Nehemiah Part 8: Church has been reduced to Sunday morning, and we think that is serving God!
"O Lord, I beseech You, may Your ear be attentive to the prayer of Your servant and the prayer of Your servants who delight to revere Your name, and make Your servant successful today and grant him compassion before this man " Now I was the cupbearer to the king. Nehemiah 1:11
Nehemiah has quite a job ahead of him. It is not an easy job. What God has called us to do is not an easy thing, which is why most churches are not doing it. That is why most churches have reverted back to just preaching an easy, comfortable, do nothing, accept everything, get everything Gospel. Because the actual job that we have, the building of the Kingdom of God, is not an easy thing.
Nehemiah has an unbelievable job. We will see it today. What God has called him to do is actually impossible. So actually we are very nice to you because most everything we tell you to do is possible. We are actually nicer than God, because what we tell you to do, in the job, in the business, in the church, it may sometimes not be easy, but it is possible. It is not beyond your capability. God has told Nehemiah to do something that is beyond his capability. We will see he is not able to do it. He does not have the proper equipment (always a good excuse). He does not have the money. He does not have the position. He needs a supernatural act of God. We have got to move back into that. I do, you do, we do, where we trust God, not only with our own ability – as long as everything is OK and I have everything that I want, then I will do it. No, but to reach out, sometimes for that impossible, reach out to that area where you really then have to seek God, where you no longer have the ability, the money, the object, the thing, but somehow, the job still has to be done, it still has to be done.
Nehemiah cries out, “Oh Lord, I beseech you!” This is missing in the church, in your life, in my life, to be in a position where we really have to cry out to God, where it is beyond our measure, it is beyond our ability, it is beyond our capability. What God has called him to do, what God has put in his heart, he cannot do. We will see that very clearly later. It is not possible for him to do it. He cried out to God.
We have to do that. We have to do that voluntarily, because there is usually no demand put on us. That is why, as a whole, people do not like what we call the Apostolic, because the Apostolic puts a demand on you. The Apostolic says I do not want to hear excuses. I want to see action. I want to see the Kingdom of God built. It says, he cried out to God. That is why we have to do that voluntarily. We live in the United States of America. We don't have to cry out. If we want a job, we can just go and get a job. If you don't have a job, you can just go down and get a welfare check, get some food stamps. There is no need to cry out, We don't even have to do anything.
That is why we have to decide to cry out. We have to decide that we are not going to do that, to take that, accept that, the easy way out. We are going to cry out to God. We are not going to give up. We are not going to take the easy way out. We are going to believe God.
Nehemiah cries out. He says, may your ear be attentive to my prayer, the prayer of your servant. The prayer of your servant – you see, we are to serve God. Coming on Sunday morning is a very small aspect of serving God. It is perhaps serving God, but actually when we come on Sunday morning, we are not so much serving God as we are receiving from God. When we worship, we serve him to a certain extent, but we also receive. When we worship God, burdens are lifted from us, we receive a new joy, we receive a new power, a new energy, so we are actually not serving, we are being served.
We are not serving as the word of God comes. We are sitting, which is good. We are hopefully listening, we are receiving something that will helpfully change our life, something that will make us happy, something that will make us uncomfortable, but the end effect, it is doing something good in our life. So we are not actually serving there either. When we give in the offering, well, giving is serving, but also we know if we do not give we will not receive. We know if we will not plant, we will not receive. So then again, we are receiving. When the service is over, we will get food. We will receive. So how we actually serve God is by doing what he wants.
So serving God has another aspect than just Sunday morning. Church has been reduced to Sunday morning and we think that is serving God. But Sunday morning is not really about serving God; the rest of the week is about serving God. What are we doing with the rest of the week? With the rest of our time, the rest of our energy? Where do we put that? Where do we invest that?
It says, “... be attentive to the prayer of Your servant and the prayer of Your servants who delight to revere Your name…” Reverence! Somehow we have lost that. I just heard a preaching on the internet from Paul Washer, a good guy - you need to hear it - a radical guy, a radical message. He made a statement there. He said, “All of you people who are a little bit older, 40, 50, 60 years old, this is the message you grew up with: repentance, turn to God. But in the modern day church, they don’t want to hear that.” They don’t want to hear that. They want some kind of easy, greasy Gospel.
They don’t want to hear that, but it is that message that changes our life. Nehemiah reverenced God. That is why he was willing to give up his job, that is why he was willing to believe God, to go beyond his means, his circumstances, he was willing to say, “I will take on that job.” It is too much. You say, “Well it is too much.” Well, of course it is too much. If it is not too much, you don’t need God. If it is not too much, where do you need God, then? If it is inside of you ability, your energy, your knowledge, where do you need God? God is not there. You are doing it. Of course it’s too much. Of course at times it is too much, too much demanded, too much expected. Of course! When are we ever going to trust God if it is not once in a while too much, if we find that once in a while I can’t do it? Good, then let’s trust God, let’s reverence his name. We are talking about fear, positive, good fear of God.
A fear of God causes obedience. OK, a love of God causes obedience. Good, you need both of them, because it is actually more the fear of God than the love of God that causes obedience. I know it is like that in the world, that fear and respect. Why do we obey the law? Because we love the law? No, we know the law is good, the law is proper, the law is correct, but I don’t know that we really have a love for the law. We obey the law because of a good, healthy respect and fear. If we do not do it, we will be in trouble, we will get a fine, it will cost us money, it will cost us time in jail, something will happen to us, and because of that we make choices. We say, “I don’t want to do that, so I will go ahead and do this. I don’t want to do this, but I definitely do not want to do that.”
Kids have a healthy fear of their parents. Of course they do, some little bitty kid and some great big parent. Now if you are just petrified and the guy is just beating you all the time that is something different, but a healthy fear and respect is good. You learn to respect authority then, you learn to respect people that are over you. You grow up like that, it is a good thing.
God has given Nehemiah a job. He is going to need a lot of favor. In order for us to do what God has called us to do, we are going to have to go beyond, “I can’t do it,” god beyond, “I don’t have the right thing.” We are going to have to go beyond that to get the job done. We are going to need that supernatural favor.
