Be Aggressive

This week at ZBC we wrapped up our summer message series in Nehemiah. If you like happy endings, Nehemiah 13 is not for you. After 12 chapters victory, revival, & renewal, we fast forward several years into the future to find that Nehemiah has had to return to Persia to serve the king before making a return visit to Jerusalem. What he finds is depressing to say the least. The people have descended back into the same lifestyle that had cost them in the past. The same temptations had brought them down again. The same things they had identified as chronic problem areas in Nehemiah 10 had reared their heads again, & the people had succumbed to the temptation. In Nehemiah's own words he was "greatly displeased." His confrontation of both the leaders & the people of Jerusalem seems overly harsh to some people, but there is something we have to remember: Nehemiah had invested years of his life into leading these people to honor God.

His frustration was directly connected to his sense of responsibility for these people. He knew what God could do in & through them when they submitted themselves to God's will, but He also knew what would happen if the people chose to rebel against God & pursue their own ways. There was a lot at stake. Most importantly, God's glory revealed & reflected through His people was at stake. Nehemiah took on the leaders in really aggressive ways. When the people violated the Sabbath by continuing to conduct business, he put the city on lock-down. When Nehemiah found out that his old enemy Tobiah had been given a place to live INSIDE of the Temple, he literally threw Tobiah & all of his things out. After years of leadership, instructions, & correction, the time for a soft warning had passed.

"Aggressive Temptation Requires Aggressive Accountability."

These chronic problem areas had been handled too softly for too long, & while getting physical like Nehemiah did probably isn't the best way to confront someone you care about, we should have the same sense of urgency & responsibility for one another. After all, how many of us have watched people we care about begin to drift away from God, but we hid behind phrases like "Who am I to judge?" The truth is that if the two of you are followers of Jesus, you are brothers or sisters in Christ & have a responsibility to protect one another from the dangers of sin & temptation. Our enemy is relentless & aggressive. Should we be just as relentless & aggressive in guarding one another & seeking to rescue or restore one another from his attacks?

Who do you need to reach out to in love in order to guide them back from a path that will lead to their own self-destruction? Be proactive, be aggressive, don't assume that they'll figure it out or learn their lesson. Rescue them. Perhaps you need to invite this kind of accountability into your life. Perhaps you are stuck in a cycle of defeat by the same temptations that take you down all the time. Who can you invite into your life as a sort of spiritual bodyguard? Do we really care about one another enough to confront one another in love in hopes of rescuing one another from the relentless, aggressive attacks of our enemy?

Looking Back So We Can Move Forward

The past is a tricky thing. We all look back fondly at "the good ole days" & think about the good times in our past, but at the same time, we're also prone to get stuck in the past. Looking back & celebrating the good times is great, but when you get to the point that you try to recreate or live in the past, you have a problem. On the other hand, if you have some past hurt in your past that you can't seem to move on from, that past hurt will impact almost everything about your future. The past is a great place to go back to & visit in our memory to celebrate the good time, to mourn the bad times, & to learn from it all, but living there or trying to export the past into our present is dangerous.

In Nehemiah 12, Nehemiah & the people are about to dedicate the newly reconstructed wall around Jerusalem. If you've ever been to a dedication, ribbon cutting, or grand opening ceremony, you know those events are extremely future oriented. It's all about the excitement of what the future holds for a new facility, organization, or business. However, Nehemiah begins this section of his memoirs by looking back. He looks at a couple of generations from the past. One generation led the initial return from exile back to the Promised Land. They resettled the land & rebuilt the Temple. They were bold, courageous, & faithful. Then Nehemiah looks at the next the generation, the one that immediately preceded his. This group of people weren't necessarily bad or evil people. They were just negligent. Their lack of faith stands in stark contrast to the generation preceding them who rebuilt the Temple & the generation that followed them who rebuilt the wall. It's not that they did anything overtly bad; they just did nothing. Perhaps they were content with the fact that the Temple had been rebuilt. Perhaps no one was ever bold enough to say, "Let's rebuild this wall & city." No matter what was going on, it's clear this was a part of Israel's past that needed to be learned from but not celebrated. Nehemiah then turns his attention to his generation & those who would come after him. Those generations had already demonstrated their faith, but there was so much potential for the future too. As they looked forward to the future, they needed to look back: to celebrate & to learn.

There's something really important we can learn from this passage that can be so important for us in our faith, our families, our ministries, & our communities.

"Learning From The Past Can Direct Our Future,

  But Living In The Past Can Destroy Our Future."

Our past is going to play a part in our future. We can't escape our past, but we don't have to be imprisoned by it. We get imprisoned by the past when we either choose to live there because those were "the good ole days," & there's no way God could have anything else in store for us or when we choose to live in the past & be defined by some of its hurts & defeats. The truth is that if you're a follower of Christ, you should assume your best days are ahead of you. God is still at work. Your past is filled with things that you can celebrate & things you can learn from, but God is leading you to take those things & follow Him with bold faith into the future.

What things in your past are you holding onto that are actually holding you back? They may be past victories or past defeats, but either way, their in the past. What can you learn from your past so that you can follow God faithfully into the future.

