4-10-22 Palm Sunday

Today, we’re continuing our study in the book of Nehemiah. And we’ve been looking at the prayer Nehemiah makes for his people at the beginning of the book. He’s received bad news about what’s been going on in Jerusalem, and now, after a good long cry, he prays. Two weeks ago, we started looking at his prayer and how he begins with worship. He worships God by extolling His greatness, His tremendous power and glory, and worships God for His love, compassion, grace, and mercy. And today, I want to continue looking at Nehemiah's prayer, except I’m not going to take the next verse. I’ll get to it, maybe, but I want to skip down today and focus on verse 11 because it speaks to the heart of prayer that is answered. Or it’s a key ingredient we need when we pray. And the ingredient is a right heart and a right heart intention. I mean that we have to have a clean heart before the Lord. As Autumn talked about last week, we don’t want bitterness, wrath, anger, unforgiveness, or pride to lurk in there; but we also want to pray with a genuine intention to be the best disciples we can be and to follow Jesus fully as much as we are able. Our heart intentions matter when we pray. James 5:16 AMP “The heartfelt and persistent prayer of a righteous man (believer) can accomplish much [when put into action and made effective by God—it is dynamic and can have tremendous power].” The heartfelt prayer of a righteous person (or a person who has been made right with God through Jesus Christ) matters. And I want to talk about what it means for a prayer to be heart-felt. I want to discuss why our hearts matter so much when we come to God in prayer. But let’s pray first before we jump into our study. Father in Heaven, we give You glory, honor, and praise as the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. We say You are great and glorious, and You are full of mercy, love, and compassion. Thank you for this time we have together today. The Heart of the Matter | 1 I ask that You would bless Your word and that You would quicken our hearts to respond to the message the Holy Spirit would say to the church. I ask that You would meet us here today and minister Your life, Your healing, and Your grace to each one of us. Open our hearts, eyes, and ears to You, Lord. We give You glory, honor, and praise today. In Jesus’ Name, amen. Nehemiah 1:11 NKJV O Lord, I pray, please let Your ear be attentive to the prayer of Your servant, and to the prayer of Your servants who desire to fear Your name; and let Your servant prosper this day, I pray, and grant him mercy in the sight of this man.” For I was the king’s cupbearer. This is the end of Nehemiah’s prayer. There’s a lot going on that we can study, such as praise and worship, which we looked at last week. But I’m skipping down to verse 11 today because I want you to know that our heart posture in prayer matters. The heart posture of Nehemiah is one that wants to obey the Lord, one that desires to be the person God wants Him to be and to do the things God wants him to do. There always has and always will be a very close relationship between loving God and obeying Him. But both of those things, love and obedience, come from our hearts. They spring out of our hearts. Our heart attitudes provide the origin for what we do and how we act. Matthew 12:33-35 NKJV “Either make the tree good and its fruit good, or else make the tree bad and its fruit bad; for a tree is known by its fruit. 34 Brood of vipers! How can you, being evil, speak good things? For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks. 35 A good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth good things, and an evil man out of the evil treasure brings forth evil things. Jesus is saying that what’s inside us is going to come out of us, because our heart attitudes are made manifest, or evident as we go through life. Jesus said that ‘out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks.’ The Heart of the Matter | 2 This could be good or bad - but what’s in the heart is going to come out when a person talks and acts. Whether it’s bitterness, anger, unforgiveness, perversity, love, peace, grace, or kindness, you’ll be able to tell eventually what’s in there by what a person says and does. A good person out of their heart brings good things out, and a bad person brings bad things out of their heart. “The thought is of bringing to light what is in the secret place, and that a person’s words or deeds reveal what is really important to them and so their true character.”1 And the point here is that our emphasis in our walk with Jesus should be our hearts, because that’s where our treasures are, that’s what generates our thoughts, emotions, and behaviors. Nehemiah 1:11 NKJV “O Lord, I pray, please let Your ear be attentive to the prayer of Your servant, and to the prayer of Your servants who desire to fear Your name; and let Your servant prosper this day, I pray, and grant him mercy in the sight of this man.” For I was the king’s cupbearer.” Nehemiah asks that God would listen to servants who desire to fear His Name. In other words, Nehemiah knows that people mess up a lot. He’s read enough Jewish history to know that we run into problems a lot, and often those problems are in our own hearts. Will we follow God’s way, or will we follow an idol? Will we destroy the things that aren’t of God or we allow a foothold for the devil? Nehemiah knew about the different kings of Israel and what was in their hearts. He knew because the bible talked about it. The kings had various levels of heart obedience, and if they had a full heart's commitment to serve the Lord (even without perfection) they either did well. or they didn’t and things went poorly. King Rehoboam didn’t do very well because his heart wasn’t committed to follow the Lord. 1 France, R. T. The Gospel of Matthew, P743. