PREPARED FOR GOD TO MOVE

Introduction

-{Nehemiah 9}

-Has it ever happened to you that stress or something you fear from real life turns into some weird dream you have? Maybe it’s even turned into a nightmare. I have to admit that I often dream about what would be my greatest fears as a pastor/preacher. Probably the most recurring dream/nightmare has to be showing up on a Sunday morning, walking up to the pulpit, not having a sermon ready to preach. In the dream I just stand behind the pulpit panicking over what in the world I am going to say. Sometimes there are variations to that dream—I forget my Bible, I lost my sermon notes. You could say that the recurring theme in these dreams/nightmares is that I am not prepared. The biggest fear of a pastor is not being prepared to fulfill what I was called to do.

-We are not given a spirit of fear, so I don’t want to call us to have a fear, but we ought to have a concern (and to use a phrase I used last week, we ought to have an anguish) over the fact that we, the church of God, are not prepared for God to move in power and revival in our midst. God is wanting to move through His church with power to proclaim the gospel, save lost souls, and make an eternal impact in the world. And if we’re truthful, we’re not ready for Him to work through us in that way.

-Oh sure, we like to talk a big game: YES WE WANT REVIVAL! YES WE WANT THINGS TO CHANGE! YES WE WANT GOD TO MOVE WITH POWER! The problem is we’re not willing to make the changes needed in ourselves to be prepared for God to move that way. God won’t move in power amongst a people who are not prepared for Him to do so.

-In one of his articles, author Chuck Lawless listed several reasons why the church is not prepared for God to move in power. He writes:

i) We’re not really desperate for God.

We may use that kind of “desperation” terminology, but the words don’t always reflect our heart. It’s been some time since I’ve seen a congregation that pleads for God’s presence.

ii) We tend to speak about the sin of others rather than deal with our own sin.

We preach strongly against sins that we sometimes tolerate under our own roof. Few people are so broken over personal sin that they can only cry out to God for church revival.

iii) We find happiness in our stuff.

Sure, we know it’s all fleeting, but we treat it as if it weren’t. The more stuff we have, the “happier” we feel and the less we need God—and we often have much more stuff than people around the world do.

iv) We know little of the Word of God and often less about church history.

We don’t know enough about the stories of God’s miraculous intervention and powerful displays to long to see the same kind of church revival. Our general lack of knowledge equates to a corresponding lack of burden.

v) We have too few persevering, patient, persistent prayer warriors.

Our praying is usually reactionary; that is, we pray only when we must. Not many of us lie on our faces pleading with God to fall on us with His power and bring church revival in America.

vi) We can grow churches without the power of God.

That growth may not be the result of non-believers gloriously transformed by the grace of God, but it still results in increased numbers. And, churches that show any record of growth seldom begin praying for church revival.

vii) We’re probably not ready to pay the cost of revival.

When God falls on us in His power, the result must be a brokenness that leads to repentance from sin and weeping over lostness. It means calling the church to holiness and dealing appropriately with members who choose to live in rebellion. Revival often wounds first before it heals—and I’m simply not convinced the North American church is ready for that.

-So, after hearing these reasons in the article, we should be in agreement that the modern church is not prepared for God to move. We are not prepared for God to move among us. If you weren’t uncomfortable hearing me read that list from Church Lawless, then you are not prepared for God to move in your midst. But what can we do to be prepared?

-In the passage we are looking at today, Nehemiah led the Israelite to a time of deep repentance so as to prepare them for God’s moving in an empowering way amongst the people. What I want us to take away from the Word of God today is that if the church desires to experience God move with power in the midst of His people, they must spiritually prepare themselves.

Nehemiah 9:1–3 ESV

1 Now on the twenty-fourth day of this month the people of Israel were assembled with fasting and in sackcloth, and with earth on their heads. 2 And the Israelites separated themselves from all foreigners and stood and confessed their sins and the iniquities of their fathers. 3 And they stood up in their place and read from the Book of the Law of the Lord their God for a quarter of the day; for another quarter of it they made confession and worshiped the Lord their God.

-{pray}

-To give some context to what is going on in this passage, the Jews were in captivity from the Babylonians. After the Medo-Persian empire took over they allowed the Jews to return to their homeland. But Jerusalem and the temple were destroyed, so Nehemiah had an anguish to see it rebuilt. He led a group to join the Jews that were already there in Jerusalem and they rebuilt the wall around the city. But even though some earthly and physical aspects were rebuilt, Nehemiah knew that the spiritual lives of the Jews were still in ruins and had to be rebuilt. If God was to move in power spiritually amongst the people, they would need to do some work on themselves to be prepared. And we now must consider where we are at spiritually in the day and age that we find ourselves.

-So, how can God’s church prepare themselves for a movement of God in their midst?

