and attack Jerusalem and create confusion.  Nevertheless we made our prayer to our God, and because of them we set a watch against them day and night.  Then Judah said, "The strength of the laborers is failing, and there is so much rubbish that we are not able to build the wall."And, Father, add your blessing to the preaching and teaching of your Word and help us to put this key piece in our wall of our life and that is the sticktoitiveness, tenacity, dedication and commitment to the task.  We ask it in Jesus’ name. Amen.Would you be seated?Everybody loves the start of a thing.  Being on a high school football team, joining the Marines, getting a medical degree, finishing the basement or even running a marathon all have lots of participants at first and up to a point.  Somewhere between the over romanticized idea of being a marine or scoring a winning touchdown we face the troublesome facts that it will require work and that there will be opposition.That is a funny little detail of anything that you are trying to accomplish in your life.  It is that hated part.  It is you start moving forward and try to accomplish anything, whether you are trying to get a high school or college degree or whether you are trying to repair your home and reestablish the lines of communication with your wife, it is going to take two things.  There are going to be two issues to face.   Number one, there will be work involved.  Number two, you will face opposition.  It is axiomatic. You are not going to be able to get by without it.To keep going at the halfway point in the marathon is the great battle. To keep going half way to the goal is the battle that we always fight.  Getting beyond, getting beyond half way is the difficult place.It is very interesting to me that just about the half way point of this wall, they have got this thing up to the half way point.  I don’t know what half way was.  It might have been...maybe it was an eight foot, 10 foot, 12 foot wall, but do the math.  It is going to be either here or here or here.  It was a big wall they were building and they got it up to about half way and just about when it became noticeable that they were making progress, the opposition, the difficulty, the tiredness, it started to set in.  And so it works that way.There are people in this room this morning that time and again you have made a commitment or you made an emotional decision.  “It’s time to change my life, time to turn it around, time to start...”And, boy, you start making progress and just about the half way point you get difficulties and you get discouraged and people stand up against you and people say things.  Well, to keep going we have to have tenacity.After a concert someone had told a world famous pianist, “I want to learn to play just like you do with the same ease and accomplishment.”He said, “Great.  You need to go back to being six years old and then you need to choose beginning at six years old to always choose practice over pleasure, discipline over leisure.  Forget baseball, basketball, football and other time consuming hobbies and work through the hard times, the boring times, the lonely times and the times that people thought that you were a social misfit.  And when you get good at the piano and you get a little bit accomplished at the piano.  Don’t quit.  Redouble your efforts and you will go from good to great.”That pianists, Dino.  Just about the time when we begin to see progress in rebuilding our lives something in variable happens. Old Testament figures like Ezra and Nehemiah, New Testament Christians like Jesus and like Paul faced this problem, faced this situation and you and I will face it, too.  And that is, at the half way point we run into discouraging circumstances and discouraging people.  And people and circumstances team up to try to stop you in your tracks.  Don’t let it shock you. Don’t let it be something that you weren’t anticipating.  Jesus said in John chapter 16 and verse 33:These things I have spoken to you, that in Me you may have peace.A lot of people  hear that part, but they don’t read the rest of the sentence.In the world you will have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.Did you get that?   In the world you will have trouble. In the world you will have tribulation.  In the world you will have trials.  In the world you will face difficult circumstances.  And when the forewarned opposition heats up as we continue rebuilding we have got a choice to make. I have got a decision to make.  I have decided to try to start changing my life.  I am obeying the Lord.  I know the Lord as my Savior, but now then I am setting about to let him have the lordship in my life.  I have turned around.“And, pastor, just as soon as I start to do that, that’s when the difficulties arise.”Well, you can choose to do one of three things.  Number one, you can give up and say, “What’s the use.”“Well, I tried.  I made a turn. But, you know, what’s the use?  Nobody is helping me.  Everybody is criticizing me. I’m just going to have to give up.”Or you can do number two.  You can slack up and you can say, “Well, not now.  Now must not be the time.  I’m just going to have to back off on this and not get so wild eyed about the whole thing and I am going to have to do this at a more paced manner.”Or the third think you can do—which is the correct thing—and that is we can look up and confess that we cannot do it alone.Here in Nehemiah’s book God has given us an example, an inspired true life example of what to do when discouraging opposition shows up in our journey to building a successful life.  