The Meat

As a church we, each of us individually, and as a church family, remind ourselves each week, that we are to take on

The Attitude of Christ Jesus.

We know that Jesus of Nazareth, was God and a person. He was the Christ, a title for the one who would make all things right, the Messiah God himself.

Many of us here call ourselves followers of Jesus, so we look to do what Jesus taught us, through God’s word, the Bible. Therefore we look to know what it says, and seek to live out the attitude we should have in our life: today here at church, tomorrow on a day off, and everyday.

To find this attitude of Christ Jesus we have gone into the Bible, to a time back before Christ became man in Jesus, about 300 years earlier and we studied how God interacted with Nehemiah, a follower of God. As many of you will remember Nehemiah led the Jewish people, at this time called the Israelites because they descended from a guy named Israel. He led the Israelites to rebuild the destroyed wall of Jerusalem. The wall had been destroyed by another nation invading Israel and that nation forcibly took thousands of the leading people, hundreds of miles to the invading countries land, that of Babylon, to live in exile. The Bible tells us this was because the Israelites for centuries had been promised God’s protection if they would follow God’s laws, did not follow God’s laws and so after hundreds and hundreds of years, God withdrew his protection.

Everything destroyed. Yet as we read the book of Nehemiah, all that war is long over, and now God, allowed for Jewish people to return to Isreal and Jerusalem. First after a long struggle they were able to worship in Jerusalem. Through the later work of Nehemiah, these Israelites were able to rebuild the Jerusalem walls, beginning to make it an important city once again. Allowing the city to once again be a place of safety and centered on the worship of God.

Last week, we learned that as soon as the wall was built the people turned their attention to the reading of the Bible. The people learned of a festival and immediately went to making sure everyone was celebrating the festival. It was a huge success with great joy, the best festival ever.

Then we come upon today’s part of the book of Nehemiah. Let’s seek God and the attitude of Christ Jesus.

Nehemiah 9:1–3 (CSB)

1 On the twenty-fourth day of this month the Israelites assembled;

Every time I read this, I kept thinking about the story of our time. The assessembling of another group.

VIDEO

Wow! so fun, but Okay this assembly looked nothing like that assembly because they came not to do battle with a fake enemy and it wasn’t a fictional story, they came to deal with a real enemy, themselves, their shame and sins of their ancestors.

Nehemiah 9:1 CSB

1 On the twenty-fourth day of this month the Israelites assembled; they were fasting, wearing sackcloth, and had put dust on their heads.

This is not a fun story of pretend good vs evil. Its a story of real people working through real issues. Who came before God as depressed as they could be. The Israelites were very real people, the majority of which had spent over 70 years in a foreign land. Because of the evil that their families had done. This was a people that was promised all the protection by God if they followed His laws and they didn’t. God allowed the nation to be destroyed. While they were exiled they had to battle to keep their culture, truly follow God in a foreign land, keep their way of life, then had to come back and rebuild. For those who had remained it was 70 years of weakness. Many of you have not lived for 70 years and some of you were so young that you do not remember 70 years ago.

This exile time saw the merging of so many people who grew up barley hanging on to Jewishness far away and those who barely hung on to life and Jewishness in the destroyed land. So, you can imagine that the majority of these people grew up hearing about the good old days, their whole lives were hardship of survival after hardship and learning that it was because of their grandparents, great-grandparents, great-great grandparents and many more generations sin that it all happened. When the priest Ezra read what the people of Israel were supposed to be doing it became very clear that their whole lives of dealing with all they dealt with was earned. It was the punishment for hundreds of years of disobedience.

I personally do not have a refugee story. I can imagine it. But I need to pause.

It is said that with the Bible, a pastor can do three things when preaching: explain, which I just did; illustrate, which I started to do; and apply. Apply means what difference does this make in my life.

It is important that in order to take on the attitude of Christ Jesus we allow the Bible to mess with our lives, to change us but what happens to these people here, what does it have to do with us.

Let’s keep looking

Nehemiah 9:2–3 (CSB)

2 Those of Israelite descent separated themselves from all foreigners, and they stood and confessed their sins and the iniquities of their ancestors.

3 While they stood in their places, they read from the book of the law of the Lord their God for a fourth of the day and spent another fourth of the day in confession and worship of the Lord their God.

Did you see something, right in verse 2, did you see something about application.

