Nehemiah: Renew, Rebuild, Restore Powerful Praise

Nehemiah: Renew, Rebuild, Restore

Powerful Praise

Opening:

Today we continue our study throughout the book of Nehemiah. Nehemiah was just a normal guy with a big calling on his life. At the time of his calling, he was not equipped. God will do that won’t He. He will call you to do something big, out of your comfort zone, and then we have to have faith that He will give us what we are lacking to compete the task. Nehemiah was living in Babylon, a foreign land, among a conquered people. He hears that his beloved homeland, a place that he had never seen, was in disrepair. He had heard the stories about Jerusalem and he had read the Torah. Upon hearing that the most significant city linked to his faith had been burned to the ground some 70 years earlier had never been rebuilt, Nehemiah is grieved. That’s the problem. Nehemiah is given a burden for a home that he has never seen and a people that he has never met. In the next two chapters, Nehemiah sets off with the blessing of the King of Persia. Nehemiah travels hundreds of miles and finally arrives to Jerusalem. He waits. He prays. He recruits. The process begins. Nehemiah was a cupbearer, a food taster, to the King of Persia  but now God was calling him into city planning. The process had begun but it would not take long for problems to rear their ugly heads. In chapter 4 we are introduced to Nehemiah’s adversaries. He was persecuted for trying to accomplish God’s calling. So badly did these men hate Nehemiah, they charted a course to have him murdered. I can imagine that this was the lowest point for Nehemiah. Here he is trying his best only to have people try to literally stab him in the back. Next in Nehemiah 5-6, a predicament is exposed. Those that have dedicated themselves to the vision of rebuilding Jerusalem are starving, forced to sell themselves into slavery, and forced to give up their sons and daughters for food. Corruption was rampant. In Nehemiah 7 Nehemiah desires a proposal where the people are to give back what was stolen from their countrymen. They are to restore to them their families, and their fortunes. Thankfully the people are repentant. Last week, in Nehemiah 8 and 9, we see the first organized Old Testament worship service. The people begin to pray and praise God. 

This brings us to Nehemiah 9. We see a continuation of this Old Testament worship service. Last week we saw how the people responded to God in their worship and this week we will learn how God responds to them. We see God’s faithfulness in full view. This shoudl encourage us this morning as the promises that are made in Nehemiah 9 still hold true for His people today. God protects, God provides, and His presence goes before us. 

This morning we will pick up in verse 6 of Nehemiah 9. The first 5 verses of Nehemiah 9 set the scene for this worship service. We learn in the first 5 verses that all the people had come together in a position of repentance. They were wearing sackcloth and cover in dirt. These elements symbolized their sin which was in full view of God. Friends there’s no hiding our sin from a holy God. There was a period of confession, a period of reading the Law of Moses, and then praise. Imagine being there and seeing this for yourselves. I can imagine that it was really something to behold. So, let’s dig into today Scripture from Nehemiah 9:6-21.

Let’s Recap…

Nehemiah’s Problem (Nehemiah 1)

Nehemiah’s Process (Nehemiah 2-3)

Nehemiah’s Persecution (Nehemiah 4)

Nehemiah’s Predicament (Nehemiah 5-6)

Nehemiah’s Proposal (Nehemiah 7)

Nehemiah’s Praise (Nehemiah 8-9)

Nehemiah 9:6-21 ESV

[6] "You are the LORD, you alone. You have made heaven, the heaven of heavens, with all their host, the earth and all that is on it, the seas and all that is in them; and you preserve all of them; and the host of heaven worships you. [7] You are the LORD, the God who chose Abram and brought him out of Ur of the Chaldeans and gave him the name Abraham. [8] You found his heart faithful before you, and made with him the covenant to give to his offspring the land of the Canaanite, the Hittite, the Amorite, the Perizzite, the Jebusite, and the Girgashite. And you have kept your promise, for you are righteous. [9] "And you saw the affliction of our fathers in Egypt and heard their cry at the Red Sea, [10] and performed signs and wonders against Pharaoh and all his servants and all the people of his land, for you knew that they acted arrogantly against our fathers. And you made a name for yourself, as it is to this day. [11] And you divided the sea before them, so that they went through the midst of the sea on dry land, and you cast their pursuers into the depths, as a stone into mighty waters. [12] By a pillar of cloud you led them in the day, and by a pillar of fire in the night to light for them the way in which they should go. [13] You came down on Mount Sinai and spoke with them from heaven and gave them right rules and true laws, good statutes and commandments, [14] and you made known to them your holy Sabbath and commanded them commandments and statutes and a law by Moses your servant. [15] You gave them bread from heaven for their hunger and brought water for them out of the rock for their thirst, and you told them to go in to possess the land that you had sworn to give them. [16] "But they and our fathers acted presumptuously and stiffened their neck and did not obey your commandments. [17] They refused to obey and were not mindful of the wonders that you performed among them, but they stiffened their neck and appointed a leader to return to their slavery in Egypt. But you are a God ready to forgive, gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and did not forsake them. [18] Even when they had made for themselves a golden calf and said, 'This is your God who brought you up out of Egypt,' and had committed great blasphemies, [19] you in your great mercies did not forsake them in the wilderness. The pillar of cloud to lead them in the way did not depart from them by day, nor the pillar of fire by night to light for them the way by which they should go. [20] You gave your good Spirit to instruct them and did not withhold your manna from their mouth and gave them water for their thirst. [21] Forty years you sustained them in the wilderness, and they lacked nothing. Their clothes did not wear out and their feet did not swell.

