How God Rebuilds a Nation

I want to talk today about the faith of rebuilders. Because here's the truth, all of us come to a point in our lives whenever we need to learn how to have faith to rebuild. Maybe it's in your own life, maybe it's in the life of your family, or I think all of us can see that we're in an hour as a nation right now where we have to understand what it means to have the faith to rebuild. Why do we end up there? Well, for a number of reasons. Sometimes it's that weakness wins in our life or the life of somebody we love. Sometimes temptation triumphs, and we stand and we look at the trouble that was caused by temptation. Or sometimes people are just following a path, and their priorities and the pleasures they live for just kind of get out of whack, and we need God's help to bring us back to a path that He blesses. And that's why God raises up leaders like Nehemiah in the Bible. And today he's going to teach us some of the secrets that were necessary to rebuilding a legacy of faith in the nation of Israel. And his life has been speaking to me really deeply lately because I know that we're in that same hour in our country. You know, I grew up as a kid in the '60s, and I was thinking this week about how in the '60s there were seven of us who lived in our little house and we only had one TV screen. And some of you remember there were only four channels. You had ABC, CBS, NBC, and you had PBS. And some of you can even remember that annoying thing that would come on the TV saying, this is a test. It's only a test of the emergency broadcast system. But as I was thinking back to those days, I thought about how the seven of us were taught to support each other. And in today's society, many times people have seven screens. but there's very little family support that's going on in the house. I was raised in traditional values, and so when I was a kid, my dad would pay me to make good grades, and he would pay me -- even for the part that, you know, talked about the attitude you were supposed to have in school, my dad would pay me for doing that part. And since he was so generous, I thought one day he should pay me for doing my chores, too, right? So I had a little powwow with him, and he said back to me, he said, Jimmy, he said, No, we're not paying you for doing chores because the payment for doing chores is the support of a loving family. I talked to a friend about it, and he said, Man, my dad told me the same thing, only he added, and you know what, you owed your mom for nine months of room and board before you were ever born. But it was a different America whenever I was a kid. And I thought about how I knew the name of every neighbor on a two-mile street where I lived. And nowadays, most people might know their neighbor's Wi-Fi network, but they don't know their neighbor's name. They might know the passwords a week, but they don't know their neighbor's name. And there are just times whenever we have to really understand what it means to rebuild something that's better than what we're living in today. And Nehemiah understood that. And there are two things that we're going to talk about today that he did that can radically change our life when we want to see the curse of sin lifted from our life, when we want to see the curse of sin lifted from our family. And the first thing that's important to know is where did all of it start? How did temptation start triumphing, how did weakness start winning? And in Nehemiah's case, it started in 1 Kings 11, verse 9 and 10, when we read that the Lord became angry at Solomon because his heart had turned away from the Lord, the God of Israel who'd appeared to him twice. And although God had forbidden Solomon to follow other gods, Solomon didn't keep the Lord's command. And every day Solomon was to read the book of Deuteronomy as the king. He was one of the few people who had his own copy in Israel. So Solomon should have known that God's blessing is promised to people who follow God wholeheartedly, but since curses are promised to people who find following God undesirable. And one of the most important things we do as parents, as spiritual leaders in America today is we establish very clearly that you know what, the pleasure that you're going to gain from sin is not to be compared with the pleasures that you're going to gain from obeying God. I can tell you when I started following Jesus, the people who discipled me said, Jim, it's going to cost you everything. It might cost you friendships and school. It might cost you popularity and pleasure. But can I tell you this morning, I would never trade the blessing that I live in today For the things that I could have held on if I wanted to carefully followed God and for all of us It's good to do what God told them to do in Deuteronomy literally He would have his people stand on two hillsides every year And they would shout cursed are the people who find their pleasure in different sins And then he would have them shout blessed are the people who honor