Pastor Zach Pummill • June 13, 2021

Sermon Overview

NEHEMIAH 2:9–20

As Nehemiah returns to Jerusalem how does he begin to go about the purpose that God put in his heart? As he surveys the damage of the city what are the real motivations behind this rebuilding effort?

Sermon Transcript

Good morning. My name is Zach. I'm one of the pastors here and if you are a guest with us today, we are really glad to have you. Lots of new faces in this season and so we hope if you're one of them, you feel welcome worshiping with our church family. And we certainly mean that. You find us right smack dab in the middle of a series on the books of Ezra and Nehemiah.

And Ezra and Nehemiah can be challenging books to go through because they challenge your resolve to understand them. They make you work for it because you don't find God speaking anywhere. There aren't any covenants being made. There's no prophecy. There's no laws telling you to do this or to do that, so it makes us wonder why do we have this book and how does it relate to our lives? Because let's be honest, their story and their situation doesn't easily line up with our experience 2,500 years later in this modern world.

So it doesn't feel like it has much to offer you in your battle for your sanity with your kids, dealing with your health problems, or a frustrating job situation.

So perhaps that's why Ezra and Nehemiah are often so prone to simplistic readings and interpretations. So these books just become historical events that offer some practical insight for living. And so they're used to prop up a new church building campaign. That's ironic, is it not? Considering that God will also destroy this temple as well. In Matthew 24, when the disciples were marveling at the temple Jesus said, "Take a good look at it, boys. There's not going to be one stone left on top of another." Which tells us that this rebuilding story is about more than brick and mortar.

Or it's viewed as a story of powerful leaders who inspire the people against insurmountable odds. That's a story that we Americans like. An underdog story of powerful leadership, and so let's do a series on Five Steps of Powerful Leadership. Nehemiah, well, what did he do? He cast vision and he delegated the work. So cast vision and delegate the work. But this story is about far more than effective leadership.

Despite appearances, these books are about spiritual realities. This long story of return is about spiritual restoration. And not just theirs, but yours, ours.

And that can be hard to see in a passage like the one we have today. We saw last week, we saw something magnificent. This week, not so much. It's mundane. It's boring. We have a list of valley gates, fountain gates, dung gates. It doesn't get any more mundane than dung gates. This reads like Nehemiah's planner. He show's up, goes through customs, rested three days, went and checked out the walls, had a meeting with Israelites leaders, and was in bed by 10 o'clock. If we sent our updates like that from India you wouldn't read them. And yet, somehow in these mundane details, God is speaking to us because He wants us to walk with Nehemiah as he explores the ruins of these walls in this city.

So what is he teaching us about spiritual restoration and what it looks like in this passage?

Well, for starters, Nehemiah has got a big job to do. God put an extraordinary purpose deep in his heart, to rebuild this wall, to rebuild this city for people he hadn't even met and people that didn't even know who he was. That's a big purpose. So he finally arrives in Jerusalem after a long four-month journey.

And so how does he get started? How does he begin doing this purpose that God put in his heart? Well, maybe the first thing you'd expect him to do is go to straight to the Israelite leaders and the priests and the officials and just slam that letter from King Artaxerxes on the table and say, "There's a new sheriff in town. It's time to get to work." But he doesn't do that. In fact, he does the complete opposite. He doesn't even reveal who he is or why he's there for days. It's because Nehemiah isn't primarily concerned about exerting power. This isn't just a construction project for him. It's not just about rebuilding a wall. His purpose begins with removing the shame of his people.

Because if you remember last week in Nehemiah 1, yeah, he heard the news about the broken walls, but he also heard news about a broken people. And the only way that wall is going to get rebuilt, is if the people feel Nehemiah's same sense of purpose. And that's the real challenge. Why? Because they were people that are incapacitated by shame. And when shame enters the picture, it takes over. Shame calls the shots.

So how do you think of shame? It's a very important biblical word and quite often something we don't think about very often, and yet, it's highly influential in our lives. And so maybe you think of shame and you think of words like 'guilt' or 'embarrassment' or 'ridicule.' But this passage invites us to look a little bit deeper because this passage gives us a great picture of what shame does and how it impacts our lives. Shame is learning to live amidst the ruin. Shame is just learning how to live amidst the rubble and the ruin.

And Israel learned how to live among those crumbled ruins for decades. And shame is what makes all that destruction just become a part of the landscape of life. Because shame is a thief. It robs you of hope. Because just like these walls for Israel, it's a constant reminder of your failure. It's a constant reminder of your demerits. Shame robs you of the hope that life could be different. It robs you of the hope that your story can change. Instead, it just teaches you how to step over the rubble to where you don't even see it anymore. You just see what's always been there. It was there yesterday. It's there today. It'll be there tomorrow.