Let’s look again

Nehemiah 9:2 (CSB)

2 Those of Israelite descent separated themselves from all foreigners, and they stood and confessed their sins and the iniquities of their ancestors.

This confession was a thing only for the Jews. Many times in the old testament we need to look and ask is this a promise to the Jewish people, a promise to all people, a thing for just that individual. I could teach on this for quite a while, see you don’t relate because You and I, assuming you are not Jewish, although some of you might be and that’s awesome, you could relate. Most who are like me, and are not.

God never made a covenant with the United States. God never made a covenant like He did with the Jews with other racial or national groups as a group and not all of mankind. It is very important that we don’t think we are the Jewish people. It is also very important that we understand, we are chosen too.

You were adopted, chosen by God, invited into the Kingdom of God’s people because of what Jesus did on the cross and what the Holy Spirit showed us at the beginning of the church.

Romans 3:29–30 M:BCL

29 And where does that leave our proud Jewish claim of having a corner on God? Also canceled. God is the God of outsider non-Jews as well as insider Jews. 30 How could it be otherwise since there is only one God? God sets right all who welcome his action and enter into it, both those who follow our religious system and those who have never heard of our religion.

You can hold things with two hands correct? In this hand, understand that the Jewish people in the days of Nehemiah were to be a separate and holy people. They were held responsible for the law between God and his people. You, did not come to God by becoming Jewish, you came to God through faith, through belief that Jesus is God. He invited you in. The Jewish people too, could not come to God through the law, because they failed, as we all would, therefore they needed forgiveness too, thus they also must accept Jesus by faith.

Romans 3:21–26 (NLT)

21 But now God has shown us a way to be made right with him without keeping the requirements of the law, as was promised in the writings of Moses and the prophets long ago.

22 We are made right with God by placing our faith in Jesus Christ. And this is true for everyone who believes, no matter who we are.

No matter the color of your skin, your ability to read or write, the country your ancestors are from, or even how much your family went to church or did for Jesus or any false God.

We are made right through faith in Jesus Christ.

23 For everyone has sinned; we all fall short of God’s glorious standard.

Got that? No one is good. No one is good people. All fall short of God’s glorious standard.

The Jews in the days of Nehemiah and the Americans right in front of me in 2023 all are sinners.

This is actually quite freeing. You have those bad thoughts, done awful things, and sometimes think if I could only be as kind as, as good as, as prayerful as, NOPE, NOPE, NOPE. We all have fallen short of God’s glorious standard. But great news,

24 Yet God, in his grace, freely makes us right in his sight. He did this through Christ Jesus when he freed us from the penalty for our sins.

25 For God presented Jesus as the sacrifice for sin. People are made right with God when they believe that Jesus sacrificed his life, shedding his blood. This sacrifice shows that God was being fair when he held back and did not punish those who sinned in times past,

26 for he was looking ahead and including them in what he would do in this present time. God did this to demonstrate his righteousness, for he himself is fair and just, and he makes sinners right in his sight when they believe in Jesus.

We are freed from sin through Jesus. We are made right through belief that Jesus made it right.

Many of us live by faith in others everyday. We have faith that Engineers did their jobs and that when we walk into a building it isn’t going to fall down around us. That doctors and nurses we visit are doing their jobs. That people at work that we count on are doing their jobs. When you have that kind of faith, it frees you not to worry, not to have to check everything, not to have to watch and sample. I remember when my Dad told me about our Lahu friends in Visalia who had just moved hear from Vietnam back in the 80s. They would always buy live chickens instead of the chicken in the grocery store. My Dad asked the pastor of the Lahu why don’t they buy chicken in the grocery store and he said because you don’t know if the chickens were sick. My dad said there are inspectors, and the man who grew up in corrupt Vietnam said, they pay those people off, you can only trust live chickens.

You see what life is really like when their is no faith. It hurts and angers us greatly when we find out people are not doing their jobs, scaring us, so much that having faith again seems foolish.

Sadly many live like that with forgiveness of sin. We don’t trust Jesus to do the job. Their is no further punishment for sin and no way you can make sin right with God except through Jesus Christ

Romans 3:24 NLT

24 Yet God, in his grace, freely makes us right in his sight. He did this through Christ Jesus when he freed us from the penalty for our sins.

It is only by God’s power that you can have this kind of trust and faith. Jesus is not corrupt, Jesus did it. He made it right.

To know, to believe what Jesus did, the Holy Spirit enters us because we couldn’t genuinely believe unless the Holy Spirit empowers us to this belief.