God's righteousness in their heart And you know in Deuteronomy 28 God God made it so clear. In verse 1 and 2, He said, If you'll fully obey the Lord your God and carefully follow all His commands I give you today, the Lord is going to set you high above all the nations of the earth. And all these blessings are going to come on you and they're going to accompany you if you obey the Lord your God. And when you read Deuteronomy 28, verse 3 to 14, it's so clear. And it's worth obeying God with all of our hearts to live in the blessing that our benevolent God gives to people who honor His righteousness. But then if you think, well, maybe I don't want to follow God with all my heart, I'd encourage you to read Deuteronomy 28:15 where it says, However, if you do not obey the Lord your God and don't carefully follow all His commands and decrees I'm giving you today, then all these curses are going to come on you and they're going to take you. And if you sit down and if you let it settle into your soul, that all the curses listed in Deuteronomy 28, verse 15 to 68 can end up characterizing your family. If you don't carefully follow God and obey His ways, you're going to recognize that the greatest pleasure and the greatest privilege that I have as a person is that God Almighty loved me enough to forgive me and to change my heart so I no longer find my pleasure and sin, but I find my pleasure in obeying fully the goodness of God. And this comes to us by the Bible Project. It tells us that after Solomon's heart turned away from God, and the nation did as well, that Israel's prophets were laboring to turn their people from idolatry and injustice back to God's ways, but the people refused. And 1 and 2 Kings was written to explain why the people went into Assyrian and Babylonian exile. And then 1 and 2 Chronicles was written to provide hope and identity to the people as they were returning from that exile. And God made us an incredible promise in 2 Chronicles 7, verse 14. He said, If my people, if you're one of God's people this morning, would you say amen? He said, If as His people, we'll be called by His name and we'll humble ourselves and pray and seek His face and then turn from our wicked ways, and He's going to hear from heaven. He's going to forgive our sin and He's going to heal our land. Well, maybe you say this morning, Well, Pastor, that was just for Israel. No, I want you to listen to Jeremiah 18. It says that God says, If at any time I announce that a nation or a kingdom is to be uprooted, torn down, or destroyed, and if that nation I warn and repents of its evil, then I'll relent and I won't inflict on it the disaster that I planned. And I believe, prophetically, that's where we've been the last 10 years in America, is God has relented. And some terrible evil could have come on this country. But as believers, we need to remember that if we want to have a mountaintop view of something beautiful, we have to say it's worth the climb, to humble ourselves and to pray and to seek His face to turn from our wicked ways. We have to understand it's not enough to look at the scoreboard and talk about what's wrong with the performance of others. God didn't address the performance of others, but God addressed the performance of his people when he talked about whether our land would be healed or whether our land would not be healed. And can I tell you why I called this special service and why we're going to have some very special elements here in just a bit? It's because I've felt in my soul what Reverend Robert Henry felt whenever 144 of our first settlers reached the shores of the United States. I brought a picture of a stone cross that's in Cape Henry, and this stone cross reminds us of an event that happened in 1607, whenever the first settlers came. And they didn't have cameras then, but I have a picture to show you how they stood. And they put a 75-foot wooden cross on the shores of America. And as they did, they prayed, because they knew that the shores of this country were dedicated to the preaching of the gospel, and that the virtues of the gospel were to characterize this nation from shore to shore. And from this nation, we were supposed to share those same virtues with the entire world. And I have a picture in my mind in this prophetic hour in America, and it's the picture where there was a lady who had an issue of blood for 12 years. Twelve is a number of government. And something in her life wasn't functioning right. And so she had internal bleeding and hemorrhaging that she didn't know how to deal with. And there was a crowd of people who were fans of Jesus, and they were following Jesus as he walked into the town. But this one lady had more than that. And she said, If I just reach out and touch him, what's on the inside of him can fix what's wrong with me. And the Bible says that when she touched the hem of his garment, that Jesus stopped. And Jesus said, Hold it, some virtue just flowed out of me. Something just Changed, and here's what I