How do we do it?  How do we defeat discouragement?  You defeat discouragement with tenacious faith.Voice: Hey, pastor Phil, you know, that’s really easy for you to say.  At the same time you don’t live in my world.  Every day I go to work. Guys criticize me for being a Christian.  You know, I do try to walk the walk and not just talk the talk all the time.  But, you know, they are after me.  They are slamming me.  They are bringing me way, way below down.  I get discouraged at work.  Well, not only that.  I’ve got other bomb throwers in my life.  They want to throw grenades of ridicule, grenades of malice; whether it be my family, my friends I just feel like sometimes they are all out to get me whether it be from my sister, my mom, my dad, my mother, even my wife.  The shrapnel of what they say tears at my spirit and, quite frankly, it is starting to destroy my soul.You know, I hear from them, too, “Oh, Bechtel, you’ll never change, you’ll never amount to anything. You never, you haven’t.”I just can’t take it anymore.  I don’t know what to do.  I can’t measure up.  It’s all fine and good what you say here in the Word and what we have learned in Nehemiah, but, you know, you don’t know about this because you don’t live in my world.Somewhere in this process of building our lives, rebuilding our lives, somewhere about half way to victory, discouragement sets in.  The people of our life and the stuff of our life begins to get in the way.  We begin to listen to the criticism. We begin to feel the pressure and as we have already stated when a person is motivated to rise up to repair their life Satan will always rise up to oppose those repairs.  Count on it.  Discouraged people abound in all walks of life at all ages of life and everyone’s life at some time or another. Don’t think we are talking about a couple of speed bumps along the way. No, indeed.  Doing the right thing for yourself, for your family, doing the right thing for your culture, it can be dangerous.  And only tenacious commitment and unyielding faith will keep you going.  Don’t get the wall half built and just quit.  Keep on going.“And so how, pastor?  What do I have to do?”Well, write it down in your sheet.  The first thing you need to understand and that is the first major point is that we need to anticipate discouragement.  You can attribute half the victory or half the defeat to the anticipation of an obstacle that you will encounter.A few years ago on one of our Indian treks that we do in the mountains we noticed that there was one man that was lagging behind and he seemed to really be afraid when we get on narrow mountain paths.  He would hug the mountain and move really slow.  Beads of sweat would pop out on his head.After a couple of hours on the second day of walking I finally asked him, “Are you afraid of heights?”And he said, “Yes.”And he was afraid of heights and he was very upset about not being informed concerning the dangerous heights included on the Andean mountain trek.  He was not from this church so I asked him and I said, “What were you told?”And he said, “Well, the way I understood it I was told it was as simple as taking a walk across the pasture.”I said, “I’m sorry.  This is the Andean mountain trek, you know, 20,000 foot mountains and so on.  And they are very tall.  And none of these mountains are like a pasture.”What he did not do is he did not anticipate the difficulty.  I want to tell you from the very start of everything that I say today that half the battle is being able to keep going when you come under attack is knowing that the attack is coming. Whenever you are making the right choices and following God in your life and you decide to rise up and build or you decide to make changes or you decide as we said last week to make a trip to the refuse gate and get rid of some of the things of your life so that you can begin the right things in our life.  Just as soon as you decide to do that, anticipate it, count on it, take it to the bank, you will be opposed.Aspiring pianists don’t know what they are really going to expect unless somebody shares it with them.  People headed for Marine boot camp are not really ready for what might come.  And, sadly, people trying to build and rebuild their homes and lives need to anticipate that there will be difficulty, there will be opposition.The first thing you are going to face—and write this down—is people may put you to derision. They may laugh at you and mock you.  And it is a very discouraging thing for people to make fun of what you are trying to do.  Ridicule and mockery is hard to take.A little by word for you parents when your children are learning how to do something and you have a daughter that is learning how to make a cake, don’t make fun of it.  You have got a son that is trying to learn how to mow the lawn and he can’t cut a straight line, don’t worry about it. Help him.  Don’t mock him.  Don’t make fun of him.But in this story we are talking about right here as we look at this, here are some people that are rebuilding Jerusalem.  They have gone back there to the walls and they are digging out of the rubble.  It is a difficult task in the first place. They have gone to this wicked web that they have weaved in their history and they are trying to pull the rubble out.  They are trying to take away the stones, put them back on the wall, build it up.  They are trying to do something positive.  And just as soon as they begin doing it their enemies show up and they begin to ridicule them and mock them.  