1) Clothe ourselves with a spirit of mourning and humility

-Nehemiah was working hard to prepare the people and the city for God. Soon after the walls were completed it came time for a special festival for the Jews—the Feast of Booths (and this is described in chapter 8). This was a week-long celebration of what God did and how God provided during the Exodus and wilderness wanderings. It was a happy, joyous occasion—probably something more akin to what we think of when we think of festivals and feasts. And there are times for this kind of celebration. It is good and appropriate to rejoice in what God has done in our lives, because He has done much.

-But (for lack of a better term) we can’t party all the time. We cannot always be light-hearted. If we want to see God at work, we also have to have times of serious contemplation and conviction and reflection. There comes a time when you have to deal with the dark, heavy stuff that is going on inside of you and around you. And so, 2 days after the end of the Feast of Booths, Nehemiah calls the people to a time of serious spiritual preparation.

-And the first thing that is mentioned is that he called the people to a time of fasting and sackcloth and putting dirt/dust/ashes on their heads. That seems to be as far from the revelry of the prior week that you could get. But there is a reason for what he called for. Fasting and sackcloth and ashes were all a sign of deep mourning and humiliation and repentance. Throughout the Old Testament, whenever some great disaster happened, you read that the people affected put sackcloth on and covered their head with dirt/dust/ashes. Other times, when the threat of judgment comes, the people will mourn and demonstrate repentance by putting on sackcloth and covering their head with dirt (for example, after Jonah preached the people in Nineveh did just that).

-But by doing these actions, what they were doing is mourning over the wickedness and evil and sin that brought about such disasters and judgments and problems. And at the same time they were humbling themselves before God in acknowledgment that they as a people needed a time of repentance if they were to see God move.

-The church is in the same boat. I see so many churches and pastors out there that put on a show and proclaim how great they are (instead of proclaiming how great God is) and / or they revel in their sin instead of mourning over it. But we are called to a great mourning over sin to see God then lift that sin from us—blessed are those who mourn over their sin because they will receive comfort through Christ. What James told us to do in his epistle:

James 4:9–10 ESV

9 Be wretched and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom. 10 Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you.

-This mourning and humbling is a wonderful sign of our conversion in Christ. You see, if the sin in us and around us doesn’t bother us then the Spirit of Christ might not be residing within us. If we can live with evil and wickedness and sin and not bat an eye, then we have not been made new. But if you have trusted in Jesus Christ and been born again, you will have a sense of sorrow over sin, while an unbeliever will not.

-The great American pastor and theologian, Jonathan Edwards, once said that as a Christian: “I have had a vastly greater sense of my own wickedness and the badness of my heart than ever I had before my conversion.”

-Dr. Donald Whitney of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary wrote, “the fact that there is a struggle with sin, and a sense of grief because of sin, is good. Unbelievers have no such struggles or griefs.”

-But I think that we Christians in America think that we ought not to have such feelings, and we do whatever we can to avoid such thinking. We don’t want to think about our sin and wickedness and it make us feel bad. For some reason we think that we are so privileged we should never feel bad. So, we fill our time and efforts with so much frivolous stuff to make sure we don’t deal with our own issues so as not to feel bad. But we’re doing exactly what the prophet Isaiah warned about when God said through him:

Isaiah 22:12–14 ESV

12 In that day the Lord God of hosts called for weeping and mourning, for baldness and wearing sackcloth; 13 and behold, joy and gladness, killing oxen and slaughtering sheep, eating flesh and drinking wine. “Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.” 14 The Lord of hosts has revealed himself in my ears: “Surely this iniquity will not be atoned for you until you die,” says the Lord God of hosts.

-Instead of mourning over the sad state they were all in and humbling themselves before God, they partied. We try to live in a world of fantasy so we don’t have to deal with reality. God can’t work amongst a people who are trying to self-medicate rather than mourn and humble themselves. And this leads to what Nehemiah led the people to do next:

2) Separate ourselves from worldly entanglements

-In v. 2 it says that the Israelites separated themselves from all foreigners. What we read in the books of Ezra and Nehemiah is that the Israelite men took to themselves foreign, pagan wives who led them away from worshipping the One, True God, and instead they worshipped the foreign gods and idols of their spouses. The foreigners represented those things that would turn people away from holiness and a pure devotion to God. The people would get entangled with these things of the world and it stopped them from living a life for God.

-This is so important to understand even in our day and age such that the author of Hebrews wrote:

Hebrews 12:1 ESV

1 Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us,

-The writer of Hebrews understood that the world under the dominion of the devil has so many distractions and entanglements that weigh us down from putting in all our time and effort into living a God-pleasing life. Yes, we have to work and go to school and take care of the home and family and things like that. Those are good things and fine things. But then there are the other things of the world that slow us down—constant TV or video games or phones or books or whatever that might not be bad in and of themselves, but too much of it will entangle us like a spider’s web and we are more concerned about those things than we are about Christ and the gospel.

-Like the foreign wives of the Israelites, the world offers so many delights to tickle the eyes and ears, we turn the direction of life toward these things and our spiritual growth and spiritual progress is completely hindered. Sure, we might say we are running full steam ahead toward Christ, but these worldly things are a burden slowing us down.