1 Corinthians 12:3 NLT

3 So I want you to know that no one speaking by the Spirit of God will curse Jesus, and no one can say Jesus is Lord, except by the Holy Spirit.

Now I don’t want you to get all silly and say well I can run around tricking people Like you do that Ellen Degeneres game and put the phrase on your head “Jesus is Lord” and people say Jesus is Lord and then they will be in heaven! No this is not just an “I was just saying” kind of statement, it is a conviction of the heart, a statement of faith, one fundamental to life. Jesus is Lord. Only the Holy Spirit can instill that conviction of Heart.

If we live by this faith, then the Holy Spirit is in us and we can live seeing the fruit of the Holy Spirit

Galatians 5:22–23 CSB

22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness, and self-control. The law is not against such things.

Yet even with the Holy Spirit, we who are followers of Jesus are not yet finished, we are not yet perfected. We are still being disciplined.

1 Corinthians 13:12 M:BCL

12 We don’t yet see things clearly. We’re squinting in a fog, peering through a mist. But it won’t be long before the weather clears and the sun shines bright! We’ll see it all then, see it all as clearly as God sees us, knowing him directly just as he knows us!

So we are currently in the not yet finished stage. There is still sin in our lives. Just like the Jewish people in the times of Nehemiah, Their is still times when we walk away from what the Holy Spirit is leading us to do. We do what we should not do.

Romans 7:19 CSB

19 For I do not do the good that I want to do, but I practice the evil that I do not want to do.

Romans 7:22–25 CSB

22 For in my inner self I delight in God’s law, 23 but I see a different law in the parts of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and taking me prisoner to the law of sin in the parts of my body. 24 What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? 25 Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, with my mind I myself am serving the law of God, but with my flesh, the law of sin.

Therefore we who follow Jesus, know that the blood of Jesus on the cross paid the punishment for my sin back then, but I still benefit from confession today.

1 John 1:9 CSB

9 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

Confession doesn’t work as the world things it does.

Confession is not a get out of jail free card, it also is not the beginning of punishment.

A comedian shows how the world handle people who confesses.

VIDEO

Confession, even when it is sung, doesn’t allow us to get away from consequences. It doesn’t begin the punishment. Confession begins the acknowledgement of what God has already done.

But here are some things confession does for those of us who follow Jesus

Confession lets us stay in reality.

This is really what happened. So many times I have made excuses for myself. That isn’t reality. I have been embarrassed. Have you? I have explained away why I did what I did, came up with excuses. Yet my friends, when I confess, I can just own it. I can admit what I am and what I am not.

1 John 1:10 CSB

10 If we say, “We have not sinned,” we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.

Because as one author wrote when looking at the Hebrew word used in Nehemiah for confession, we see the full sense of the word,

“Confession is a recognition or acknowledgement of what is true about a person or about God. Confession may include a recital of God’s nature or his works as well as a statement of human sins.”

Confession itself can really begin with listing how awesome God is.

God finished sin. God heals. God creates new relationships. God makes a way where there was no way. God is love. God is always right. God is trustworthy. God is the great teacher.

With all that you can trust this one, God, Jesus Christ, to tell everything too, He is powerful enough to do the right thing.

An author pointed out that when people have surgery a doctor will explain how many times they have done the surgery, where they learned it, how skilled the team is, and how the procedure will go. When dealing with sin, who has more experience than God himself?

In just a minute to confess all your sins publically. Wait, don’t run for the exits.

Think about something, how many of you started pulling up sins from the past? How many of us pull up memories of things we have already begged God to forgive us for

1 John 1:9 CSB

9 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

Therefore,

Confession allows me to stop punishing myself. God took that for me.

Today, you can go farther than even Nehemiah could. You can fully embrace that God loves you. God forgives you. God does better than any other relationship in the world because He has the power to welcome you Home.

Let it go, confess who you really are to God. Confess.

Confession puts me in right relationship with God.

1 John 2:1–4 (CSB)

1 My little children, I am writing you these things so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father—Jesus Christ the righteous one.

2 He himself is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours, but also for those of the whole world.

3 This is how we know that we know him: if we keep his commands.

4 The one who says, “I have come to know him,” and yet doesn’t keep his commands, is a liar, and the truth is not in him.

I am now free to follow Jesus, the forgiver of sin, to take on the attitude of Christ Jesus.