Sermon Tone Analysis

*“What Health Looks Like: Assessment and Action – Pt. 1”*

Nehemiah 1:1-2:8                                                                    Pastor Bruce Dick - BEFC

Pt. 4 of 8 on Spiritual Health                                                             February 10, 2008

            We have been talking for the last 3 weeks about our health and in particular, going to the doctor for his or her council or advice.

We said that a doctor can size your condition up in a matter of seconds and we called that “*unity*” or consistency of the whole picture of health – what he sees should “fit” together.

We looked at *healthy communication *with our doctor which usually begins with chit chat about our families before we ever get to our health issue that brought us there; it gives us confidence in our doctor because healthy communication speaks of a healthy relationship and vice versa.

Then we talked about the need for *balance*.

In our health there is a balance between what goes in and what gets burned off in work or exercise.

If one of those gets out of balance, we suffer in our health and our doctor will help us define some healthy balances for us.

We chose to talk about grace and truth, which might not be so much a matter of balancing each but maximizing both but without overdoing one or the other.

We talked how most of us fall toward one side or the other and need to shore up our efforts in the area in which we are weak.

Today we get beyond initial conversation with our doctor to more of the nuts and bolts.

But now we need to get to the real work.

It is time for him to give his examination of us and not only give his assessment or diagnosis but a plan of action so that we can either maintain our health – if we are healthy – or begin to take steps if we are not.

So he gets out that stethoscope and listens to our heart and our lungs.

We breathe in and out and he just listens.

He takes out that 2x4 and has us say “ah” as he tries not to make us gag but wanting to see inside our mouths and the top of the throat.

He’ll touch and feel various touch points to see if there is tenderness or lumps.

He’ll look at the charts from our blood work the nurse gave him and when he is done with his assessment, he’ll say, “Bruce, this is what I see…” and he begins to tell us what we are going to need to do.

But this little assessment actually began long before we went to his office that morning.

We began to do it as soon as we thought something was wrong.

When I was playing basketball a couple of weeks ago and jammed my thumb, there were two instantaneous “pops” that I heard.

While it hurt, I kept playing; I had jammed lots of fingers and toes in my days and I hoped this was just another.

Sure enough it swelled up that night and the next day it looked a little reddish green.

I was doing assessment too.

But I was hoping that it was just a sprain and not a break.

Still I could not get that double “pop” out of my mind.

But that Thursday morning – now 3.5 days later – I asked Trudy to see if I could get in for an appointment; I needed someone who could x-ray this and give me a better diagnosis, either to confirm my suspicions of a break or send me on my way with a diagnosis of a simple sprain.

Now consider the danger of what might have happened.

Suppose that I assured myself that it was just a sprain and it would get better.

I might have caused some long –term problems if I had not finally taken my personal assessment to a professional and taken the appropriate action.

Our spiritual health as individuals and the church is much the same.

You might be here and quite content with your spiritual health and that of the church – great!

Keep taking in healthy food and putting out in spiritual exercise and the practice of your faith!

For others of you, there is this nagging feeling that the “sprain” you feel in your spiritual life personally or for the church might be a “break.”

For you, you need the encouragement to go to the next level of doing something about it rather than just hoping it gets better.

Perhaps you have a question about faith itself and God has been very “unfair” in your opinion - you prayed for a friend whose health was failing and they died; where was God?  Couldn’t he have healed her?  - and you hold that against him.

It might be a temporary sprain or it might speak of something deeper, a break.

It’s time to check it out.

Maybe your work is just bad and you get blamed for things you never did and you think they are starting to all look at you differently – it hurts – and you begin to wonder why God doesn’t answer your prayers b~/c you have tried to live with integrity and God does nothing – is it a sprain or a break?

Or how about this:  something bad happens in your family; we’ll say your 17-year old son gets picked up for open container; and you come to church on Sunday and you hear this little group of Christians talking about your lack of parenting skills and didn’t see you quickly enough to close their mouths before you got there - sprain or break?

Or let’s say you are in middle school and someone says something that really hurts you deeply.

You come home and tell your mom or your dad and they say “uh huh, OK, well that’s life, now go and do your homework before supper.”

