Rebuilding and Reviving Post- Covid
Mission Post-Covid • Sermon • Submitted
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The last year has most liekly made us feel like exiles or foreigners in our own land. We have never experienced anything liek this before.
There have been moments when we have felt tormented, pressured and persecuted by the circumstances around us.
I have felt deply encouraged and profoundly discouraged at the same time.
Mostly, I have embraced the reality of Isaiah 40:30 that says even young me grow tired and weary.
There are three R’s I would like to share with you from the Babylonian Capticity that I hope will speak to us as we think about what ministry in a Post_covid worlkd will look like
REMEMBER- ZAGAR- Recall God’s Goodness-
Taste and see that the Lord is good.
How happy is the man who takes refuge in Him!
REBUILD- From Ancient Ruins
Be joyful, rejoice together,
you ruins of Jerusalem!
For the Lord has comforted His people;
He has redeemed Jerusalem.
REVIVE- Pentecost- do it again!
Nehemiah the governor, Ezra the priest and scribe, and the Levites who were instructing the people said to all of them, “This day is holy to the Lord your God. Do not mourn or weep.” For all the people were weeping as they heard the words of the law.
When they heard this, they came under deep conviction and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles: “Brothers, what must we do?”
READ THE TEXTS OF FOCUS (Psalm 137 and Nehemiah 1):
1 By the rivers of Babylon—
there we sat down and wept
when we remembered Zion.
2 There we hung up our lyres
on the poplar trees,
3 for our captors there asked us for songs,
and our tormentors, for rejoicing:
“Sing us one of the songs of Zion.”
4 How can we sing the Lord’s song
on foreign soil?
5 If I forget you, Jerusalem,
may my right hand forget its skill.
6 May my tongue stick to the roof of my mouth
if I do not remember you,
if I do not exalt Jerusalem as my greatest joy!
7 Remember, Lord, what the Edomites said
that day at Jerusalem:
“Destroy it! Destroy it
down to its foundations!”
8 Daughter Babylon, doomed to destruction,
happy is the one who pays you back
what you have done to us.
9 Happy is he who takes your little ones
and dashes them against the rocks.
1 The words of Nehemiah son of Hacaliah:
During the month of Chislev in the twentieth year, when I was in the fortress city of Susa, 2 Hanani, one of my brothers, arrived with men from Judah, and I questioned them about Jerusalem and the Jewish remnant that had survived the exile. 3 They said to me, “The remnant in the province, who survived the exile, are in great trouble and disgrace. Jerusalem’s wall has been broken down, and its gates have been burned down.”
4 When I heard these words, I sat down and wept. I mourned for a number of days, fasting and praying before the God of heaven.
HOW DO THESE TWO EXPERIENCES OF REMEMBERING (Ps 137) and Rebuilding and Revival speak to us?
Remember we no longer have the homefield advantage.
Remember we no longer have the homefield advantage.
WHERE are the people in this text? Babylon (Exile)
WHERE are we? (what’s our context?)
We often forget that WE are called to live as EXILES yet we often live as though this is HOME. We are SENT, we have NOT ARRIVED.
11 Dear friends, I urge you as strangers and temporary residents to abstain from fleshly desires that war against you. 12 Conduct yourselves honorably among the Gentiles, so that in a case where they speak against you as those who do what is evil, they will, by observing your good works, glorify God on the day of visitation. 13 Submit to every human authority because of the Lord, whether to the Emperor as the supreme authority 14 or to governors as those sent out by him to punish those who do what is evil and to praise those who do what is good. 15 For it is God’s will that you silence the ignorance of foolish people by doing good. 16 As God’s slaves, live as free people, but don’t use your freedom as a way to conceal evil. 17 Honor everyone. Love the brotherhood. Fear God. Honor the Emperor.
Remember that we are more than professionals
Remember that we are more than professionals
Does your heart truly break for the things that break God’s heart?
Is your heart senseitive to the things that matter around you?
3 They said to me, “The remnant in the province, who survived the exile, are in great trouble and disgrace. Jerusalem’s wall has been broken down, and its gates have been burned down.”
When we stripped of our comfort and challenegd to our core, we are in a good place to be revived by God and for God to birth something new. AFTER ALL, OUR GOD IS A RESURRECTION SAVIOUR!!