A People Praising God…

I. God Is Exalted Above All vs. 5-6

Nehemiah 9:5-6 ESV

“Stand up and bless the Lord your God from everlasting to everlasting. Blessed be your glorious name, which is exalted above all blessing and praise. 6  “You are the Lord, you alone. You have made heaven, the heaven of heavens, with all their host, the earth and all that is on it, the seas and all that is in them; and you preserve all of them; and the host of heaven worships you.

Quote:

“The clearest sensation that a human being has when he experiences the holy is an overpowering and overwhelming sense of creatureliness. That is, when we are in the presence of God, we are humbled and become most aware of ourselves as creatures. This is the opposite of Satan's original temptation, "You shall be as gods.” 

R.C. Sproul The Holiness of God

Point:

When is the last time you thought about how big God really is.  My son and I were talking the other day about how timeless God is.  God exists not just geographically and universally, meaning that he is everywhere.  God also do not exist temporally.  I mean that God is not bound by time.  He is everywhere at all times.  That means that God exists in all of His wholeness in the past, the present and the future.  I can’t even wrap my mind around that truth.  

God was so exalted in the ancient word that people were prohibited from speaking the tetragrammaton YHWH or Yahweh.  His name was so profoundly holy that it could not be uttered in everyday ordinary day.  So they came up for a host of names for God.  

El Shaddai: Lord God Almighty

El Elyon: The Most High God

Adonai: Lord Master

Jehovah Nissi: The Lord Is My Banner

Jehovah-Rash: The Lord Is My Shepherd

The list goes on and on and on.  In the ancient times, God’s name was to be revered and holy.  Now we have turned it into a curse word or trivialize it when we are excited in a text message.  

We have even invented an entire field of study dedicated to the study of God. What is theology - the study of God? Really? God is not like a rock, sitting there to be studied. But, still we try.

Illustration:

There is an ancient legend of Saint Augustine, who, as the tale goes, also struggled to understand the Trinity. In the midst of his reflections, he went for a walk on the beach. He saw a little boy digging a hole in the sand with a seashell and then running to the ocean, filling up the shell, and rushing back to pour the water into the hole he had made. "What are you doing, my little man?" Augustine asked.

"I'm putting the ocean in this hole," the boy replied. For Augustine it was a moment of revelation as he realized that he had been trying to do much the same - put the mystery of an infinite God into his finite mind.

Point:

Every time a culture encounters God, they try to put into words His inexpressible attributes and each time they miserably fail.  God is simply to big, to profound to be fully comprehended.  

Point:

Just read the account of Isaiah when he comes before the incomprehensible God of the Universe in Isaiah 6.  Isaiah was a religious man.  He was familiar with Kings. Isaiah was witness to all the exploits of the good King Uzziah.  He had seen vast military armies, he had seen huge buildings and gazed upon the King’s court.

Yet nothing could prepare him from what was about to see.  He was about to see God.

Isaiah had a vision of almighty God, the God who had made the universe; the God who hung the sun, moon, and stars; the God who had built the mountains and dug out the oceans; the God of all creation. Rather than try to describe the indescribable, to explain the inexplicable, to express the inexpressible, Isaiah told himself he had better just shut his mouth. "I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips"

Point:

When is the last time you really pondered the magnificence of God and your place in the universe? When is the last time that you really praised God for just being God.  Wow, God…you are awesome!  

Psalm 113:4 NLT

For the LORD is high above the nations; his glory is higher than the heavens.

A People Praising God…

I. God Is Exalted Above All vs. 5-6

II. God Is Examining All Hearts vs. 7-8

Nehemiah 9:7-8 ESV

7 You are the Lord, the God who chose Abram and brought him out of Ur of the Chaldeans and gave him the name Abraham. 8 You found his heart faithful before you, and made with him the covenant to give to his offspring the land of the Canaanite, the Hittite, the Amorite, the Perizzite, the Jebusite, and the Girgashite. And you have kept your promise, for you are righteous.