Confession That Transforms

Confession is a tough word. It's tripping with negativity. After all, just about every time we hear the word confession it's in connection with some guilty criminal or a child caught in an act of disobedience sheepishly saying, "I'm sorry," complete with protruding bottom lip. We've been conditioned to see confession as a negative thing, something that is always connected with guilt & shame.

However, if you take a look at Nehemiah 9 & 10, you see the other side of confession that gives us a more complete view & a more hopeful view of what confession is all about. After all confession really means "to tell the truth." It doesn't necessarily have to be negative or guilt ridden. It's just the truth. In fact, real repentance & confession actually is the way out of the guilt & shame that seems to hold us captive. The key is total confession. In Nehemiah 9 the people of God are moved to confess together. In fact, we learn that they spent hours in confession & worship. The interesting thing is that their confession doesn't start with them; it starts with God. Before they declare what is true about themselves, they declare what is true about God. He is powerful, majestic, holy, just, but also abounding in love & slow to anger. He is holy & just & simultaneously gracious & merciful.

It's these important truths about God's character & nature that moves them to also tell the truth about themselves. They are not holy. In fact, they are incredibly rebellious. God established a covenant of love with them, & He has always acted faithfully toward them, yet all the while they have been rebellious toward Him. But instead of being locked up in their guilt & shame, they are moved to not only confess their unfaithfulness to God, they are also moved to begin to change. In fact, in Chapter 10 they renew their commitment to the covenant God established with them by identifying 3 areas where they had consistently been unfaithful. By walking in faith to God they can be changed, transformed. I believe there's an important principle that we often overlook in our relationship with God.

"Confession That Starts With What's True About God

  Has The Power To Transform What's True About Us."

These people were moved not simply by their guilt. They were moved by God's faithfulness to them in spite of their guilt. Understanding that God is not just a holy & just God but also a compassionate & gracious God moves them to acknowledge the truth about themselves & be set free from that guilt & shame. Perhaps we need to spend more time reflecting on the character & nature of God than we do on our own shortcomings. Believe me, if you really spend some time in sincere reflection on God's character, you'll recognize yours too! You'll see the gap between God's holiness & your sin, His faithfulness & your unfaithfulness. However, you'll also be moved to run toward Him, not away from Him because you also know that He is slow to anger & abounding in love. That truth will move you to confess so that you can find freedom from your guilt & shame, & as you experience His faithfulness, you'll want to grow, to change, to be transformed.

Surrender Means Submission

As we have continued through Nehemiah in our current teaching series at Zebulon, we have come to Chapter 8. Chapter 8 is a huge turning point in the story of what God was doing through Nehemiah in the lives of the people in Jerusalem. As the chapter opens, there's a big assembly of the people in the shadow of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. As the people gathered the presence of the Temple would have been unavoidable. Then the priest & scribe Ezra climbs up on a platform & unrolls the scrolls of the Law & reads...& reads...& reads. Six hours into this, Nehemiah & the other leaders have to calm the people down because as Ezra has read God's Word, the people have been deeply convicted of their sin & lack of faith because their history had been one of great spiritual victory followed by massive failure. That cycle spanned hundreds of years & dozens of generations. Does that feel kind of familiar? However, Nehemiah's message isn't one that focuses on the people's sins. Instead, Nehemiah encourages the people to celebrate because of God's faithfulness. They send the people home with instructions to celebrate & throw a party in their homes in response to God's goodness & faithfulness to His people.

The next day something else amazing happens. The men come back. After 6 hours of Bible study, the men come back for more, & as they continue to listen to God's Word, they learn that there is a festival  to be celebrated that they knew nothing about, & it was supposed to be celebrated that very month! What happens next demonstrates that these people were really in the process of being changed & transformed. They discovered that their lives were not in alignment with God's Word, so they went out & did something about it. They brought their lives, their families, their society into alignment with God's will in God's word. They celebrated that festival like it hadn't been celebrated in generations. Israel's history had been a story of taking a step forward spiritually only to take two back. If these people wanted to break that cycle, they knew they had to be different, so they made sure their lives were surrendered to God, even if it seemed strange, even if it was inconvenient. There's a powerful spiritual truth on display in the lives of those Israelites in Nehemiah 8.

"Surrender To God Is Reflected In Submission To God's Word."

Christians often talk about being fully surrendered to God. One of our classic hymns is called "I Surrender All." However, what we say & what we sing is often very far from where we live. So how can we know if we're surrendered? How can we recognize whether or not we're really surrendering our lives to our Heavenly Father? The answer is found in this question: When was the last time God's Word changed your mind, your behavior, & your life? If you can't point to a time where your will came into conflict with God's will revealed in His Word, there's a good chance you're not spending much time in God's word. If you've encountered those places but you haven't changed your mind & behavior to submit to God's will in His Word, then you aren't surrendered to your Heavenly Father. You're still a slave to your will & your desires. Instead of talking about surrender, let's all begin to take a look at whether or not we're really submitted to God's Word. 

Where are you out of alignment? Are you so far out of alignment that you're not even reading God's Word, much less submitting to it? How can you start bringing your life & your family into alignment with God's Word? The longer you stay out of alignment, the further you will drift off the path that God would have you follow.