And people will put you to derision.Sanballat the pagan represents the pagan world around us.  Many times foolish friendships do that.  We formed many friendships through our lifetime that we thought were friendships, but they weren’t. They were acquaintances and, perhaps, leashes.  Perhaps their lives were being spurred on in the evil they were doing by the life that you were living.  And so they weren’t really friends at all.  And we find out that when we begin to change and repentance begins to take place in our life and the wall starts coming up to half height, people that are enslaved by drink, people that are enslaved by drugs, harmful habits, those full of anger or those that have just decidedly anti Christian.  They begin to laugh. They begin to mock.  The Bible says that that person is a scorner and a mocker. And what should you do with them? Ignore them.  Just keep on building.  Just keep on going forward.  Just keep doing what the Lord has led you to do.  Just keep going for your future.Like Tobiah, the Ammonite.  Now, he was a distant family member that...he had decided he was going to rise up and cause them pain and cause them problem and ask they what is the use?  Why do you think you are doing that?  He should have been encouraging them, but he was discouraging them.  And so what do you do even when distant family members [?] you have tried this before.  You have done this before.  Why don’t you just give up?  You are who you are.  People don’t change.Well, people can change.  How many of you are witnesses to the fact that the grace of God changes people?  Will you raise your hand?  Me, too.  Oh, he does.  God’s grace is sufficient for any need and he changes people. He doesn’t just change our destination, he changes our disposition.  Let me say that to you again.  God is not only going to change our destination about where we are going to live in eternity, he will change your disposition.  He will take that sourness out. He will take that crankiness, meanness.  He will take away that disposition of attack away from you so that you can be a different person.The Bible says that in Christ all things are made new in 2 Corinthians 5:17.  “If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new” especially the disposition and the attitude of a person.Ands so people, they are going to mock you.  But that is not all.  And as we look at verse number seven and eight there:Now it happened, when Sanballat, Tobiah, the Arabs, the Ammonites, and the Ashdodites heard that the walls of Jerusalem were being restored and the gaps were beginning to be closed, that they became very angry, and all of them conspired together to come and attack Jerusalem and create confusion.What did they conspire to do?  Go on the attack.  They decided that they were going to do more that ridicule, mock and laugh at.  It wasn’t enough that they could just be the butt of a joke. That wasn’t enough. Now then they have got to go over there and do something physical. They have got to go over there and just make some real effort.I shared in the first service that I had a man in our church that while going through the Nehemiah series and had made some decisions, he is a man of character for man years, but he was working somewhere in a so called Christian boss told him, “Here is what I want you to do.  I want you to write down some numbers and I want you to do something crooked and I want you to do something that is a lie and I want you to help me line my pockets and line the pockets of this business by a little bit of fancy work there with some accounting.”This Christian member of our church says, “Nope.”  He says, “I can’t do that.  I cannot participate in that.  It’s wrong.”He appealed to him. He explained to him.  The boss—quote, unquote, a Christian—became very, very upset, fired him on the spot because he would not do it.Well, I am here to say that God took note of that and God is watching and God is going to watch over those that are his.  The Bible says that I have never see the righteous forsaken or his seed begging bread.  And God is going to take care of that person.but I want you to know that there are those out there will that will try to get you sidetracked.  People will put you in danger.  When words of ridicule are not enough, when words of mocking and jest are not enough they will come after you.There is at least one person that is after every one of us and that is Satan himself.  I have said it.  You rise up to make change, Satan will rise up to oppose you.  And how does he do it?  Well, one way he comes is like a roaring lion the Bible says in 1 Peter 5:8, full frontal attack, scare you to death, just come right at you trying to scare you.  That’s what these folks did. They came right at the children of Israel.Now, you have to understand this little rag tag group of people that are trying to rebuild this mammoth wall around this city.  You have got to understand this picture.  In your Scripture sheet that you have for your grace groups that you are going to study later there is a map right on the front of it and it shows the approach of these armies coming from these other places that were going to attack.  They were surrounded.How many of you have ever felt surrounded even when you are trying to do the right thing you feel surrounded by people that are not giving you much help?  Would you put...yes, that’s the way it is, isn’t it?  That’s the way they work. They were surrounded.  They were threatened. They were mocked, ridiculed, laughed at.  Now it is getting serious. “We are going to attack you.”Well, Satan is going to make a full frontal attack.  