Point:

Friend, there is was nothing particularly special about Abram.  He was from a small town. A town named Ur.  What good could possible come from a place named Ur.  Yet, Abram was a listener.  That was one thing that made him different.  Abram was a dreamer.  Yes, Abram was just like everyone else, but he was a good listener, a dreamer, and he was obedient.  God told Him to leave his home and go to a foreign land.  Abram listened and did as he was told.  

Yet, Abram had his problems.  

Abram struggled with fear.  

Abram told lies.

Abram, for all of his belief, struggled with doubt.  

Abram had pretty significant marital problems.

Abram used his power and authority of Hagar, getting her pregnant, and then tossing her out in the cold. Not a high water mark for Abram

Abram lived with a cantankerous woman whom he scorned due to his selfishness and weakness. 

Sure, Abram is a giant in the Bible, but I imagine that Abram looked, acted, and felt like most of us. You see, if God had looked at Abram’s outside, he would not have even been a footnote in the Bible.  God looked at Abram’s heart.  He looked so deep that He saw that Abram could be Abraham, the father of a great nation and the start of a race of people that would be called God’s people.  God knew that Abraham descendants would eventually give birth to the Savior of all mankind, Jesus Himself.  

Point:

Friend, just about every character in the Bible shares a similar story.  Normal people doing extraordinary things because God looked at their hearts instead of their physical or mental gifts.  

Quote:

“There is no such thing as a great man of God, only weak, pitiful, faithless men of a great and merciful God.” 

Paul Washer

Illustration:

Years ago, I was a senior in college.  I couldn’t get a job to save my life. I had no degree.  No seminary.  No skills just a few internships.  I would walk in, pass my resume and that would be it.  Off to the better qualified more experienced person.  That happened dozens of times until I ran into a guy named Randy Overstreet.  Randy was the Associate Pastor at FBC Birmingham.  I went into that interview thinking that there was no way that this church would give me a chance.  I even offered to be their maintenance supervisor if that meant I could work there.  

Randy looked at my resume and said, “Well, you don’t have much experience.  You don’t have your degree yet and you haven’t even started seminary yet. Saying that, Stuart I think that you have potential.  If you will stick close to me, listen to me, follow my example, Ill hire you today to be our youth pastor. Can you do that?”.

You can imagine my response.  “YES, ABSOLUTELY!”.

I worked with Randy for 4 short years.  I went one way and he went another.  We are both still serving the Lord.  I will forever be grateful that Randy saw potential in me to do something in ministry.  I promise you this, I would not be here today if it were not for Randy seeing my heart instead of my experience.

Point:

Are we guilty of that?  Do we see people’s experience and outside instead of their heart?  Not God! God looks at the hearts and sees our potential to do wondrous things.  That is a great reason to praise him today.  

I Samuel 16:7 ESV

But the Lord said to Samuel, “Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him. For the Lord sees not as man sees: man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.”

A People Praising God…

I. God Is Exalted Above All vs. 5-6

II. God Is Examining All Hearts vs. 7-8

III. God Is Emancipating Slaves vs. 9-10

Nehemiah 9: 9-10

9 “And you saw the affliction of our fathers in Egypt and heard their cry at the Red Sea, 10 and performed signs and wonders against Pharaoh and all his servants and all the people of his land, for you knew that they acted arrogantly against our fathers. And you made a name for yourself, as it is to this day. 

Point:

It is hard to put ourselves in the place of the Israelites during the time of slavery and oppression at the hand of the Egyptians. As Americans we do not fully grasp the power and wickedness of slavery. We do not have any conception of what it would mean to live under the iron hand of an overlord. None of us have ever felt the sting of the whip across our backs. None of us have suffered the pain of seeing families, brothers, daughters die of exhaustion only to see their bodies discarded like trash. None of us have experienced the hopelessness of being a life long servant with no freedom. None of us have seen our wives sold to different slave masters, or our children being taken away to the auction block to be purchased by the highest bidder. 

Point:

Yet we are still slaves. Not in the normal sense of the word but there are some of us here in this room that are slaves. We are slaves to alcohol. Slaves to opioids. Slaves to drugs that numb us and medicate us. We are slaves to debt. We have borrowed so heavily that we cannot hope to pay ourselves free. We are slaves to our past. Some of you are living unforgiven lives. God has forgiven you but you have not forgiven yourself. You wake up everyday with the weight of the abortion that you had when you were a teenager. No one knows what you did but you cannot forget. You are a slave to the memory of daily abuse at the hand of your mother or father. No one knew but you never forgot and the memory is like a noose around your neck dragging you under a sea of guilt and shame. 

Point:

We are all slaves to sin. That’s what Scripture tells us. 

John 8:34 ESV

Jesus answered them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who practices sin is a slave to sin.

Romans 6:6 ESV

We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin.

This is a slavery that all of us are born into. A slavery that we cannot set ourselves free from. A slavery that we will all die in if there is not an intervention. 

