Foundations 27

Sorry I haven't been posting these life got hectic over the last couple of months - Brad This week we are going to get back to Nehemiah chapter 4 and the process of building the body of Christ. We’ll start with verse 7: Now when Sanballat, Tobiah, the Arabs, the Ammonites and the Ashdodites heard that the repair of the walls of Jerusalem went on, and that the breaches began to be closed, they were very angry. 8All of them conspired together to come and fight against Jerusalem and to cause a disturbance in it. There’s nothing new in this passage. The enemies of God still want nothing more than to destroy the rebuilding of the body of Christ. They do not want to see you grow up in Christ Jesus. They don’t want to see you get out of the bondage that so easily ensnares you. They don’t want to see you grow up and get out of diapers. They don’t want to see you mature in the faith because that means an end to their power, their sphere of influence. It’s just like the politicians in our day and age they don’t want to see people become responsible. They don’t want people to be able to take care of themselves and provide for themselves because it reduces their power. Why do you think the unions are in such an uproar in Wisconsin and Ohio? They are on the verge of losing power and influence. They don’t care if the government doesn’t have enough money. They don’t care about anything except keeping the power that they have accumulated. And so they will use any tactics they can to keep that power. I wouldn’t be surprised if there isn’t blood shed in Madison before all of this is over. God is showing us the true condition of American’s hearts. We are seeing the greed that reigns supreme. We are seeing the hatred for doing what’s right if it interferes with our bank accounts. The same thing was going on around Jerusalem at the time of Nehemiah. The enemies of God were getting ready to lose power and influence because the body of Christ was waking up and starting to grow up. It was beginning to mature and God’s enemies didn’t like it. Now if you remember from the last time I spoke: the church had already prayed in verses 4 and 5 of chapter 4 for God to intervene. They prayed: Hear, O our God, how we are despised! Return their reproach on their own heads and give them up for plunder in a land of captivity. 5Do not forgive their iniquity and let not their sin be blotted out before You, for they have demoralized the builders. What we see is that they prayed and now after the fact, it looks like nothing happened because the enemy is still the enemy and is still giving them grief. I want you to understand something if you are striving to walk on the path of life and all hell seems to break out around you that should be a sign of encouragement to you because the enemy doesn’t need to give you grief if you are not giving him any trouble. He’s already won if you’re content to wear depends the rest of your life and suck your thumb. But if you start growing up then he’s got something to worry about. He has God to worry about because God is on the move when you start to grow up. God is doing something and the enemy loses power and influence every time you take a faltering step toward maturity. It’s important to remember that trouble or at least the threat of trouble ALWAYS follows any attempt to rebuild the things of God. I remind you of that because it can seem like God isn’t doing anything when you pray but look at the passage from the last time I spoke: they prayed to God and then they built half of the wall. All those people prayed and worked and in the midst of tribulation from the enemy God allowed the body of Christ to be repaired and built up. The aggravation didn’t stop but it also didn’t hinder the work of God. Now on the surface it doesn’t look like the enemy has been defeated does it? I mean they prayed for the enemy to be blotted out but the enemy is still present and giving them grief. Hear this: God doesn’t work in your time frame. He works in his. He does things in his time according to his plan. He is already answering the prayers to destroy the enemy but he is not through with the enemy yet. He is going to use them to advance his own kingdom. He is going to use the enemy to motivate the body of Christ to grow up even more. He is bringing trouble into the lives of the body of Christ so that they will be stirred up to want to grow, to want to pray, to want to seek the face of God. The enemy stirs up trouble and what does it cause the church to do? Verse 9 says: But we prayed to our God, and because of them we set up a guard against them day and night. 