He is going to come like roaring lion and just try to scare you out of your wits.  If that doesn’t work he is going to do like he did in the Garden of Eden in Genesis chapter three. He is going to slither in.Imagine them working with those rocks and there they are working and here a snake sticks its head out here or there and scares them to death while they are working.Do you know Satan slips in? Satan slithers in? He slithered in to the Garden of Eden?  And do you know he even slithered in there to the garden where Jesus was praying before he went on to Calvary?   He slithers in. He tries to tempt and test and to discourage.  And that is the way he is.And then he does something else even more dangerous.  It is like a faithful friend or like an angel of light.  Satan likes to present himself—2 Corinthians 11:14.  And I have got to tell you that whenever you hear somebody that has been an acquaintance or a friend or even a distant family member with you, you are making changes, you have got your wall up to the half height.  You have got your life on the road to mend and you are starting to grow, you are in the Word of God. You are communicating with your family.  You have said no to a drug or said no to alcohol or you are changing, you are getting a hold of that anger.  All of the sudden some of the people that you have been around, that have been running with you, all of the sudden they look at you and they come along like this faithful friend, put their arm around you and say, “Hey, man.  Don’t got at this too hard.  Listen, you just, you know, you’re going to really discourage yourself and you just can’t do that.  And, you know, people don’t really change, they just start speaking to you and start talking to you like an angel of light,” like they are trying to really be your friend.  Well, that’s not the kind of friend that you need.You know what?  People are going to put your in danger.  People are going to put you to derision. Something else people are going to do—and this is such a difficult thing—is people are going to disappoint you.How many have ever been disappointed in anybody?  Could you raise your hand up?  Me, too.  How many people have ever been disappointed in you? Could you raise your hand up?  Yeah, me, too.  People disappoint us.This next one is really hard to take.  Look at verse number 10.  “Then Judah.”You say, “That’s only two words.”That’s right, but make sure you understand who Judah is.  Then Judah rose up and here is what Judah said."The strength of the laborers is failing, and there is so much rubbish that we are not able to build the wall."  And our adversaries said, "They will neither know nor see anything, till we come into their midst and kill them [notice the danger] and cause the work to cease."Verse 12:  “So it was, when the Jews who dwelt near them came, that they told us ten times, ‘From whatever place you turn, they will be upon us.’”Judah. Who was Judah?  Well, Judah is one of the 12 tribes.  In fact, Judah is the location in the tribe in which Jerusalem is located.  The city of Jerusalem, the rebuilding project is located in the territory of Judah and who are the people that were coming along to point out some things to them to discourage them?  They were their own relatives.Did you know people can be disappointing?  Do you know what they did?  The first thing they did was point out the problems in verse number 10.  I call them the rubble rousers.You say, “Rubble rousers.  Pastor, it is rabble rousers.”I know that, but for my purpose this morning it is the rubble rousers.  And what are they doing? Well, they are rousing them up about the rubble.  Here is what they said to them.  They said, “First of all, you just don’t have enough strength.  You have little strength.”Look at verse number 10. “Judah said, ‘The strength of the laborers is failing.’”  “We’re tired. We have been working on...look at all these people. They are just tired. They have got their own homes to take care of.”  Of course, that is what we are trying to do here. “They have got their own jobs. They have got other things.  They have got other issues. They have got other things going on.  Everybody is tired.  Why don’t you just take a break?”Can I tell you what Satan would like to get you to do in your road to recovery, in your road to growth, in your road to rebuilding your life?  Do you know what he would like to get you to do?  He would like to get you to take a spiritual vacation. Take a rest.You say, “What are you talking about? Aren’t we supposed to take a vacation?”Yep. Take a physical vacation.  Your body needs rest.  But don’t you even think about taking a spiritual vacation.You say, “What’s a spiritual vacation?”It’s a time when you decide that you don’t need to be in the Lord’s presence.  You don’t need to talk to the Lord.  You don’t need to read his Bible a little bit.  You don’t need to pray over it.  You’re just fine.  Everything is going to be ok.  You just can’t keep up this pace.  You need to back off and just take a rest, just take a vacation.  It is wearying.Well, the Bible says just the opposite. The Bible say that they that wait upon the Lord shall do what?  Renew their strength, “they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint.”But do you know what the world would like us to think?  “I mean, this whole spiritual thing, this whole God thing, this whole church thing, this whole living for the Lord it is just so cumbersome and it is just so wearying and it is just going to wear you out.”Folks, it is going to do just the opposite for your soul.  