You see, the Israelite people are a shadow of the human condition. The Israelites were born into captivity. They were ruled by a Satanic overlord. They were hopeless. They would die in their sin without a Savior. A man by the name of Moses came and led them out of their oppression to a good land. Moses may have led them out but make no mistake that it was God who set them free. 

Point:

As Nehemiah and his countryman were worshiping God, Nehemiah reminds them that it is important for them to remember what God delivered them from with His mighty hand. You see, back in the days of the Israelite oppression in Egypt, the Israelites thought it impossible that they would be saved. Nehemiah wanted to remind the people that God does the impossible and saves who He wants to save. 

Remember Jesus words in Matthew 19:26. 

Matthew 19:26 ESV

Jesus, looked at them and said, “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.” Lord, it may look impossible to me, but I know that with You all things are possible.

Point:

Maybe you feel like you are enslaved today. Enslaved to addiction. Enslaved in a broken relationship or marriage. Enslaved by the trauma and memory of abuse. Friend you are not. God wants to set you free. He wants your marriage to thrive. He wants to set you free from the guilt and the same. God is still in the saving business. 

Point:

The other day I was watching a news story about an American family living in Mosel. I was introduced to a Christian named David Eubanks who is a Christian humanitarian bent on saving lives. It is a stunning story about a man willing to lay his life down to save complete strangers. Check this out and see if you can’t see God moving, saving people. If God can save them, He can save you, setting you free from slavery. 

Point:

Friends, this is what being set free looks like. David Eubanks is such a picture of Christ.  First, he finds broken, the beaten, the people that everyone else has given up on, next he comes to those people, people like you and me, then he put them in the arms of an adoptive father given us a new family.  It is absolutely stunning to see up close and personal.  

Point:

When the people of Israel were set free from Egypt, this is what it looked like.  They were slaves.  They were oppressed and treated horribly.  God set them free. 

There was a time when you and I were slaves as well.  Slaves to sin and death.  

That sin is ugly and horrible and brings along with it death.  Yet, Jesus set us free.  God made us His. He has set us free to be adopted into His family.

Point:

When you worship God, do you recognize your former way of living?  Do you remember your slavery?  Do you worship God today for setting you free and brining you into His family?

Ephesians 1:5 ESV

God decided in advance to adopt us into his own family by bringing us to himself through Jesus Christ. This is what he wanted to do, and it gave him great pleasure.

A People Praising God…

I. God Is Exalted Above All vs. 5-6

II. God Is Examining All Hearts vs. 7-8

III. God Is Emancipating Slaves vs. 9-10

IV. God Is Enduringly Patient vs. 16-17

Nehemiah 9:16-17

16 “But they and our fathers acted presumptuously and stiffened their neck and did not obey your commandments. 17 They refused to obey and were not mindful of the wonders that you performed among them, but they stiffened their neck and appointed a leader to return to their slavery in Egypt. But you are a God ready to forgive, gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and did not forsake them. 

Quote:

"Quite honestly, most people are quick to "write someone off." But our God is a God of the second chance. Learn from One who is patient with you, and you'll learn to be patient with others."

Woodrow Kroll

Illustration:

A "pk" (preacher's kid) told me this one:

One Sunday morning my wife was teaching her class of small girls the subject of patience.

She asked, "What is patience?"

One little girl raised her hand and said, "Patience is when you are sitting in church and the preacher is preaching. You're just sitting there and he is preaching. He keeps preaching and you keep sitting there. That's patience."

Point:

I want you to think about something.  Where is the one place you hate to go?  Think about it?

How many of you said that you hating waiting for a green light?

How many of you said that you hate waiting in airport security?

How many of you said that you hate waiting for your morning coffee?

How many of you said that you hate waiting at the doctor’s office?

Point:

The other day, I was waiting at the doctor’s office.  No one likes waiting for the doctor.  No one.  Well 15 minutes went by and I was ok.  30 minutes and a part of my soul died.  An hour went by and I went to the receptionist and asked if her if I was being filmed for some reality show about people losing their tempers.  An hour and 15 minutes went by and my cell phone died because you can only play Crossy Road so many times.  Finally, after and hour and a half I was seen.  

Friends, I have always thought I was a patient person but in that moment I discovered that I am not that patient.  

Now, think about God.  How many times did God wait for His people to keep their promises.  Over and over again they would promise they would follow them.  Over and over again they disappointed them.  Friends, we worship a patient God. A loving hopeful long suffering God.  A God who does not give up on us and forgives us over and over again.  

2 Peter 3:9 ESV

The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.

So How Should We React?  We Should PRAISE Him!

Pray Continually

Read The Word

Acknowledge Jesus As Lord

Invest Yourself In His Church

Serve Others and Share Faith

Encourage Others

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