10Thus in Judah it was said, "The strength of the burden bearers is failing, yet there is much rubbish; and we ourselves are unable to rebuild the wall." I know verse ten sounds like the church was pretty hopeless but the truth is they were just being honest. We need that same kind of honesty. We need to understand that our strength is failing, that there is a lot of garbage in our lives that shouldn’t be there. We need to be aware that we do not have the ability to rebuild the body of Christ. If we live our lives that way what we are saying is we can’t do it: But God can. We must come to the end of ourselves so that God will receive all the praise and glory and honor. If that is not our attitude then we have become like the church at Laodicea saying: "I am rich, and have become wealthy, and have need of nothing," the result of such an attitude is that we will end up being wretched, miserable and poor and blind and naked. Here is the paradox of the kingdom of God: If you think you have it altogether you’re a mess and you have no hope. If you understand that you are broken and helpless God will do great things through you. Back in Nehemiah they are praying and building, praying and building and then the second round of attacks comes their way in verse 11: Our enemies said, "They will not know or see until we come among them, kill them and put a stop to the work." 12When the Jews who lived near them came and told us ten times, "They will come up against us from every place where you may turn," 13then I stationed men in the lowest parts of the space behind the wall, the exposed places, and I stationed the people in families with their swords, spears and bows. 14When I saw their fear, I rose and spoke to the nobles, the officials and the rest of the people: "Do not be afraid of them; remember the Lord who is great and awesome, and fight for your brothers, your sons, your daughters, your wives and your houses." I want you to see a couple of things in this passage. First, it is understandable to be afraid especially if you are aware of how weak you are. At the same time you must remember that this is the Lord’s battle not yours. Second, we must remember who we are fighting for: our brothers and sisters, our sons and daughters, our wives, our houses. There are lives on the line. I know we don’t like to think about this battle going on in the real world. We want it to be spiritual. But your children, grandchildren, friends and families lives are at stake not just in the spiritual realm but in every day life. The church has been so lax over the last hundred plus years that we are now seeing the spiritual battle blossom in the everyday world. The turmoil in every part of the world around us is the harvesting of seeds that we have sown, that our great grandparents, grand parents, and parents have sown. We are beginning to reap the harvest. I know we don’t like to think like this but we planted the seeds of Babylon in our country starting around the time of the civil war, they were the seeds of the government as provider, government as protector government as safety net, government as educator, government as God. And we have been slowly feeding that god until he is the dragon we are faced with today. You don’t need to look for anything else to see the Babylon of the book of revelation. He is here: the civil government becoming the do all and end all of a people’s life. That is the essence of the Babylon of scripture. You don’t need to wait for the European union or the Arabs or the Russians to do anything. Babylon is here now and living unopposed for the most part right here in America. And it is the church’s fault. That’s where we are at. Now I don’t want you to be discouraged by that. I want you to remember how the story ends: Babylon is defeated. BABYLON LOSES. Our call is to stand wherever we are when we wake up and see the situation for what it is. We are to stand with our weapons in hand. You see we have been made aware of the enemy’s plans. We have been called to stand against the attacks. We have been called to have our weapons ready. That is our calling. If you notice in this passage at this point in time the church didn’t have to fight against the enemy. All they had to do was stand firm with their weapons in their hand. Look at verse 15: When our enemies heard that it was known to us, and that God had frustrated their plan, then all of us returned to the wall, each one to his work. Sometimes being ready for a battle and standing firm is all it takes to defeat the enemy. Notice what they did after that: From that day on, half of my servants carried on the work while half of them held the spears, the shields, the bows and the breastplates; and the captains were behind the whole house of Judah. 17Those who were rebuilding the wall and those who carried burdens took their load with one hand doing the work and the other holding a weapon. 18As for the builders, each wore his sword girded at his side as he built, while the trumpeter stood near me. 19I said to the nobles, the officials and the rest of the people, "The work is great and extensive, and we are separated on the wall far from one another. 20"At whatever place you hear the sound of the trumpet, rally to us there. Our God will fight for us." 21So we carried on the work with half of them holding spears from dawn until the stars appeared. 