Shame is powerful because it teaches you how to co-exist with brokenness and it convinces you that this is just how life is and things will never change. We think those thoughts all the time.

Community? I'll never have real community. People don't care about me. They wouldn't like me if they really knew me.

Freedom? I'll never be free of my struggles. I just have to learn to live with it and keep it hidden.

Forgiveness? What I've done is beyond forgiveness. I get what I deserve.

Qualified? I'm not qualified. God doesn't use people like me. I'll just watch from a distance.

When shame shows up, it comes with handcuffs to imprison you in this idea that freedom is nothing more than a fairy tale. So Nehemiah has got a big job to do because these are the very people that he needed to rebuild this wall. People incapacitated by shame and despair. Which means that what Israel needed was for someone to come and remove their shame and give them a new sense of purpose that's driven by hope, and Nehemiah knows it.

So how does he go about removing this shame? He starts by surveying the damage. He starts by surveying the damage. Before he tells anyone why he's there, before he tells anyone who he is, he goes out by night and he surveys the damage. Last week he was awakened to reality but this week he wants to see it up close. He wants to see it for himself. He doesn't hide from it by hiding behind that letter that gives him power and going immediately to the people. He wants to see the damage and the devastation. He wants to see it for himself because remember what Nehemiah is doing. He is coming back to the saddest place on earth for him.

When he heard the news of the city and the people, he fasted, and he mourned and he wept for four months. When have you ever been that sad? Maybe you have, and you know how difficult it is to go back to that source of grief and sorrow. This is the story playing out for us. He comes back to the saddest place on earth for him because he wants to take it all in and see the full scope of the devastation, every burnt gate, every broken rock, and every crumbled stone. Nehemiah comes to grieve and it's in that grief he finds hope. Because that word for 'inspect' that's used in this passage carries with it the idea of hopeful expectation. Which means the more he surveyed the damage, the more he took in the destruction, the more he began to re-imagine the walls and the gates being rebuilt and restored. It was in that surveying of the damage he found hope. And so it was in Nehemiah's willingness to come and face the source of his grief that he found and experienced the hope of restoration. That's the real blueprint for this rebuilding project. That's what Israel has to do for this shame to be removed, for their story to change, for restoration to happen, grief and hope have to be bound together.

Because Israel could no longer grieve over their situation because their shame made them give up. Just makes them give in and they needed someone to come along and finally grieve over the full extent of the damage, over the full scope of the devastation and their condition because they could no longer see it for themselves. And they needed somebody who didn't just minimize it, didn't just give them some nice coping mechanisms, didn't give them just a few things on how to live with it. What they needed was somebody who came back and grieved and appreciated it in all of its severity, in all of its seriousness and treated it as precious. They needed someone who would come and lead them back to that source of shame and grief and help them see what they stopped looking at long ago. Why? So that they too might experience the hope of restoration. Hope that the story can change, man. Hope that life could be different.

So then Nehemiah's ready. Now, he goes to the leaders, the priests and the officials with an invitation. He tells them of what God has done on their behalf and he shares with them what God has put in his heart to do for them and with them. But he doesn't just give them a plan. Notice he gives himself, he identifies with them. He doesn't come and say "you all." He says, "We. Us. Our." He identifies with them and they see his care. They see his concern and his compassion in the way that he enters into their story and he bears their burdens with them. He enters into their suffering, enters into their shame and says, "I am with you."

And then he says, "Come and let's remove this shame together. It's time for restoration. Fill your hands, grab a shovel and let's rebuild." And you know what? They're moved by it. And the people, after decades, finally said, "Let us rise up and build."

This teaches us that the purposes of God are powerfully contagious in this world when they're in the hands of one who's willing to grieve and hope. Because sometimes you just need someone to come and help you see what you stopped looking at. Sometimes you need someone to come and hope for you when you no longer feel hope yourself.

Does this story sound familiar? What appeared mundane, I hope points forward, because it's an opening act that sets the stage for an even greater work of restoration. This passage with all of its monotonous details it gives us a spiritual framework for understanding the ministry of Jesus. It gives us a glimpse of who he is and what he does in our lives.

Because oftentimes when we think about Jesus and we think about salvation, we only think of it as just this kind of one-time event. Salvation is just wrapped up in this moment of Jesus's death on the cross and if you believe in that moment, well, then it saves you from something really bad happening in the future. And certainly that's true in the most basic sense. But there is a whole lot more to that story. Because if salvation is just this one moment in time, then why does Jesus even have a ministry? If it's just a moment in time then why didn't he just wait until the appointed time and then just go volunteer to be crucified on the cross and die for your sins? What are we to do with his life and his ministry?