Remember and repent of our our sin
Remember and repent of our our sin
As leaders and responsoble citizens of heaven deployed to earth, we must confess OUR PART of the problem.
6 let Your eyes be open and Your ears be attentive to hear Your servant’s prayer that I now pray to You day and night for Your servants, the Israelites. I confess the sins we have committed against You. Both I and my father’s house have sinned.
In what ways are we a part of the Problem rather than part of the solution?
The world all too easily spotlights the problems in the church BUT we must be careful not to be like the world and see other Believers as the enemy..... We spend SO MUCH TIME pulling other believers, pastors and Christian leaders down, rather than exalting Christ.
IMPORTANT QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER:
What was your vision pre-covid? Was it BHAG? Was it acheivable?
How has COVID altered this plan?
What has COVID shown about your vision and ministry?
What do we embrace now?
We must embrace our vocation and calling
We must embrace our vocation and calling
God desire to use the WHOLE church to take the WHOLE Gospel to the WHOLE world.
NEHEMIAH’S VOCATION
Please, Lord, let Your ear be attentive to the prayer of Your servant and to that of Your servants who delight to revere Your name. Give Your servant success today, and have compassion on him in the presence of this man.
At the time, I was the king’s cupbearer.
JEREMIAH’S EXILIC AFFIRMATION
This is what the Lord of Hosts, the God of Israel, says to all the exiles I deported from Jerusalem to Babylon: “Build houses and live in them. Plant gardens and eat their produce. Take wives and have sons and daughters. Take wives for your sons and give your daughters to men in marriage so that they may bear sons and daughters. Multiply there; do not decrease. Seek the welfare of the city I have deported you to. Pray to the Lord on its behalf, for when it has prosperity, you will prosper.”
For this is what the Lord of Hosts, the God of Israel, says: “Don’t let your prophets who are among you and your diviners deceive you, and don’t listen to the dreams you elicit from them,
NEW TESTAMENT TEACHING ABOUT GOD’S GIFT TO THE CHURCH AND IT’S PURPOSE
And He personally gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers, for the training of the saints in the work of ministry, to build up the body of Christ,
UNITY IN DIVERSITY: on our own we can only go so far BUT together, we are able to accomplish greater things than we ever imagined.
JESUS said:
“I assure you: The one who believes in Me will also do the works that I do. And he will do even greater works than these, because I am going to the Father.
Embrace our counter cultural identity
Embrace our counter cultural identity
Paul reminds us of our IDENTITY as leaders:
Paul, a slave of Christ Jesus, called as an apostle and singled out for God’s good news —
A person should consider us in this way: as servants of Christ and managers of God’s mysteries. In this regard, it is expected of managers that each one of them be found faithful.
Paul and Timothy, slaves of Christ Jesus:
To all the saints in Christ Jesus who are in Philippi, including the overseers and deacons.
WHAT DOES PAUL ENCOURAGE US TO EMBRACE?
Make your own attitude that of Christ Jesus,
As citizens of the Kingdon of God we realize that we embrace a different—counter cultural— perspective:
When we are weak, then we are strong.
When we are poor we are rich.
When we are the least, we become the greatest.
MATTHEW 5- The Beattitudes
The name “beatitude” comes from the Latin beatitudo/beatus, because the first word of each statement in the Latin Vulgate is beati, which translates Matthew’s Greek word makarios (traditionally translated “blessed”). Some recent versions translate makarios as “happy” or “fortunate,” which can be good renderings, but the modern usage of those terms tends to trivialize the meaning by simply suggesting a temporary emotional or circumstantial state. The somewhat ambiguous English “blessed” perhaps is still the best term to describe Jesus’ statements.
Eight primary statements of blessing make up the Beatitudes, with the ninth statement of blessing (5:11–12) being an extension and personalization of the eighth beatitude for Jesus’ disciples who experience persecution:
Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. The “poor” are those who have encountered unfortunate circumstances from an economic point of view (19:21; 26:11), but also persons who are spiritually and emotionally oppressed, disillusioned, and in need of God’s help. This first beatitude undercuts the predominant worldview that assumes that material blessings are a sign of God’s approval in one’s life and that they automatically flow from one’s spiritual blessings. Instead, Jesus teaches that the norm of the kingdom of heaven is spiritual bankruptcy, unlike the spiritual self-sufficiency that was characteristic of the religious leaders.
Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. The loss of anything that a person counts valuable will produce mourning, whether it’s one’s financial support, or loved ones, or status in society, or even one’s spiritual standing before God. Mourning does not exclude the joy that is to typify Jesus’ followers, but instead characterizes life in the already–not yet presence of the kingdom.
Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth. The domineering, the aggressive, the harsh, and the tyrannical are often those who attempt to dominate the earth and establish their own little kingdoms. But Jesus says that it is the “gentle” who will inherit the earth, harking back to the psalmist who encourages those who have been treated harshly by evildoers (Ps. 37:9, 11). Jesus exemplifies best what it means to be gentle. It takes tremendous strength to bring others into God’s will, but when that strength is coupled with a selfless nonassertiveness, it produces a gentle person who can patiently endure much to bring about God’s purposes for his people.
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled. Righteousness includes several facets. It includes “justice” for those who have been downtrodden or who have experienced injustice. It includes the idea of personal ethical righteousness for those who desire a life lived above the entanglements of sin. And as in 3:15, it includes the salvation-historical sense of God’s saving activity. For those who deeply long for God’s multifaceted righteousness, they will be filled. That divine satisfaction will come in a final sense in God’s future reign, but it will be experienced in the present by those who respond to Jesus’ invitation to kingdom life.
Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy. Showing mercy toward others does not earn a person entrance to the kingdom; rather, it is a heart attitude that opens a person to receive the offer of mercy that Jesus has proclaimed in his gospel of the kingdom. Jesus’ disciples learn from this beatitude that God’s good requirement has always been mercy. Recall the classic statements of Micah: “He has showed you, O man, what is good. And what does the LORD require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God” (Mic. 6:8).
Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God. In the sixth beatitude Jesus goes to the core of human life, the heart. Purity or cleanliness was an important religious theme in Jesus’ day. Observing all the Old Testament laws of being clean could bypass the most important purity of all, purity of the heart. Jesus declares here that a pure heart is what produces external purity, not vice versa (e.g., 15:1–19).
Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God. Jesus turns aside the various political, religious, and militaristic attempts of those within Israel to establish their supremacy. They have created even more division; thus, he turns to those who want God’s peace. With the inauguration of the kingdom of heaven, Jesus himself is the supreme peacemaker, making peace between God and humans, and among humans (Eph. 2:11–17; Col. 1:20).
Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. The eighth beatitude makes it once again clear that the Beatitudes are not entrance requirements to the kingdom of God, or else Jesus would be sanctioning torture or martyrdom as a way of earning one’s entrance to the kingdom. At the same time, this again makes clear that the Beatitudes are not ethical demands for personal behavior, or else Jesus would be implying that it would be good for his disciples to seek out persecution in order to gain his blessing. Instead, in the eighth beatitude Jesus comforts those who have suffered undeserved persecution. Jesus elaborates in his follow-up statement—"Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me…”—looking down the long corridor of time until the kingdom is established on earth in its final form and offers hope during those times when it seems doubtful that his kingdom will ever arrive. It may not look like it from a religious, economic, or social perspective, but the kingdom is theirs nonetheless—and in this they will truly rejoice.
BE ENCOURAGED....
WHATEVER WE SEE WITH OUR EYES WILL NOT BE OUR PERMANENT POSITION:
For this is what the Lord says: “When 70 years for Babylon are complete, I will attend to you and will confirm My promise concerning you to restore you to this place. For I know the plans I have for you” —this is the Lord’s declaration—“plans for your welfare, not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope. You will call to Me and come and pray to Me, and I will listen to you. You will seek Me and find Me when you search for Me with all your heart. I will be found by you”—this is the Lord’s declaration—“and I will restore your fortunes and gather you from all the nations and places where I banished you”—this is the Lord’s declaration. “I will restore you to the place I deported you from.”
HAVE HOPE
Look, I am about to do something new;
even now it is coming. Do you not see it?
Indeed, I will make a way in the wilderness,
rivers in the desert.
SING A NEW SONG
He put a new song in my mouth,
a hymn of praise to our God.
Many will see and fear
and put their trust in the Lord.
And they sang a new song:
You are worthy to take the scroll
and to open its seals,
because You were slaughtered,
and You redeemed people
for God by Your blood
from every tribe and language
and people and nation.