Sermon Tone Analysis

Intro

If you have your Bibles, let’s go to Nehemiah, chapter 1.

REBUILDING WITH PRAYERDonateToggle navigation60% CompletePlayCurrent Time 0:00Progress: 0%Duration Time46:49Mute

SERMONS / NEHEMIAH

Rebuilding With Prayer

Nehemiah centers on the Lord's providential protection of His people and the expected response of obedience and faithfulness in prayer and praise.

This series explores the importance of God's Word, the reality of opposition, God's power to restore broken lives and the need for prayer.

MATT CHANDLER | FEB 17, 2013

I think before we dive in today we have to establish how it is we are to look at the men and women in the Bible.

TOPICS : PRAYER SCRIPTURE:

TRANSCRIPT | AUDIO

There’s a way to look at the men and women in the Bible that’s going to be helpful to us, and then there’s a way to view men and women in the Bible that’s not just not helpful but actually harmful.

What our tendency is is to not look at the men and women in the Bible as ordinary people but actually extraordinary people, so that as we watch God move in them and through them, we’re able to look at them like you should look at Jordan.

Are you tracking with me?

TRANSCRIPT

Hey, how are we?

Are we doing okay?

If you have your Bibles, let’s go to Nehemiah, chapter 1.

If you’re a guest with us today and don’t have a Bible with you, maybe you don’t own a Bible, there should be a black hardback one somewhere around you.

If you don’t own one outright, that’s our gift to you.

Please feel free to take it.

If you just left yours all wrinkled up in your car, you can use that one here, but then leave it here.

I don’t want to add to your collection in your backseat.

If you don’t own a Bible, seriously, why don’t you take that as our gift to you.

I think before we dive in today we have to establish how it is we are to look at the men and women in the Bible.

There’s a way to look at the men and women in the Bible that’s going to be helpful to us, and then there’s a way to view men and women in the Bible that’s not just nothelpful but actually harmful.

What our tendency is is to not look at the men and women in the Bible as ordinary people but actually extraordinary people, so that as we watch God move in them and through them, we’re able to look at them like you should look at Jordan.

Are you tracking with me?

Basically, what we do is we look at the men and women in the Bible like we would look at Jordan in basketball, like we would look at Steve Jobs in business, and like we would look at Mozart in music.

So just to unpack that a little bit, just in case you’re not tracking with me, here’s what I would say.

Michael Jordan is the best basketball player who has ever lived.

I have no ears to hear from anyone else something other than that.

If you come up to me on the fiftieth birthday of MJ and try to throw LeBron out there…church discipline.

I’ll convene the elders, and we’ll go to work.

When you’re talking MJ, you’re talking about a level of play that transcended his time and even to this day.

Like Jordan is Jordan.

Right?

A hundred years from now, two hundred years from now, if the game is still being played, there will be Jordan.

There are a lot of dudes in the league, but there’s Jordan.

Then Steve Jobs’ business creativity.

You might be brilliant at business, but that man convinced us computers were cool, and then look what he did to us.

I mean, I can’t even get angry.

It so blows my mind.

He literally developed a product and then would just slightly tweak it and make us rebuy it.

And we loved him for it.

We liked that he did that to us.

We didn’t even go, “Are you serious?

The camera just has better pixels?”

We were like, “Give me the 4. Give me the 4S.

Give me the 4S1.”

We just kept doing it.

We loved it.

Right?

So this is a man that if history continues as then, we’ll always look back at Jobs.

And Mozart.

I know there are different styles of music.

I probably could have dropped other things in there.

When all is said and done, I love Michael Bleecker, our worship pastor here, I love John Warren up in Denton, Isaac Wimberley in Dallas, and Randy Fuller in Fort Worth, but here’s what I would wager.

I would wager 200 years from now people aren’t getting together to listen to Bleecker.

A hundred years from now the best musicians out there aren’t going to gather for a “Glorious Day” reunion.

That song we just sang, “God is a Warrior,” was written by Isaac Wimberley.

Great song, biblical song, pulled right from the text, absolutely true about the nature and character of God.

A hundred and fifty, two hundred years from now, I just don’t know that it’s going to be on a classical music CD you’re studying to.

What we do is we approach men and women in the Bible as though they’re that type of person and not us.

When you do that, the stories in the Scriptures actually serve as kind of a burden that weighs on our expectations and on how we view God.

We exalt the role of man and diminish the role of God and, in so doing, rob ourselves from the courage and the power that is made available to us in the person and work of Jesus Christ.

Here’s the thing.

If you really pay attention when you read the Bible (and I don’t think we do), they’re us.

Some of them come from busted-up homes.

Some of them come from really great homes.

Almost all of them have serious life issues.

Really, if you’re paying attention, God’s great glory is seen in who he does use.

These are very ordinary men and women.

God extraordinarily works through ordinary men and women.

That is a fascinating truth.

If you view the Bible, and then, God help us, if you view other people around you as having better opportunity… Now let me be straight here.

We have different gift sets, don’t we? Can we be straight about that?

There are certain things you have been gifted by God to do that if I worked at it with all my might I would never be able to hit it like you can hit it.

I’m not talking gifting; I’m talking the availability of the presence and power of God.

That’s available to all of us.

We all start with the same baseline.

We’re all sinners in need of salvation.

The Holy Spirit who lives in you is the same Holy Spirit who lives in me, if you’re a believer in Christ.

This is who we are.

We’ve been adopted into the household of faith, where the power of God is made available to all who have submitted their lives to him.

It’s important we see that as we continue on in the book of Nehemiah, because if we’re not careful, my fear is you’re going to go, “Well, I’m glad that worked for Jordan.

I could practice the rest of my life and I couldn’t hit that shot.”

It’s not true, and it really diminishes the power and might of God and his ability to move powerfully in ordinary people.

The Bible is simply filled with ordinary people.

You have this one guy who’s God in the flesh, but other than that, it’s just ordinary guys.

Some of them are unbelievably gifted in government and business, and some of them aren’t very gifted at all at much, yet God powerfully uses them.

Two weeks ago we looked at what happened when Nehemiah heard Jerusalem was desolate, that the walls had been torn down and the gates had been burned.

We did a little bit of work on what it means to not have walls and gates.

It basically paints a picture of anarchy.

When he hears, he’s 800 miles away in the palace of the king of Persia.

I just have to guess (you can Google this) he’s living all right for himself.

If you’re cupbearer to the king of Persia, you have a pretty sweet gig.

You’re sampling the best wine, eating the best food, and unless someone tries to kill the king, you have a pretty plush gig.

I have to wonder even historically, since everyone knew there would be a wine-tester, if your attempt would be to poison the king that way.

So great job, 800 miles removed from the atrocity that is Jerusalem at this point.