And that wound goes deeper.

All of those things hurt deeply and personally.

And even worse, unless something is done, they just stay hurt and if it was a break, it heals awkwardly if it ever heals at all and the damage done is then very difficult to repair when it could have been fixed quickly and safely if addressed early on.

I want you to meet a man by the name of Nehemiah today.

Nehemiah is hurt deeply by something that really wasn’t his concern if he didn’t want it to be.

But what he does shouts across the centuries to Christians and the church as a wakeup call not only to get involved but to take the time to assess what’s wrong with us and begin to take steps to address it.

If I were to say all of what we are about to say in 3 short sentences, I would say it this way:  /Assessment without action is worthless.

Action without assessment is foolish.

God-focused assessment with Gospel-motivated action is not only healthy, it is courageous and victorious.

/For those of us who love analysis but never do anything with our analysis, we waste our time.

We talk about the church and what we like and what we want but we never put the rubber to the road and so we just begin to sound like whiners.

Enough.

Some of us love to leap before we think – let’s try this!  Let’s try that!  - and our foolishness gets a lot of others burnt out real fast.

But when our assessment is God-focused (what does he want?

What does he want me to be?) and gospel-motivated (How can I or we best bring others to Christ?

How can I become more like him?

How can our church make some impact on our community?)

then we will be more than healthy, we will have this courage that can only be explained as from God and victories as we see our lives and others changed.

Nehemiah gives us a great picture of that this morning.

I want to walk you through part of his story.

I simply want you to see how Nehemiah doesn’t take the safe road; he chooses to get involved in a situation that God has prepared him for.

And as I share nuggets of his story, I want you to see how similar God’s path and plan are for you as an individual and us as a church as we pursue spiritual health together.

So please turn to the book called Nehemiah in your Bibles if you are not there already.

Nehemiah chapter 1 verse 1.  Don’t be embarrassed if you can’t find it right away.

The simplest way to find it is to find Psalms, which is in the very middle of your Bible and go backwards.

Before Psalms is Job and before Job is Esther and before Esther is Nehemiah.

Nehemiah 1:1 which is page 398 in the pew Bibles.

The first piece of assessment and action is simply *AWARENESS*.

Here’s what happens in verses 1-3:  /The words of Nehemiah the son of Hacaliah.

Now it happened in the month of Chislev, in the twentieth year, as I was in Susa the capital, 2 that Hanani, one of my brothers, came with certain men from Judah.

And I asked them concerning the Jews who escaped, who had survived the exile, and concerning Jerusalem.

3 And they said to me, “The remnant there in the province who had survived the exile is in great trouble and shame.

The wall of Jerusalem is broken down, and its gates are destroyed by fire.”/

OK, historical perspective here.

The nations of Israel and Judah have both been defeated years and years earlier.

Jerusalem is in ruins.

The temple was utterly destroyed, the centerpiece of worship not only for Jerusalem but the nation.

Stone after stone torn down until it was just rubble.

The walls of the city were destroyed.

Huge blocks of stone pulled down and fell into the valleys around the city.

The city of Jerusalem was located on two hills that ran parallel to each other from north to south and that were steepest on the west, south and east.

So when they destroyed the city they torn down the walls and just let these huge stones roll down the hill into the valleys below the city.

It was a huge defeat and had been demoralizing for over 100  years.

But here is Nehemiah, in the city of Susa.

He’s got a great job working as cupbearer for the king; he tastes the king’s wine to be sure it isn’t poison b~/4 he gives it to the king, but he’s also a close adviser to the king with the king’s trust.

He’s hundreds of miles from Jerusalem with a great job for anyone much less a Jew in the Persian Empire’s court, the most powerful nation in the world at that time.

Why should he care?

Does he? 

Nehemiah 1:4 (ESV) 4 /As soon as I heard these words I sat down and wept and mourned for days, and I continued fasting and praying before the God of heaven/.

The news crushes him.

For days he is devastated.

Why?

Why should he care?

It’s not his problem!

It wasn’t his fault.

We could do the same thing.

It would be so easy to just block out the condition of our world, our community or even the overall health of our church – and many of us do.