-What it made me think of are those inflatable bungee runs you see at festivals or fairs. They’re like a bouncy house but it is this inflatable that has two lanes and two people try to race each other. But what happens is that they are both tied to these bungee cords, and so while they are trying to run from one end to the next, the bungee cords are pulling them back. The first one to reach the end / goal wins, but the entire time the bungee cord is a burden that is working against them.

-That’s the entanglements of the world, and if we are to be prepared to see God move, we’ve got to get those spiritual bungee cords off our backs, we have to separate from the things that are holding us back. And sometimes that includes people. It might not be just habits, but it might be people that are holding us back. Bad company corrupts good morals. But whatever the entanglement might be, we have to get a separation from it to be in a position to see God move in our midst.

-And the way that we can work at that is through confession and repentance. We notice that if says in v. 2 after they separated themselves from the foreigners, they then confessed their sins and the iniquities of their fathers. To get rid of the weights and burdens and sins you confess them to God through Jesus Christ. If we confess our sins He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. God removes the burdens.

-To confess means to agree with God that those things are weights and sins and burdens. We don’t sugar coat things, but we agree that they are what they are and that they have made us ill-prepared for God to work and move in our midst. We do that as individuals. We do that as a group. You know, for those who have been at Harvest Baptist Church for some time, there might be sins of the church body from years and years ago that you know of that you need to confess on behalf of the church. It might be things that us newer folks don’t know anything about, and yet they stick to this body and will continue to do so until someone confesses it to God. But then finally and quickly...

3) Conform ourselves to the Bible’s worldview

-V. 3 tells us that they read the Book of the Law (the Scriptures / Bible) for a quarter of the day and spent another quarter of the day in confession of sin and testimonies of God’s goodness along with worship. The day it is talking about is like daylight hours, so a 12 hour period. That means that they listened to a 3 hour sermon and then they had a 3 hour worship service. {And all of you are looking at me and thinking, don’t you even think about it preacher!}

-The length of the service is not the point (although, if you ever complain about the length of a worship service again just remember the Israelites sat through a 6 hours service—and they still beat the Methodists to lunch). The point is that they were centered on the Scripture. In fact, if you read Nehemiah and Ezra you will notice several times where they would do this—have an extended period of time reading aloud and teaching from the Scripture. Why would they do that?

-The reason they did that is because the previous generations were judged by God and sent into exile exactly because they ignored and disobeyed God’s Word. And now this new generation that would live in the land needed to know God’s Word backwards and forwards so they would not make the same mistake. They wanted to know God’s Word so that they could conform their thinking and attitude and lives to what God’s Word said. They wanted to love what God loved and hate what God hated and do what God said and don’t do what God said not to do. They wanted to make decisions that pleased God according to His Word and think thoughts that were in conformity to God’s Word. How we would say it in modern language is that they wanted to hold and live out a Biblical worldview.

-If God is going to move in the midst of a people they have to be guided by Scripture in every aspect of their lives. If we want to see God move in power and be a people prepared to receive it we have to live according to the Bible. That means what guides our lives is not our own ideas and concepts. We don’t use the phrase I THINK when it comes to living a life pleasing to God, we say THE BIBLE SAYS! So, we don’t think and live as if all people are inherently good because the Bible says all have sinned. We don’t think and live as if all people go to heaven, because the Bible says the wages of sin is death. We don’t think and live as if being good gets you to heaven, because the Bible says there is none righteous. We don’t think and live as if all religions are the same, because the Bible says there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved, and that is the name of Jesus Christ. This also means that it is the Bible that determines our morals, not current fads or what we feel in our hearts.

-I had a friend share that they were driving along a scenic strip of road in some northern state (maybe Minnesota) and they passed several churches and all the churches had the rainbow flags and signs that said to the effect that LGBTQ people are accepted there. Now listen to me, we want LGBTQ folks to come to our church and hear the truth of the gospel, but we will never say that they lifestyle is anything but sin. Why? Because that is what the Bible says. Some people will angrily say, WELL WHAT IF THEY’RE BORN THAT WAY? HOW COULD GOD CONDEMN THEM IF THEY’RE BORN THAT WAY? First, that’s a very doubtful claim. But second, the Bible says you have to be born again. We’re all born into sin, it doesn’t matter what our sin of choice is. But the Bible says we need to believe the gospel.

Conclusion

-And what a glorious gospel it is. God so loved the world that He gave His Son so whoever believes in Him would not perish but have eternal life. If there was no gospel, there wouldn’t even be a chance of God moving in power amongst the people. Everyone would be condemned and judged. But there is a gospel and there is a church through whom God would change the world if they were prepared.

-If you have never believed the gospel and trusted Jesus for eternal life, that is the only way, and I urge upon you to believe in Jesus today.

-Christian, are you prepared for God to move in your midst much less the midst of the church. Let’s come to the altar today and pray that God would work in us so that we are ready and prepared for Him to do some great and mighty things.