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2007. Accessed 7 April 2022. The Heart of the Matter | 3 2 Chronicles 12:14 NKJV “And he did evil, because he did not prepare his heart to seek the Lord.” Notice here that because he didn’t want to follow God in his heart, he ended up doing evil. His heart attitude led to his behavior, and in this case it was an evil heart bringing out evil treasure. Or evil desires bringing out evil actions. Rehoboam didn’t prepare his heart. That could mean a lot of different things; but we prepare our hearts in a lot of ways. One way we prepare to follow the Lord in our hearts is by repenting of our sins and asking God to come into our hearts. You hear that verbiage a lot for salvation, new birth, or becoming a christian. And it’s accurate because we’re preparing our hearts to follow Jesus by acknowledging that He’s God, what He says is true, and that we accept His terms for our life. Salvation is the first step in preparing your heart to follow the Lord. Some other ways to prepare our hearts to seek the Lord have to do with what we call the christian disciplines, regular reading of the word, tithing, worshiping with other believers, etc. You can add your own here - but the point is that we need to be consciously trying to prepare our hearts for God’s manifest presence. By that I mean that we cultivate a desire to follow Jesus even if we hit rough times, even if we have a bad attitude for a while, even if we don’t feel like we have it together. And it’s important because, ultimately, our heart’s desire will either drive us deeper and deeper into God’s presence or it will send us farther and farther away from His presence. That’s why scripture says people who don’t know Jesus are in ‘outer darkness,’ because they have chased after their own selfish, fleshly desires so long that they don’t want to be around God, who is light. We look at two kings of Israel, David and Solomon, and the heart they had to follow God was what led them into success. Remember when Samuel first found David and anointed him to be king? Samuel thought God’s anointed king would be big, tall, and strong just like Saul. He would have picked one of David’s brothers. The Heart of the Matter | 4 But that’s not what God wanted. Saul was chosen by the people to be king because he had it all together on the outside, but David was chosen by God. And God based His choice on what was in David’s heart. 1 Samuel 16:7 NKJV But the Lord said to Samuel, “Do not look at his appearance or at his physical stature, because I have refused him. For the Lord does not see as man sees; for man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.” God sees what’s in our hearts. He cares about our heart's desire to follow Him. If that desire and commitment is there, He’ll take care of the rest. One reason Solomon was so great was because of his heart. 1 Kings 4:29 NKJV “And God gave Solomon wisdom and exceedingly great understanding, and largeness of heart like the sand on the seashore.” Now, yes, Solomon had a lot of wisdom, and that’s important. It’s very important. The bible says Proverbs 4:7 NKJV “Wisdom is the principal thing; Therefore get wisdom. And in all your getting, get understanding.” But Solomon had wisdom and largeness of heart like the sand on the seashore. I’ll put it back up for us. 1 Kings 4:29 NKJV “And God gave Solomon wisdom and exceedingly great understanding, and largeness of heart like the sand on the seashore.” I am open to being wrong on this point - but I couldn’t find any other references to ‘largeness of heart’ in the bible in this same way. Every other time this word ‘largeness’ is used, it’s talking about width, or measuring the breadth, width, or thickness of something. In exodus, it’s used to describe how to measure the priest’s breastplate. Exodus 28:16 KJV “Foursquare it shall be being doubled; a span shall be the length thereof, and a span shall be the breadth thereof.” The word largeness here is translated as breadth. The point is that Solomon had a largeness of heart, or a heart wide open to receive what wisdom God would give Him. He was open (in a large and major way) to what God wanted to say. And then he acted on it. The Heart of the Matter | 5 The Hebrew word heart has to do with our mind, will, and emotions. It means our inner person, our soul, our being, who we are at the core of our personalities. And so, from his heart, Solomon had an openness and a desire for God and to serve Him. God honors the desire to serve Him. Even if you mess it up a lot, God sees and honors the heart’s desire to follow after His will and His ways. Hope should start to rise up in us as we start to understand Nehemiah’s prayer, because even though he wasn’t perfect, he was trying from