know: if we, as Christians, will... reach out and believe in the virtue of Jesus, the virtue that's in his heart is enough to get rid of the mess that we're in as a country. He can still turn it around with what's in his heart. And it's that virtue that Nehemiah called Israel back to because he knew that the hope of rebuilding their nation began with each one of the people saying, I'm so grateful for the virtue of God. I don't want to live in the pleasures of sin. I want to live in the goodness of God. And Nehemiah taught them two things about rebuilding their nation. Number one, he taught them to see the challenge really, really clear. The Bible says it was a month of Kislev in the 20th year, and he was in the citadel of Susa, which was the place of government for the Persian Empire. And he said when he was there, some of the brothers came and he questioned them about the Jewish remnant and Had they survived the exile? And he asked them about Jerusalem. And when he heard that the people were in great trouble and disgrace and the wall of Jerusalem was broken down and its gates had been burned with fire, he said, When I heard these things, I sat down and wept. And for some days I mourned and I fasted and I prayed before the God of heaven. Nehemiah had a very prestigious position in the Persian Empire, but you notice that his heart was concerned about something more than his own life. His heart was concerned more than about his 401 or how he was going to enjoy life on earth. His heart was concerned about rebuilding the faith of God's people and fulfilling the plan that God had. And these people not only had, over the 400 years from Solomon when his heart turned away until Nehemiah was standing in the citadel of Susa, they not only had the book of Deuteronomy that told them how much they needed to have a passion to live for God, and they not only had the prophets who were continually calling them back to God's purpose, but they also had some amazing prophecies that they were living to see fulfilled. And 700 B.C., a hundred years before Cyrus of Persia was born, Isaiah saw that Cyrus was going to become the most prominent leader in that part of the world. And he's going to issue an edict that said, Let Jerusalem be rebuilt and let its temple be rebuilt as well. And if you think the Bible is boring reading, let me tell you to read that a hundred years before Cyrus was born, Isaiah called him by name, and sure enough, he was born, and what God prophesied came to pass. And then in 600 B.C., the prophet Jeremiah said, Listen, we're going to go into captivity. It's going to last 70 years. And he said, After that 70 years, God's going to call us to go back and to rebuild that nation. And as I studied, it was only about 5% of the Jews who were in the remnant at that time. About 1,000,000 people were scattered throughout Assyria and then Babylon, and that they had left the homeland. And about 5% of them said, we have a prophetic word from God that we're to live for. And this is the most amazing prophecy about the time that Cyrus came in and overtook Babylon. It was either that year or the next year Daniel the prophet had God explained to him the very time that Jesus Christ was going to come to earth, the very time he was going to stand in that temple, and God showed him that his life would be cut off like a sacrificial animal. And listen, I just want to say that's what caused these brave people to rebuild their nation. And how many of you know God has a brave people on the earth today who are going to build His kingdom before Jesus returns to the earth again? Can you say amen? There's no greater purpose for us to live for, and that's why days like this are important, because this land was dedicated to God, that the virtues of the gospel would fill our land. And from this piece of land, the gospel would go forth to the other continents of the world. And we're in an hour, whenever God needs us to have the faith of a rebuilder, how do we do that? Well, number one, we're going to see the challenge really, really clearly, because if we don't realize what the mountaintop should look like, we're not going to embrace the climb. The second thing we have to do is we have to set our hearts correctly. And that's the reason Nehemiah did something, and it's the reason we're going to do something today. In Nehemiah 8, it says, All the people came together as one in the square before the Water Gate. And they told Ezra, the teacher of the law, to bring out the book. Everybody say, Bring out the book. Bring out the book that explains how we can lift curses and live in blessings. And the Bible says, So on the first day of the seventh month, Ezra the priest brought the law before the assembly, and it was made-up of men and women, all of who were able to understand. And he read it from daybreak until noon, as he faced the square before the Watergate, in the presence of the men, women, and others who can understand, and all the people listened attentively to the law. In other