It's Nehemiah who helps us understand because this story points forward to Jesus and helps us understand that salvation is about restoration. Jesus comes to remove our shame so that we might be restored to real life, real purpose, and real dignity. And we see Jesus do that from beginning to end in his ministry. And how does he do it? Well, let's look at the story of Jesus but think of him as Nehemiah 2.0.

Because his story began in the same way with a magnificent moment when he too, left a throne room with a purpose that God had put deep in his heart. And that sense of purpose compelled him to lay aside all of his privilege, all of his position and power and splendor, and he emptied himself to identify with his people. And he entered into their story. And he entered into their story in a way that was unimaginable, unthinkable, and yet, sometimes we think of it as old hat.

God took on flesh, not just for a minute or for a moment, but for all time. God the Son took on flesh and he was born in a stall that smelled of dung. And then there were dirty diapers, cutting his first teeth. He learned how to walk. He learned to talk. He learned to laugh. He learned how to be hurt with bumps and bruises and scraped knees. He learned how to make friends and how to be hurt by them. He ate meals with friends and he ate meals alone. He learned a trade and he worked a job with wood and stone and mortar. He was a blue collar and we forget that Jesus spent the majority, the vast majority of his life, in the utter mundane day-to-day grind of work, identifying with us, his people. Sweeping floors, locking up at the end of the day with calloused hands and eating dinner and crashing immediately afterwards because he could barely keep his eyes open from such a hard day of work. And then he did it all over again the next day.

And people passed him on the streets. He fixed their homes. He walked among them and no one knew who he really was. Not just for three days, but for 30 years. And all that time he never told anyone what God put in his heart to do. And so what was he doing all of these years? He was surveying the damage. He was quietly taking it all in. He was surveying the length and the depth and the height and the width of the devastation of sin in this world and all of the crumbled ruins it produced.

He surveyed the damage of Israel that was demon-infested. He saw a broken religious system that showed partiality to power and completely disregarded the poor. People that were sheep without a shepherd, forgotten by a corrupt system. He saw humanity that was filled with shame and had completely learned how to live amidst the rubble and the ruin and they didn't even know it. And so when Jesus begins his ministry and reveals what God put in his heart, what do we see him do? He invites the world to survey the damage with him. To look at the devastation in their life and grieve over it with him. To see what they learned to ignore, to see what they no longer looked at, but to see it with the hope of restoration. To see it with the hope that the story can change and things can be different.

And we see Jesus remove the shame of his people and bring restoration from beginning to end, restoring a people to a full life of participation in the purposes of God. And he deals with shame in all of the different ways that people can experience it. He dealt with the shame that people experienced from issues they had zero control over.

So think of all the miracles that we see Jesus perform from the beginning to end of his ministry. Why do so many people come to him for healing in droves to where he can't even enter into a town? Well, you might say, because they want to be healed? Well, of course they want to be healed. But think about it from the perspective of shame because the prominent predominant idea and thought during Jesus's day was that if someone suffered from a deformity or a disease or chronic illness or a health malady, it was because they deserved it. It was divine judgment upon something that they must have done and they deserved it. It was a destructive culture that heaped shame upon people. It was a culture filled with ruin.

To see that, let's just think about that idea in our own context, because what if we believed that here at RPC? If we treated people with chronic illness or cancer or health issues or health maladies with that kind of judgemental contempt? If everyone here just thought, "Oh, well, they have cancer because they deserve it. Oh, they're suffering with chronic illness because they must have done something. What a sinner." Can you imagine how shame with thrive in this place? How hopeless this place would feel? If we made everybody that had those conditions and situations sit on the outside and listen in, while we sat on the inside?

But also think about how purposeless of a people that would make us. Because why go out into a world filled with broken people and broken situations, if it's just their fault and they're just getting what they deserve? We'd probably convince ourselves that we were people that offered salvation, but in reality we would just be a people that offered shame. And this is the reality of the world that Jesus stepped into.

And so all of these miracles are more than just people wanting to be healed. Of course, they wanted to be healed but they want to be restored. They want their shame to be removed so that they can fully participate in community, in friendships, in relationships, in work, and in full restoration of worship. To feel accepted and to feel like they have a place for them. And when Jesus comes along, they saw one that grieved over their condition and saw them in their shame and offered them hope that the story can change. That life can look different.

You have the woman with the issue of blood who suffered for 12 years. A situation she had no control over. She suffered for 12 years and she bankrupted herself trying to find a cure. But this is more than just a health malady because that bleeding made her unclean. Everything she touched became unclean. She couldn't participate in the worship with God's people. She listened from the parking lot. She couldn't participate in the life of their community. Everyone socially distanced from her because she was the plague. No one invited her into their home, no one came to her home. Her grandkids would visit and they'd wave from the street as she sat on the porch. And she sat on the utter outskirts of life amidst the ruin and the rubble of a life that was resigned to shame.