22At that time I also said to the people, "Let each man with his servant spend the night within Jerusalem so that they may be a guard for us by night and a laborer by day." 23So neither I, my brothers, my servants, nor the men of the guard who followed me, none of us removed our clothes, each took his weapon even to the water. This is how serious the battle is around us. We need to be on the alert all the time. We need to have our tools in one hand and our weapons in the other. We build and fight, fight and build at this point in our growth and building. You see for too long we’ve been told that coming to Jesus was all that it took. Say the sinner’s prayer and everything is ok. But that was a lie. It was the lie that put the church to sleep. It was the lie that let Babylon become what it is today in our country and in the world. I was with my grandson Obi this week. He is three months old. He is full of life. He is alive 100%. But if I put him at the starting line of a race and left him there he would be dead in a week because he hasn’t grown up enough to take care of himself, he can’t crawl let alone run in race. He has to be nurtured, fed and cared for. He fights battles with little bitty viruses and bacteria that we can’t even see. They are things that probably won’t bother him when he gets older but right now they reek havoc on his little body. Many of us have been left on the finish line alone since the day we were born again. It’s a wonder that we’re still alive. Many of the people that used to be there on the starting line have died – they have left the faith and are growing up on bitterness and despair, hatred and lawlessness; they may be doing it in the name of Jesus but they’re not alive anymore. I’m calling out to you today and asking you to embrace growing up. Embrace feeding your soul on the word of God. I’m calling you to put the weapons in your hands – weapons like prayer and the word of God applied to all of your life. I challenge you to challenge God to begin to show himself to you and make himself real in ways you’ve never imagined could be changed. The time for depends and baby blankets is over. Infants will be crushed by the boots of the enemy that are fast approaching in this land. We are at war. We have been for our entire lives but I believe that war is going to begin to get ugly. I want you to be ready for that. I want you to be aware of just how big God is now because when the trouble finally reaches us we are going to need a huge God. You need to be aware that God is causing powers, spiritual powers who have been in control of nations for a long, long time to come tumbling down, Tanznia, Egypt, Lybia, and other countries. The hand of God is stirring the pot. It is not Islam that is stirring things up. They serve a dead God who can do nothing unless the God of heaven says so. Do not think for a moment that those nations becoming a democracy is a good thing. Democracy is simply the demands of 51% of the people. If 51 percent of those countries are Islamic they will have Islamic democracies. If they secular they will have atheistic, so called neutral democracies – neither thing is godly. The only hope that those nations have is to repent and submit to the Lordship of Jesus Christ and his word. It is no different here in our own country. We have not had protests in the streets in our country over anything since I was a kid. God has stopped giving wealth to our government for a purpose. God is letting our sins begin to bear fruit. He is letting the economic lies that we have worshipped come home to roost. I want you to be aware, not afraid, but aware that God is moving. Continue to humble yourself before him, seek his face, pray, turn from your wicked ways so that he will see fit to raise you up to rule and reign for Christ in your sphere’s of influence. You need to be learning now how to apply the word of God to the situations of life. You need to learn how to pray with perseverance and expectation that God will actually do something now so that you will not be swept away by the coming flood. We need to start preparing now, laying out a vision and a plan as to what we are going to do should God use these troubled times to open the flood gates and draw people to repentance and faith. What will we do if 500 or a 1000 come to the faith in one day? What will be our response if we end up being the only people willing to lead local governments and make hard decisions? If we ask, God will answer. I want to remind you to continue to ask for a word from the Lord for our brother Ian. We are going to start focusing prayer in his direction soon. I believe that God is going to use him to show us what he can do and to remind us that he is in charge of everyone and he can raise up and throw down as he sees fit. Be encouraged. God is moving. God is stirring up the world. There’s an old song that says Just as an eagle stirs her nest so that her young ones can have no rest God in his own mysterious ways stirs up his people to watch, fight and pray. That is where we are at God is stirring. Our call is to get serious about watching, fighting, and praying. Let’s pray. Oh Father, We see you stirring the world unlike anything in recent memory. Powers are falling down and rising up, earth quakes and floods and other natural disasters are increasing. Oh Lord we ask that you would strengthen us for the battles to come. Grow us up so that we will be able to stand against the warfare to come, that we might run the good race and fight the good fight giving honor and glory to your name. In Jesus’ authority and power I ask these things So be it. Amen.