his heart to serve the Lord. He prayed with a heart that wanted to serve and obey, and God answered him. Some people think that because of ways they’ve failed in the past or may be failing now that God can’t or won’t complete His purpose in their lives. For these people - and maybe for most of us - a call to obey God and operate according to His principals seems virtually impossible. It’s too hard, it’s difficult to do what Jesus wants so I’m just going to give up and forget it. And we tend to think this way because we’re not perfect. We mess up, even sometimes when we try really really hard. But Nehemiah's prayer shows us the strong link between the heart and the intention to obey. What I want counts more than who I am right now. Remember the Lord looks at the heart. And He wants to establish our hearts. He wants to build up our hearts into strong centers of the will that desire to follow Jesus day by day. 1 Thessalonians 3:13 NKJV so that He may establish your hearts blameless in holiness before our God and Father at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ with all His saints. God is not as concerned about our perfection as He is with our direction. Let me say that again. God is more concerned with our direction than He is with our perfection. As the quote goes, God isn’t as concerned with where we are as His is with where we are going. The Heart of the Matter | 6 The praying heart that desires obedience might not be perfect in walking it out all the time, but God will respond to that person because of the posture of their heart that is fully committed, however imperfectly, to following Jesus.2 And so the point today is that, as we pray, pray with a heart of faith. Pray with a heart that rests in the knowledge that God sees your heart, and God loves a heart that comes before Him with a willingness to trust, a willingness to open, and a willingness to respond. And the good news today, the message of Palm Sunday, is that Jesus has come. He’s come because He’s heard the prayers of our hearts to help, to save us from this world and the heartache it brings. God has heard the cry of our hearts and sent Jesus to save us, to heal us, and to set us free from all forms of demonic oppression and bondage. And when we prepare our heart to receive Jesus, when we prepare our heart to worship Him, we are spiritually doing the exact same thing the people did on palm sunday when they laid branches down before Him. And really, the way we prepare our heart is by calling out to God with a desire to see Jesus, a desire to follow the king. God will do the rest. Psalm 10:17 NKJV “Lord, You have heard the desire of the humble; You will prepare their heart; You will cause Your ear to hear,” God hears our heart’s desire. He hears a humble heart cry out to God and say, “Lord I know I mess up in a lot of ways but I need You. I need Your presence and power, I need Your grace and mercy. I want, more than anything, to follow You and walk in Your ways because I know it works. It’s good for me and I love You and Your word.” And as we call out to the Lord from our hearts, from the depths of who we are with a desire for His will and way in our life, God prepares our hearts to receive Him. In other words He takes care of perfection for us so we can actually receive King Jesus and His kingdom. 2 Hayford, Jack W. Rebuilding the Real You: God's Pathway to Personal Restoration, P72. Gospel Light Publications, 1986. The Heart of the Matter | 7 He clears the atmosphere of all the gunk and junk bogging us down so that we can put our full focus on fellowship with the King and on worshiping Him. Matthew 21:1-11 NKJV Now when they drew near Jerusalem, and came to Bethphage, at the Mount of Olives, then Jesus sent two disciples, 2 saying to them, “Go into the village opposite you, and immediately you will find a donkey tied, and a colt with her. Loose them and bring them to Me. 3 And if anyone says anything to you, you shall say, ‘The Lord has need of them,’ and immediately he will send them.” 4 All this was done that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet, saying: 5 “Tell the daughter of Zion, ‘Behold, your King is coming to you, Lowly, and sitting on a donkey, A colt, the foal of a donkey.’ ” 6 So the disciples went and did as Jesus commanded them. 7 They brought the donkey and the colt, laid their clothes on them, and set Him on them. 8 And a very great multitude spread their clothes on the road; others cut down branches from the trees and spread them on the road. 9 Then the multitudes who went before and those who followed cried out, saying: “Hosanna to the Son of David! ‘Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord!’ Hosanna in the highest!” 10 And when He had come into Jerusalem, all the city was moved, saying, “Who is this?” 11 So the multitudes said, “This is Jesus, the prophet from Nazareth of Galilee.” This is Jesus, the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. This is Jesus, who is victorious over death, hell, and everything else we have to face. Hosanna started as a plea from the heart of an oppressed people, but God answered by sending Jesus. And now we can shout Hosanna in victorious praise because Jesus answers the prayers of people who simply make a heart commitment to follow Him. The Heart of the Matter | 8