But then it tells us that Jesus comes along and something about his presence made her see the damage in her life and made her see the devastation in a new way, because he made her feel the slightest possibility of the hope of restoration. This is one that doesn't run from the dirty, the broken, the filthy, the diseased and the sick. This is a different kind of Teacher. And she takes that hope and that hope causes her to get up and she thinks if I can just touch the hem of his garments I'm going to be healed. So she gets up, she sneaks up behind him, she touches his garment and instantly she's healed. And Jesus feels his power go out and he says, "Who touched me?" He stops. And by the way, he's on his way to meet a little girl and heal her, who's dying. But he stops and he says, "Who touched me?" Now, if all he cared about was just displaying his power and doing some neat tricks and healing people, why would he stop and ask that? Why would he ask, "Who touched me?" It's because he wanted to find her. He wanted to see her. He wanted to meet her.

And he finally sees this woman and she's terrified because she just did the unthinkable. That's why she was trying to be discreet. But Jesus met her right there and Jesus listens to her tell him everything. About all of that pain and bleeding and loss. He gets down on her level and he listened to every word before the eyes of everyone that watched. Before the crowds, he listens to her because he didn't want to just heal her, he wanted her to be restored in the eyes of her community. He wanted to restore her dignity and to know that she was restored in the eyes of her God. And before him, there is no shame.

And you see Jesus deal with the shame that people experienced from the things they've done and the decisions they've made.

He sees Zaccheus the Tax collector who was the guy everybody hated in town. He lived in shame because he couldn't get his own greed under control and all of the ways that he betrayed his own people and stole from them. And Jesus steps into his story and he says, "I'm coming to your house today. I'm coming to your house because it's time to remove that shame. It is time to rebuild your life." And Jesus helps him see what he didn't want to look at. Jesus helps him see all the damage that he's done and to feel the hope of restoration because he sees that damage in full just like Jesus sees it, because what does he do? He gave half of everything he had to the poor and he went back and repaid everyone that he robbed four-fold. And Jesus didn't just come and point out his sin and shame, he led him on the path of restoration.

That was their story. What about yours? What about you?

It's surprising how some of the most important decisions of our lives come by trusting in someone to rightly survey the damage. When you buy a house, you hope the inspector will look closely and take in all the damage and give a full account of anything that's broken. When you go to a doctor, you hope that he won't just offer you quick solutions and move on to the next impersonal case, but that he'll be careful. He'll survey your condition. He'll see the full scope of the damage so that your healing might be complete. You want a contractor that fixes what's broken and doesn't take advantage of you in your ignorance and lack of knowledge about all of the things in this life that can break.

So what about Jesus? Do you trust him? Do you trust him? Sure. You may you trust in what Jesus did in the past, but do you trust what Jesus wants to do in the present? Do you desire spiritual restoration? Do you desire to be restored? Then start where Jesus starts. Start by surveying the damage.

Start by looking at all those places where you've learned to live among the ruins. Start in those places of rubble where you no longer look at and you just walk around it each and every day and you think it was there yesterday, it'll be there today, and it'll be there tomorrow. Maybe it's in your marriage and it's time that you started to face some of the problems that you know are there but you don't want to look at. Or maybe it's a relationship with someone that was close to you or brokenness in your family. Maybe it's a sin struggle or an addiction. Maybe it's in the burdening weight of the things that you've done and the guilt of your bad decisions. Or maybe it's in the weight of the pain of the things that were done to you that you've done your best to walk around and ignore your entire life but you know it doesn't work. Or maybe it's in the ruin and the rubble of depression, mental illness, anxiety.

Where have you learned to live among the ruin and resigned yourself to thinking this is just the way life is? Life will always be this way. This is just a part of the landscape. And Jesus invites you to something new. He asked for you to be willing to let him lead you back to that place where you've learned to no longer look at it. You've learned to ignore it and to finally grieve with him. To see it for what it is, to be willing to see the damage and the devastation and that's why we don't want to look at it. Because it hurts. It can be hard, it can be difficult. And he invites us to look at that damage once again so that we might grieve with him.

But it's also so that you might know the hope of restoration, because he wants to meet you in that place. Because he wants to offer you the hope of restoration that the story can change and that your life can look different. Because the purpose that God put in his heart wasn't just for everybody else. It was also for you. So that you might be restored to the life that God wants for you. So that you might be restored to those you love, to your community, to yourself and to your God. Because before Him, there is no shame.

He comes to you this morning and he says, "Let's remove that shame. It's time for restoration. Will you come and meet me?"

Let's pray.