You never take a spiritual break.  You never take a spiritual vacation.  I can tell you of the shipwrecks of people and people’s lives that I have known that have taken a spiritual vacation. Let me just give you an example. I was talking to somebody in this church and I was talking to them and I said, “Say, you have decided you are going to walk away from your wife and walk away from your children.  You are going to abandon your home.  You are going to go do something else.  You have gotten involved with somebody else.  Let me just ask you one question.  I’m just curious about something.”“Ok, go ahead.”“Well here is my question.  In the process of going through this thing and being tempted and giving in to the temptation…”“Well, I don’t look at it as temptation.  I look it as I just want to be happy.”“Well, ok, however you want to look at it. In the process of doing that I have just got one question.  While you were thinking about it, while you were contemplating, while you were considering the sin, while you were considering leaving your wife, leaving your children, leaving your home, one question: Were you carrying on a daily relationship with God in heaven and fellowship with him through a little bit of Bible reading, a little bit of prayer and waiting before the Lord and seeking his guidance?”“Well, no.  I’ve got to be honest.  I really haven’t been doing...”I have never in my entire ministry—going on 29 years—I have never talked to one single person who has made life changing decisions that were destructive in nature who did so while he was on his knees.  You never take a spiritual vacation.  You just don’t do that.You say, “Pastor, what is this study all about?  What are you talking about in the book of Nehemiah?  How am I going to build this wall?”Not near as hard as you think.  But it is going to take tremendous tenacity.  You are going to have to build into your life.  Listen to your pastor.  You are going to have to build into your life.  You are going to have to build into your life the good habits of getting before God daily.You say, “Wow. That’s real legalistic and everything.”It is not any more legalistic than brushing your teeth everyday.  It is not any more legalistic than eating three meals a day.  It is not any more legalistic than going to sleep every night.  It is not any more legalistic than getting up every morning.  It is not any more legalistic than taking a bath every day.  There is nothing legalistic about it.  It just makes good sense that if you are going to have connection with God, know his will, have his protection, his guidance in your life you are going to have to be in contact with God.This is not the Christianity of the 21^st century.  The Christianity of the 21^st century is flash and splash and big stars and wonder and some guy over here with some big story in a book and all that kind of stuff and this seminar and that conference.And you say, “Pastor, don’t you ever you go to seminars?”I go to all kinds of them.  None of them build my inner being.  Only presence before the Lord can do that.  You are going to have to build it into your life.  And that is what we are talking about, building this wall.  People can put you in danger. People can disappoint you.  Even the people that you really do love and love you mistakenly can point out that you are tired, that you have little strength. Take a break.  They will point out that there is a lot of junk.  I call them the rubble rousers, remember.  They say, “Oh, man, your life is...you just got to be happier with small stuff. You just can’t expect that God is going to change all of your life.  How about if you just...”No, it is what we do is we make the assumption that I just got to be satisfied with just a very little bit of God’s will for my life and not a completely radical change in my life.  There is lots of junk.  It is a large task they said. The people are tired.Not only did they point to the problems, they were rubble rousers, the pointed to the opposition. They were trouble rousers.You say, “That’s not a word either.”But will you give me just a little license here this morning?  Rubble rousers and trouble rousers, the people who like to stir up trouble.  The men of Judah should have been working, but they were spending too much time looking at why they couldn’t build and conversing with the enemy about it.  They warned them 10 times.  “Oh, man, the enemy is strong. The enemy is coming.”They got to consider... you know what?  They spent more time contemplating failure than they did working on success.Do you know what losers do?  Losers worry about failing.  Do you know what winners do?  Winners plan on succeeding and they keep to the plan and they keep going forward.Do you know what Judah did?  He conversed with the enemy about defeat.  Do you know what Satan would like to do?  Get you off track, stop you from working, get you to take a spiritual vacation so he can sit on your shoulder and tell you, “You will never change.  You are never going to be different.  You are always going to be the same. You are a flunky.  You are a jerk.  You are a fool. You will never make it.”  He will just tell you that over and over and over.  And as long as you are listening you are not changing.And so they point to the opposition.  People disappoint you.  They point out problems.  They point to the opposition. And, folks, don’t listen to the riff raff of your life. They don’t care about you. They care about themselves.  