Nehemiah
2
February
11, 2006
First Presbyterian Church Carson City
Purpose: For people to realize the necessity of letting God do a new thing in us and through us. For people to realize that God’s grace restores by putting the old behind.
The old new has been on my mind and heart a lot lately.
I’ve been asked a lot about why “new”.
And so I’ve done what I know I always need to do in times of growth.
I’ve looked up passages on the word new – II Cor. 5:17, the
resurrection, new bodies, new heaven, new earth, New Jerusalem, new life.
Leaving the old behind, Lot and wife, Phil. 3 (the old is refuse), Abe
and Sarah, leaving a pile of rocks and moving on.
When God came to us in person in Jesus Christ he was and is our new
covenant; our new promise.
Nehemiah knew about the need for new because the old had worn out; and
not just the walks. More significantly he knew Israel needed a new life with God.
So do we. Most significantly
so does the world because nothing in this world will sustain life but the new
life God offers to build in us as we let him.
When we seek to do a new thing in any of these or other areas; when we
seek to let God reign in us; when we seek to truly let Jesus Christ renew us we
will at least be misunderstood and likely opposed, sometimes by people who we
think should be our friends and loved ones, not our enemies.
When we get serious about following Jesus Christ it may get harder before
it gets better and I’m not sure it ever gets easy, but the more we let Jesus
Christ into the fullness of our lives, the more clear it will be that there is
no other way to live.
We need to be prepared. Nehemiah
was prepared. He pondered and
surveyed what it would mean for Israel to build a new life.
He counted the costs and moved ahead.
The best thing we can do when we begin to let a new thing happen in us
and we are opposed is to be ready for it. Nehemiah
was ready for Sanballat and Tobia. And
how did he respond to them? He
responded the same way we need to respond to anyone who would tell us that what
we are letting God do in our lives isn’t right.
He didn’t confront them. He
didn’t try to explain to them. He
didn’t get into an argument with them. What
did he do? He simply told them what
was going on. And what
was going on? GOD was on the
move. God was restoring what had
been allowed to deteriorate. And
God’s people were moving. Nehemiah
tells us that the people said, “Let us start building!”
Now, in this case it was literal building and God willing it may be in
ours, but in Jerusalem’s case and our own the far more significant building
going on was the restoring within the people of a right relationship with God.
Think about it. Where had these people been?
They had been captive in Babylon. They
had grown weary. They had developed
spiritual amnesia. There was great
spiritual atrophy in their lives. They
had taken on ways that were not God’s ways.
The walls of their lives were not stable.
But they knew it and they knew it was necessary to build a new
relationship with God that would be strong and dependable and life giving.
And so they started building together.
Nehemiah says, “So they committed themselves to the common good.”
And what was the common good? A
communal life serving God and only God was the life they needed.
It is the life we need. And
it is the life our families need and it is the life this congregation needs and
it is the life Carson City needs and it will only come as each of us together
accepts that God wants to build a new life in us and through us as we let God
make changes in our individual lives together as the body of Christ.
Every person who saw this in Jerusalem that day said, “Let’s start
building.” They said,
“Where’s the trowel. How can I
be part of this new thing? How can
I be committed to the common good? And Nehemiah showed them as God’s Holy Spirit will show us
and the Nehemiah in us.
There’s just one problem and Nehemiah nails it on the head in 2:10 and
19. Those who seek to do God’s
will, will always be opposed. But
2:20 reminds us that it is God who gives success.
What
do you need to do that is God’s will that is opposed?
Raising
healthy kids in a crazy world…
Being
a faithful spouse?
Making
your relationship with God the center of all you do?
How
you invest your time and money?
How
you let God love you?
How
you plan for the future?
Trusting
that God really will be all you need?
Today I think Nehemiah gives us three things we need to do for God to be
able to build a new thing in us and through us:
First, we need to admit the need.
Can you do that? Can WE do
this? That is, can we admit what
the need for new is in us? Some of
us need a new heart. Some need new
patterns of behavior. In our common
ministry we have a need for a new place of worship.
Why? Someone might ask. What’s
wrong with what we have; what we are doing, where we are.
And if we can be really honest with ourselves we will know the answer.
And the answer is first internal before it is external. We need a new heart, a new way of living and a new place to
worship because God knows what will happen to us and through us when we let
ourselves admit this. We will
realize that we have a new chapter of knowing and reflecting God’s grace and
glory that can only come to and through us as we submit ourselves to God.
Nehemiah knew this. I’m
learning this. I think we are learning this as a body; that God needs to
change us because for us to be changed will be to belong to him in ways we never
could before. We’re not there
yet. There is more of us that God
has yet to claim. We need to let
God break up the soil of our old life and build in us what God knows is needed
for salvation; for our being loved as only God can love us.
Second, we need to be willing to build and get our hands dirty.
We need to realize that what needs to take place in and through our lives
might get messy. The Gospel of
Jesus Christ is messy. God’s will
is messy. It’s messy because it
comes into our neat plan for a comfortable existence and calls us to change; to
be transformed; to accept a need within ourselves that nothing we can control
will meet. To get our hands dirty
is to work with God in the process of letting God take us apart and put us back
together for his glory in THE way God alone knows is best for us. This will call us into the earth of devotion.
We will need to get our hands into the soil of our lives and recognize
the things that need to be rooted out so that a strong foundation can be built.
Getting dirty will mean acknowledging what we have tried to hide from;
patterns of behavior; isolation from God, accepting the need to forgive others
or ourselves and the humility to accept that we need to be forgiven.
We’ll never be so clean or so whole as when we are getting dirty with
God in this building project.
Third, we need to be willing to let God build God’s house in us
God’s way and let the success be God’s success, not our own.
It is time to accept that there are not two ways in this life.
There is only one way. It is
God’s way. It can’t be built
with decorations and niceties. It
needs to be built with the real stuff of surrender to the will of God at every
turn in our lives. Nothing we try
to hold on to in this life will support the weight of eternity.
Nothing we try to control will save our lives or anybody else’s.
The only hope for this life is to get a whole new life and the only way
we will succeed in this is to trade our old life to God for the new one HE alone
can and will give in exchange.
God
is going to win. There will be
success. Our role is to let that
success be our greatest desire and to let nothing; no opposition stand in the
way. We need to be passionate about
letting God do his work his way in our lives and put our fears aside.
Let’s start living new and let God build in us today.
Amen.