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County Line |
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County Line |
NEHEMIAH 8
"WHAT MAKES A PEOPLE OF GOD?"
I once stood and looked at the Dead Sea Scrolls in Jerusalem. These ancient
manuscripts of the book of Isaiah are encased in a fortress so permanent that
even if an atom bomb went off in Jerusalem, the scrolls would survive.
Everything is regulated, the temperature, the condensation, the total
environment. In case of nuclear attack, the scrolls descend into the earth.
What Israel has built to protect these priceless pieces of parchment is good
and will endure.
One of England's greatest preachers of the 20th century was Dr. Martin Lloyd
Jones. Author, lecturer, pastor, Dr. Jones would take his congregation
through book after book in the Bible, spending years in each book. One
Sunday, you may hear a sermon on just three words of the verse. (One preacher
in the middle ages spent 18 years going through the book of the Song of
Solomon and just got to chapter 3, verse 1 in all that time.)
On one occasion, Dr. Jones was asked about his ministry and he said this, "I
built a great church, but I didn't build great people." That's sad, isn't it,
to have to say that at the close of one's life.
Nehemiah, under God's instruction has built a great wall in 52 days. The
people have worked on the wall, now it's time to go to work on the people; a
great wall demands a great people for God. The stones are in place, a miracle
of blinding speed and effort. They have restored Jerusalem's wall. Now Ezra
and Nehemiah begin to restore the people.
I want to ask this morning, "How does God make a church into a people of
God?" Build a strong wall, yes. Now build a strong people.
When Bethany was one year old, she couldn't sit up. When I would hand her
something, she had no idea what to do; she wouldn't know to even close her
hand around the object. When she opened her mouth, you saw that there were
no teeth in her head. When most were walking, she couldn't even roll over.
Why? Food. Nutrition. In Romania, food was scarce, abandoned children
were
low on the list. They were dependent on the relief efforts of foreign
countries to get food in there.
But once in America, once the food started coming, the waiting teeth erupted
into her mouth, her muscles began to flex, her bones grew flinty hard. Food.
Nutrition.
Say "Pitcarin Island" and what do you think of? Some of you think
"Clark
Gable," some of you think "Captain Bligh." Some of you think
"Mutiny on the
Bounty," the movie about the British ship that saw its crew mutiny against
their tyrannical captain. The crew revolts, puts ashore at Pitcarin Island.
Now here's the rest of the story . . . . . One of the most dramatic examples
of the Bible's divine ability to transform men and women involved the famous
mutiny on the "Bounty." Following their rebellion against the notorious
Captain Bligh, nine mutineers, along with the Tahatian men and women who
accompanied them, found their way to Pitcairn Island, a tiny dot in the South
Pacific only two miles long and a mile wide. Ten years later, drink and
fighting had left only one man alive-John Adams. Eleven women and 23 children
made up the rest of the Island's population.
So far this is the familiar story made famous in the book and motion picture.
But the rest of the story is even more remarkable. About this time, Adams came
across the "Bounty's" Bible in the bottom of an old chest. He began to read
it, and the divine power of God's Word reached into the heart of that hardened
murderer on a tiny volcanic speck in the vast Pacific Ocean-and changed his
life forever. The peace and love that Adams found in the Bible entirely
replaced the old life of quarreling, brawling, and liquor. He began to teach
the children from the Bible until every person on the island had experienced
the same amazing change that he had found. Today, with a population of
slightly less than 100, nearly every person on Pitcairn Island is a Christian.
How does God transform a people, restore a people to become a people of God?
He begins with THE BOOK. 8:1-8. Under the protection of the rebuilt walls,
Ezra now begins with the Book, the O. T., that book which Paul tells us is
able to make a person "wise to salvation," to bring him to faith in the
Savior. It's the Book that feeds the believer and makes him strong, the book
that transforms us into a people of God.
How does this transformation take place? There is one thing I remember about
being in the 9th grade. My 9th grade experience was pure misery for many
reasons. And I remember being in an elective class called Speech. One of the
things we had to do which I hated was to make speeches. The other thing that
we had to do was to be in a play. We could pick out the play, we could cast
the play, and we were to be in the play. I decided to put on one act of the
play "Dial M for Murder." (Looking back, that was an odd choice and I
don't
know why I made it, but I did. I picked the one act that had only two people
in it, so I didn't have to get a lot of people involved.