They are against you and your change because it puts the pressure on them.Lots of people hate you because of the light that you shine upon them when you begin to change.  Do not listen to the people who think they make themselves brighter by blowing out your candle.You know it is a dog eat dog world out there and that happens every day in the work place.  It happens in schools. It happens on football teams and baseball teams.  Instead of rejoicing in somebody else’s success what do we think?  “Well, if they are successful, that means I have got to put them down in order for me to go up.”Do you know why people really have a hard time when somebody begins to change and their life starts taking order and all of a sudden God starts getting active in their life and where they were angry they are not so angry anymore and where they didn’t have self control they now have self control and where they used to be a drunk they walk away from it and where they used to be involved in all kinds of addictions and all kinds of behavioral difficulties?  They begin to change. Do you know why they get so upset and they begin to criticize?  Because, let me just say this to you.  As your life changes and we begin to be salt and primarily when we begin to be light, the light of our life casts light on their life.  Say it again.  The light of our life casts light on their life and light always shows up where the darkness is and it runs it away.Do you know what people have a hard time with when your life starts changing?  You are changing and they know that they should, too.  How many of you know what I am talking about?  Oh yeah.  Don’t let it stop you.  Don’t let it stop you.  You are going to do more to help them by you changing than by you staying like you were.Listen.  When God saves somebody in a family an that person becomes a new person in Christ, that family, even though it creates a rift in the beginning, that family is far closer to hearing the gospel and coming to Jesus because somebody got saved and somebody began to change in that family than if that person never would have gotten saved.And I will take it further.  If you are in your family and you have an extended family in which every one is going the wrong direction, you go ahead and make up your mind to serve the Lord with all of your heart because he can turn it around and he can use you as an influence to turn the light on in that family where all of the sudden yeah they will be angry, yes they will fight against you, yes they will criticize you, mock you, deride you, cut you out of the will. They may do all kinds of things. But sooner or later the light that you are shedding on them may draw them to Christ.Please don’t give up.  I have got to finish.  Listen to this verse of Scripture.  I love this.  Hebrews chapter 12, verse one:Therefore we also, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which so easily ensnares us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith.Do you see that right there that there is a great cloud of witnesses?  I thought for many years that that meant that all the people in heaven are watching everything we do here on earth.  Man, wouldn’t that be embarrassing. No, I don’t believe that is what that is talking about. I believe that these are witnesses of the grace and goodness of God.  And I believe they are out there screaming and saying, “Oh, just tell them, Lord, tell them, Jesus, tell them, Holy Spirit.  Don’t give up.  Keep fighting.  Keep going forward.  Keep doing the right thing because it is worth it.  We are in heaven. We are in the Lord’s presence. It is unspeakable and full of glory and I cannot even describe it to you. And if you will just be faithful on earth the rewards are beyond wonderful in heaven.  Be faithful.”It is a cloud of witnesses that are saying, “Just keep on going.”Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to see these cheering crowds?  Wouldn’t it be great to hear the cloud of witnesses that have gone on?  They are witnesses of the fact that God is faithful.  Victory is worth the fight.  They know that tenaciously pressing forward will pay off in eternal rewards and earthly blessings.  And they say in a unified chorus, “Just keep running.”And to do so you have to deepen your commitment to reconstruction of your life, deepen your commitment to your home.Voice: How, pastor Phil?  How?  You say deepen my commitment and reconstruct my home and my life and I try.  But I can’t do everything that is asked of me.  I take kids to school in the morning.  I go to work, PTA.  I take kids to practice. We come home.  I cook.  I clean.  I do laundry.  I pray with my children.  I be a wife.  And that’s on an easy day.  Too many things are pulling me too many different directions.  And I know that those who have gone before are cheering, but sometimes I can’t hear it.  And I know, by faith I know that the victory will be worth the fight. But  sometimes I am too tired to stand, let alone fight.And I know you say we need to tenaciously press forward.  But sometimes I don’t even know how to press forward or what the fight even is.  But still I will try to press on, to fight the good fight, to take a stand.  But often I feel like a solitary warrior alone, uncertain of the battle plan, not even knowing how to begin.  So how, pastor Phil, how?How?  Write these things down on your sheet just as quickly as you can. We must deepen our commitment.  How do we do it?  How do we keep going forward?  Well, it is to remember that any one individual with the Lord on his side is not in the minority, but the yare in the majority.  