words, they listened attentively because they understood if we listened attentively and if we're careful to obey, we can lift curses and we can see God's blessing reestablished. Now, this is very important from my perspective, and that is there were three groups of people who were led back to Israel to rebuild. The first group was led by Zerubbabel. Everybody say Zerubbabel. If you're pregnant today, can I suggest the name Zerubbabel to you for your son's name? But anyways, Zerubbabel was a political leader. Some people say, Well, politics don't matter. Oh yes, politics matter, because listen, politics can determine whether we have freedom to worship or whether we don't have freedom to worship. And God used a man named Zerubbabel, and this man led the Israelites to do what God had called them to do. Then after Zerubbabel, he sent Ezra. Why? Because we can have freedom to worship, but it doesn't mean we're discipling our families, or it doesn't mean we're discipling our nation like we could. So God sent Bible teachers so that the people understood that your freedom is precious, but listen, don't waste it. Man, live the Bible. Disciple people in the Bible if you want to live in a blessed land. And then in Nehemiah's day, Nehemiah understood that you can have politicians who love God, You can have Bible teachers who love God, but at the end of the day, it's going to come down to the rank and file people who step up and be who God needs us to be. And the people said, Yeah, it's us. We're going to provide for the house of God. We're going to serve in the house of God. We're going to be leaders in the house of God so that God can rebuild this great nation that we have. And it was beautiful. The Bible says in Nehemiah 8:6 that Ezra praised the Lord, the great God, and all the people lifted their hands, which was a sign of surrender, and they responded, Amen. Amen. And the Bible says again, this went on until noon. And it says, after they said amen, they bowed down as a sign of surrender. They worshiped the Lord with their faces to the ground. Why? Because they understood that God had made them a promise in the book of Chronicles. And that is, they shouldn't be disheartened by the difficulty around them, if my people, who will be called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, I will hear from heaven. I will forgive their sin. I will heal their land. You know, I heard the story about a guy who had a tough neighbor to live by. I mean, he planted a garden in his backyard. He kept his grass meticulous. But this neighbor of his would always let his dog run in his yard and the dog would tear up the grass, it would get in the garden and mess everything up. So this neighbor went over and he was a believer and he very nicely asked his neighbor, Will you quit having, can you keep your dog from tearing up my grass and ruining my garden? Because I'm working hard on this. And the neighbor listened, but he wouldn't change. So he went back the second time, and this time he lost his temper. Have any of you ever lost your temper, right? And he let his neighbor have it. And listen, it did more damage than it did good. Finally, the man said, You know, I can't just change my neighbor with words, but here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to plant hedges around my yard. And he nurtured a beautiful yard, and he had a beautiful garden. And his neighbor looked at that yard, and his neighbor looked at that garden, and he thought, Man, I wish I had a garden, and I wish I had a yard that looked as good as that. And you know what? His neighbor repented and he became the man he should have been by looking at the blessing of God on this man who just took care of his own garden. I think that's what God wants to say to the church today. Let's take care of our garden. Let's take care of each other. Let's be the church Jesus died for. When I think about Jesus dying on that cross and the sacrifice that He made when He died on that cross, it's just not appropriate for me to live casual Christianity when I think about the death that He died upon that cross. So I want to ask you today, are you ready to live with the faith of a rebuilder? Does your life need rebuilt? Does your family need rebuilt? We all can see our nation needs rebuilt, but it starts with us. So I want to ask you to give me an amen if you agree with this this morning. If you're God's person, will you say amen? If you're grateful you can be called by his name, would you give me an amen? If you're willing to humble yourself because you know only God can fix us, will you say amen? If you're willing to seek his face and keep doing more and more right because you know God always has more right for us to do, would you say amen? Are you willing to turn from your wicked ways? If you are, would you say amen? Amen. Then I declare today that because we're going to live with the faith of a rebuilder, God is going to hear from heaven, God is going to forgive our sin, and God is going to heal our land. Amen?