This guy and I met and we practiced and we practiced and we memorized the
lines for the whole act. It was the act where I the hero, and he, the
murderer that I was to hire, met for the first time and planned it all out.
How he was to kill my wife, when he was to kill her, what he was to be paid
for it.
Did we ever rehearse! Over and over again we went through the lines. The
scene opens with a knock at my door and I open it and it's the murderer that
I'm hiring. He extends his hand and says, "Lesgate, I'm Fisher." The
play
comes and the audience is in place in the school auditorium. I'm a nervous
wreck. The curtain goes up. I'm seated in my living room waiting for Fisher
to arrive.
There's a knock at the door. I get up, go and open it, and the guy puts out
his hand and says, "Fisher, I'm Lesgate." He got the line completely
backwards! Now the whole rest of the play won't make sense. He's so nervous,
he doesn't even know who he is. I have to turn to the audience, stop the play
and tell them that we're going to have to start all over.
Have you ever been in a situation where you just felt out of place? Sort of
like me in a ballet or me sitting and listening to an opera or sitting in the
Atlanta Motor Speedway. Have you ever been in a situation where you didn't
know exactly how you fit in? It's a miserable feeling isn't it?
I remember trying to coach an adult soccer team and we had one lady on the
team that did not know the difference between being on offense or defense.
She had no idea what the terms meant, or what she was to do when it switched
from one to the other in the course of a practice session. She was totally
out of place, lost; she lasted for only one practice.
You, know, one of the great things about the Bible is that as you read and
understand it, it gives you what you need to be strong-it shows you where you
fit, it gives you a historical perspective. Look at these verses-as these
people hear the Word of God read, they start to weep and they start to cry
because they see where they fit in history.
I think that as Ezra reads and reads he gets to Deut. 28 and he reads verses
36-37; 43-44; 47-48. They understand that they've been the disobedient
people, they are under a foreign ruler's royal thumb. Their sin has brought
this upon them. They weep over their sins. This process is giving their
spiritual bones the spiritual calcium they need to grow, as God said in
Isaiah, I will look on he who has a contrite and humble heart."
Do you have the historical perspective of where you fit in? God has placed
you in the church age, after the Resurrection and before the Rapture of the
church. You are part of God's movement taking the gospel into the world from
the platform of the church. You're part of a grand and glorious plan to go
into the entire world and make disciples of the nations! You're indwelt by
the Holy Spirit who enables you to live a supernatural life, a life like the
world has never seen before until this age!
Then, when God shows you the historical perspective process and how you fit
in, it's time to move. One of the most famous pictures in all of literature
is that of Achilles pouting in his tent, refusing to get in the battle. God
doesn't want His people to sit and pout over past failures, He doesn't want
His people to wallow in past failures, but He wants His people to get up, move
on in obedience. In vss. 14ff, as Ezra reads on, they discover that they're
right in the time of the year when the Feast of Tabernacles was to be
observed. Nehemiah tells them to "quit pouting in their tents" and move on
in
obedience.
Look at 8:8-here's the thing. The Bible is read, in context, verse by verse,
the Bible is explained in context, verse by verse, the Bible is applied in
context, verse by verse. The Bible studied, the Bible explained, the Bible
applied, and this is what leads us to a stronger and stronger relationship
with God. The study of the Bible, applying the Bible leads us more and more
into a stronger relationship with God. This in turn enables the church to
become, in real life experience, "a people of God."
CONCLUSION
In ALICE IN WONDERLAND, Alice asks the Cheshire cat, "Would you tell me,
please, which way I ought to go from here?"
"That depends a good deal on where you want to get to, " said the cat.
"I don't much care where," said Alice.
"Then it doesn't matter which way you go," said the cat.
A people of God are those made strong by the Word, they know who they are,
where they fit in God's plan, they read it with a humble heart that God uses
to move them into strong obedience. He transforms us from glory unto glory.
Mike Halsey, Pastor
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