Me plus God makes a majority in any situation.  God is fighting for us.  And that is the first thing we need to do is remember who fights for us.  Verse four and five talks about God fighting for us.  Verse number 15 says, “And it happened, when our enemies heard that it was known to us, and that God had brought their plot to nothing, that all of us returned to the wall, everyone to his work.”We have to remember that the Lord has said, “I will never leave you nor forsake you.”  The Bible...we have to understand that God is good. He is good all the time to his children.  We have to understand that he is our strong tower. He is our hiding place.  He is our refuge.  He is the place of safety and those that run into him are safe.   And so we have to remember who it is that fights for us.  This rag tag group of people building a wall couldn’t build a wall if God had not been with them.  And I want you to know that God has put you in a world as if it were a river and the river is going one way and you are swimming the other.  And you cannot do it by yourself.  You have to remember who fights for you.The second thing you have to do is remain committed to the wall.  Verse number six mentions a little word that is irreplaceable.  It is not fun.  It is not enjoyable.  It is not the word we all want to hear, but it is the four letter little word, a dirty little word we think. And it is the little word “work.”  And that is that they returned to the work. They were dedicated to the work.And, folks, I just want to say to you in your relationships, in your homes as difficulty comes in relationships you must understand that it is not going to be three easy lessons and snap your finger and that is going to be the end of it and your relationship is going to be restored.  It is going to take work.  It is going to take diligence.  It is going to take humility.  It is going to take bowing before the Lord.  It is going to take keeping the best...what is best for you, for your family, for your loved ones and mine.  You have to remain committed to the wall.Next week’s sermon really, really zeroes in on that one.Then the next thing you have to do is you have to remind yourself of the cause of what you are doing in the first place.Do you know what the greatest lack of understanding is concerning the Christian home today?  And that is that God’s great purpose for the home, of course it is that we would have our needs met as human beings in the world.  Of course it is so we can bring godly offspring into the world.  But the real reason for a Christian home is so that the world could have a picture of the love that Jesus has for his church.  That’s right.  A Christian home is supposed to be the best illustration on planet earth of what the relationship between Jesus Christ and his church is.  And what was that relationship?  The Bible says that Jesus calls the church his bride and that he gave himself for her, that he washed her with the Word, that he bled and died for her, he sacrificed himself for her.Oh, it is that self sacrificial, full, no cost too great dedication that it takes to make a home work.  There is no cost too great.  There is no commitment that is too great to make the home work, to make your life change and to serve the Lord.Do you know what the real cause and real purpose of your home is?  Verse 14 talks about the Lord who is great and awesome. Do you know what the world needs to see?  It needs to see some homes that are built on the Word of God.  It needs to see some homes with great commitment one to another.  It needs to see some homes where we remember those words that we said before, a pastor, a priest, a minister when we said those words “I do” concerning, “Do you promise to keep only unto her, do you promise to keep only unto him?”We need to keep our promises. And we need to understand that the one who wrote down the promise and was present and was a testimony to the ceremony was God almighty himself.  He is great and he is awesome and God wants glory in our home.  And that is the place that he is seeking glory.And we remind ourselves of that cause.The next thing is—and this may be the most important of all—we need to reclaim the purpose of God in your home and be willing to fight for it.  Look at verse number 14.  “I looked, and arose and said to the nobles, to the leaders, and to the rest of the people, ‘Do not be afraid of them. Remember the Lord, great and awesome, and fight for your brethren, your sons, your daughters, your wives, and your houses.’”Oh, you know what?  I believe that we have just lost the fight.  I believe that there is not any fight left in us.  I believe that in the middle of our situations of our homes and our families and we see the difficulties, I think that flight has become far easier than fight.But I am here to tell you this morning that there ought to be a holy and ambitious fight in the heart of every man and in the heart of every woman.  You had better be ready to fight for your children.You say, “Well, what am I fighting against?”This culture would like to pervert your children.  Did you know that?  Did you know that this world...Hollywood would like to pervert your children and the culture of this world and maybe even the culture of the grade school and grammar school and high school where your children go to school. They would like to get them to conform to their image instead of the image of God.Have you got any fight left in you?  Do you have any will to fight for your children, for your homes?  