Sermon Tone Analysis

Welcome

Good Morning!

I’m Pastor Wayne and I’d like to welcome you all to the gathering of Ephesus Baptist Church.

Why did you choose to gather today?

We believe we are a called people!

Called to worship and exalt our God among the nations in order that His glory may be spread over all the earth!

If you are visiting with us this morning, we want you to know that ...

We are all one family of faith: “giving our all to love God, love people, proclaim Jesus, and make disciples in our generation.”

We have a connect card in the pew in front of you.

I invite you to take one and fill it out!

If you have prayer needs, you can let us know about those as well.

I promise, our prayer team will lift you up soon.

You can place those cards in the offering plate when it comes around.

Scripture Memory

Opening Scripture Reading

Introduction

“NEHEMIAH: How God Uses the Ordinary to Revitalize the Kingdom!”;

Rise Up and Build!

Part 2,

Let’s start today by quickly reviewing the principles we learned last week.

REVIEW

1.

Like Nehemiah, we must be ready to give our all for the cause of Christ.

2. Like Nehemiah, we must anticipate opposition and ridicule when we seek the welfare of God’s Kingdom.

3. Like Nehemiah, we must be wise and rest as we seek to glorify God!

This great passage of Nehemiah is full of practical spiritual wisdom.

Are you ready to learn more of Nehemiah’s godly wisdom today?

Join me in Nehemiah 2 as we explore verse 9-20 further.

Today we are going to look at Nehemiah’s inspection of the Walls.

Nehemiah received his mandate from the Lord to rebuild the broken down walls and burnt gates of Jerusalem that have left the people of God without defenses and in great trouble and shame.

King Artaxerxes has given Nehemiah the blessing to go and govern over the rebuilding of Jerusalem.

So Nehemiah has journeyed from Susa to Jerusalem to give everything he could to the rebuilding of Jerusalem for the glory of God.

Now God is about to use Nehemiah to begin accomplishing His divine will as Nehemiah accomplishes the things God has implanted into his heart.

I want you to notice two principles that work together that we dare not separate if we want to see God use us for His Glory.

1. God lays things on our hearts to accomplish for His glory according to His will.

Up to this point, we have seen God moving and working upon the heart of Nehemiah.

He worked on Nehemiah before the report from Jerusalem to give him a love for the city of God.

He worked on him after the report to cause him to be burdened with the sad state of affairs in Jerusalem.

He changed Nehemiah’s heart as Nehemiah sought the Father to forgive and restore Israel in prayer.

Henry Blackaby has said,

“Prayer can be unsettling, because God uses our conversations with Him to change us.”

As Nehemiah prayed, God laid His heart for His glory over Nehemiah’s heart.

God moved supernaturally on King Artaxerxes heart and in doing so emboldened Nehemiah’s heart to the point that he said, (Neh 2:8)

“And the king granted me what I asked, for the good hand of my God was upon me.”

It is very clear that God has been laying things on the heart of Nehemiah.

The plan Nehemiah was beginning to form in his mind as he sought to rebuild Jerusalem was a plan that was actually being framed by God every step of the way.

After three days of rest and recuperation from his long journey, Nehemiah decides to take a midnight tour to inspect the walls that God had placed on his heart.

God has embedded the desire to see Jerusalem rebuilt into the heart of Nehemiah.

So he “arose in the night” to take a secret look at the walls that were in ruin.

Even today, those who are involved in leadership are often awake while others sleep.

I can assure you that the moment you sign on to serve others and the moment you accept the burden of rebuilding your broken world, you will have many sleepless nights.

He arises, wakes up his armed guards, mounts his horse and quietly inspects the damaged walls as a burdened man while the city sleeps.

Where did that burden come from?

It came from the Lord!

Nehemiah said, “God had laid something on his heart.”

And if you’ll listen, God will lay something on your heart too.

Some of you may have already heard what God has put on your heart, but you haven’t followed Him in obedience on that matter yet.

It may be a new ministry God want you to start building.

It may be letting go of an old ministry that has run its course.

It may be that He wants you to join the family of God here at Ephesus in church membership.

It may be that you need to know the Lord Jesus and be saved.

What has God been laying on your heart to do for Him?

Are you being obedient to the vision of His will that He has put into your heart?

And I want you to focus on it.

I want you to say like the Apostle Paul, “But one thing I do.”

(Philippians 3:13)

Run after Christ this morning.

Allow His will to overshadow yours.

Let His will override your comfort and preference.

Realize our first principle is this:

God lays things on our hearts to accomplish for His glory according to His will.

Let me warn you right now, It is not enough for God to lay something on your heart.

There is a part we must play if God is to be ultimately glorified in our lives because of the vision He placed in our hearts.

There is a second principle that works alongside of the first that we dare not separate.

And the second is this:

2. Our responsibility is to learn and labor in response to the things God puts into our hearts.

What do we learn from Nehemiah’s Secret Nocturnal Inspection Tour?

The task that burdened Nehemiah, as we have seen, was to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem, so that the life of the city could be reestablished.

Until the walls were up, nothing else could be done.

With its walls down, Jerusalem had no defense against raiders and invaders and was no place to make a home.

How could God’s people make a home in such a desolate place?

How could they maintain temple worship under such trouble and shame?

While we are on this subject of the weakness of Jerusalem, listen to the words of J.I. Packer.

Jerusalem is a picture of Christian churches generally in the modern West.

Weakness, disillusionment, and the melting away of adherents is the story everywhere.

In Asia and Africa and Latin America the gospel advances and the church grows, but in the Protestant world of Britain, Europe, North America, and Australia the secularizing of community life and the faltering of theologians, church leaders, and ordinary clergy has left the majority of congregations in a very low state.

Abandonment of the historic belief in a holy Creator who graciously saves sinners through atonement and new birth is common still, as it has been for the past century, and whenever fidelity to the biblical faith ceases, spiritual vitality quickly drains away.

Overall the Western church has shriveled and shrunk; it has ceased to count as a community force; the faith of which God made it trustee is largely unknown to the man in the street, and when known it is largely ignored; and the godliness that the church once set forth as true humanness is rated in popular culture as a comic, old-fashioned oddity.

The church appears as a ruined city, like Sarajevo or Beirut after the fighting, and like Jerusalem as Nehemiah found it, and a tremendous rebuilding job awaits anyone who still cares about its welfare.

In such rebuilding, the reconstruction of biblical belief will be the first and basic task.

Before the rebuilding process in Jerusalem could begin and before a single recruit could be enlisted for the challenging task, Nehemiah had to make a careful analysis of the situation before him.

He knew what God had inspired in his heart, but he had to take personal responsibility for it.

He had to learn and devise a plan of action before he could labor to complete the task.

This was no casual inspection in the dark, but a careful probing analysis into the situation.

Nehemiah saw for himself all the broken debris that had been piling up for decades.

There was accumulated trash all around the broken-down wall, and nothing had been done to remove it.

He saw that God’s work was in ruins.

He saw that the walls around the city of Jerusalem, that had been a thing of strength, a thing of beauty, a thing that brought glory to God were broken and in ruin.

Remember we said that the walls around Jerusalem are symbolic of God’s salvation and symbolic of God’s glory in the Bible.

He sees firsthand how God’s symbolic salvation and glory appeared in a state of decay.

This same accumulation of “trash” happens in so many lives today.