Do you have any will to fight for your mates?You know, the very first thing I think about and we think about that is where is the enemy? You show me the enemy and I will fight him.People ask me all the time, “Pastor, are you aggressive?”Am I aggressive?  Yeah.  I am.  When I think about fighting for my children and fighting for my home and fighting for my family and fighting for my country and fighting for my nation and fighting for the Word of God, well, I want to...  “Where is the enemy?”  And we can talk about that.  Hollywood is an enemy.  And we could point at all of these different things but I am going to tell you the greatest enemy.  Listen to your pastor.  The greatest enemy that I am going to fight, the greatest enemy that you are going to fight...and if you are man here this morning the greatest enemy you are going to fight is the one you shave every morning because the Bible says that we sin when we are drawn away of our own what?  Lusts.  I am going to have to win the battle with self.  I am going to have to stop asking:  What is it is going to make me happy for the next five years?  And I am going to have to start asking myself:  What is going to be the best for my family for the next five years, 10 years, 20 years.  I am going to have to stop asking: Well, what would I really like to do with this money and how would I like to invest this money over the next five years?You better start asking: What would be the best thing for me to do for my family and for my children and for my...you had better start fighting the fight with yourself. Fight the fight of self indulgence.  Fight the fight of lustful thinking. Fight the fight of pornographic minds.  Fight the fight.  You are going to have to fight because Satan is going to put up a battle.Are you aware that you are going to build and battle the rest of your life?  You can never stop.  That is the last point.  I don’t even have time to look at on your sheet. But do you know what?  For the rest of our lives we are going to have to build.  Do you know what they did? They had to have a sword in one hand and a trowel in the other because the enemies were everywhere. The enemies came at them and they couldn’t lay down their sword just to build because if they did they would get stabbed in the back.  And they couldn’t lay down their trowel just to fight with the sword because if they did then there wouldn’t be any building going on.And so what do you have go to do?   You have got to fight the enemies of your soul at a continuous clip and then you have got to be building the right things into your life all the time. You never stop doing one to do the other and you never stop doing the other to do the one.  You never quit.  You are building and you are battling in your life for the rest of your life.Do you know that is what they did?  The enemy surrounded them. They came at them to attack them. They tried to test them unawares, but they did not do it because every man strapped a sword on his side and held a trowel in his hand.  And while some were working, others were watching.Are you understanding what I am saying to you this morning?  It is a full time task of building into your life the character of Jesus Christ and it is a full time task of being alert and watching the devil may want to slip in.Just about the time you think you have got the whole thin whipped and licked the Bible comes along with a verse, “If any man thinks he standeth, let him take heed lest he what?”“Oh, I’ve got that whipped, pastor. Everything is ok.  My kids are fine.  I’m fine. We’re all fine.  I’m just going to take a spiritual vacation.”You just left the door open. You just laid your sword down.“Pastor, what is this study all about?  What would you like us to go home with?”I want you to put the building block of tenacity in your heart.  I want you to tenaciously build the habit of coming before the Lord into your life.  I want you to not look for an excuse.  Don’t look for an excuse to miss your time with the Lord. You look for a reason to be with the Lord.  Don’t you let other people, don’t you let your schedule, don’t you let the business of your life...here is the best thing you could do.  I am going to tell you right now. The greatest thing on earth you could do to make sure you spend time with the Lord every day.  Shut that box off at about 9:30.  Go to bed so you can get up in the morning.  And spend a little bit of time.I have been saying this over and over, haven’t I?  Am I becoming a drum that is just sort of driving you people crazy?  I’m sure I am. But I want you to grow.  I want you to be built up so that when you pick up a sword to fight you will have something to fight with. You will have some strength.  I want you to build up your soul in the presence of God by seeing a little bit of what God’s Word has to say, by praying over what...and asking some questions.  “God, what does this mean?  God, what do you want me to do with it?  And God how can I put it in practice today?  Lord help me today.”Will you please tenaciously build the character of Christ in your life by going into God’s presence every day?  Will you tenaciously stay alert? Watch out for the devil because he is going to slip in a temptation when you are least expecting it.Would you bow your heads and close your eyes?Nehemiah 4:1-3  (All Scripture quotations are from the New King James Version of the Bible unless indicated otherwise).Nehemiah 4:4-10John 16:33Ibid.2 Corinthians 5:17 (King James Version)Nehemiah 4:7-8Nehemiah 4:10Nehemiah 4:10-11Nehemiah 4:10Isaiah 40:31 (King James Version)Hebrews 12:1-2Nehemiah 4:15Nehemiah 4:14Page  PAGE 1 of  NUMPAGES 19