Renewal Must Be Ongoing

Speaker 1: 0:03

Hey man, good morning. My name is Morgan Lusk. I'm the assistant pastor here and I don't normally preach from a stool, but I've got a bum foot, so thanks for indulging me Also. Really, the reason I'm on a stool is because we had the men's chili cook off last night and we're all just moving a little slower today. There's a lot of chili. It was delicious. I'm happy to report Where's Jerry Flores? Jerry Flores is your people's champion, your people's choice champion, so at some point he'll have to come to church wearing the apron. Also, greg Fulington well, his wife Trisha's here, but Greg Fulington was our judges champion, and so congrats to them. What else is going on? Well, you know, we had Reformation Day this week. Most people call it Halloween, but it's actually Reformation Day.

Speaker 1: 0:51

October 31st 1517, martin Luther nailed 95 DCs to the door of the church in Wittenberg, germany, and changed the world. Changed the church, brought us back to biblical faithfulness. Whereas people had been trusting in tradition and the word of man, people then began to look back to the Bible as God's word, and we I jump off there, because today we're going to be talking about Reformation Martin Luther was not the only reformer. Nehemiah was also a bit of a reformer himself and we're going to look today in Nehemiah 13 about how he brought reform to the people of Jerusalem. I'm going to read most of this chapter but it's pretty long. I will skip a few verses to start off. We're just going to look at Nehemiah 13, verses 1 through 3. On that day they read from the book of Moses in the hearing of the people, and in it was found written that no Ammonite or Moabite should ever enter the assembly of God, for they did not meet the people of Israel with bread and water but hired Balaam against them to curse them. Yet our God turned the curse into a blessing and as soon as the people heard the law, they separated from Israel all those of foreign descent.

Speaker 1: 2:11

Now, what you don't know yet in reading those first three verses is that Nehemiah had actually been gone for a while. So verse six it says while this was taking place I was not in Jerusalem. For in the 32nd year of our desert seas king of Babylon, I went to the king and after some time I asked leave of the king, came to Jerusalem. So he returns after being away for a while. And it's sort of like when in Braveheart, when William Wallace comes back and he finds the whole places in disarray. He's like the clans, un-des-array, unite the clans, you know all that stuff. And so he comes back to bring reform to Scotland. In a similar way, here Nehemiah comes back to bring reform.

Speaker 1: 2:53

Well, why was reform needed? Well, the first thing we see is that they have allowed ammonites and moabites into the assembly. Now, if you want to know more about what's wrong with that because that doesn't sound like that big of a deal, right. But if you want to know more about that, I suggest you go back and read Numbers, chapter 22 through 24, one of those first five books of the Bible that our awesome children sang about earlier today, numbers. So go read those chapters. There's a talking donkey in there. You'll love that.

Speaker 1: 3:21

But anyway, the point is is that the Israelites here, the Jews here, should have known that they were not to have ammonites and moabites in their midst in their assembly. It's plain as day in Deuteronomy 23. No ammonite or moabite may enter the assembly of the Lord, even to the 10th generation. None of them may enter the assembly of the Lord forever. They didn't know about this. Why? Because they had strayed from faithfulness to God's word. They were not reading it. They were ignoring it and this had terrible consequences. Verses four through five.

Speaker 1: 3:57

Now, before this, elias shib, the priest who was appointed over the chambers of the house of our God and who was related to Tobiah, prepared for Tobiah a large chamber where they had previously put the grain offering, the frankincense, the vessels and the tithes of grain, wine and oil which were given by commandment to the Levites, singers and gatekeepers, and the contributions for the priests Over Tobiah man. He's back causing trouble again, right? So Elias shib, who is probably the high priest, definitely has at least has has charged over the temple operations, right? So one of his jobs is to make sure this big storeroom in the temple is stocked with provisions for the Levites and the singers, and instead, what he does is he uses his influence to allow Tobiah who is an Ammonite, by the way, remember. They're not supposed to be there. But now Tobiah the Ammonite has moved into the temple. He's living in the temple. He's got like a sweet bachelor pad in the temple, in the storeroom where they're supposed to be storing the offerings for the Levites and the singers.

Speaker 1: 5:09

Now, if we were to put this in modern day, 2023, terms, this would be the same thing as if Westtown Church took all of the money budgeted to pay its staff and gave it to like a Hamas terrorist. Okay, that's what this is. That's how bad this is, how low Elias shib has stooped here. And so Nehemiah comes and he sees this and he's like uh-uh, not on my watch. This is seven through nine.

Speaker 1: 5:41

I then discovered the evil that Elias shib had done for Tobiah, preparing for him a chamber in the courts of the house of God, and I was very angry and I threw all the household furniture of Tobiah out of the chamber. Then I gave orders and they cleansed the chambers and I brought back there the vessels of the house of God with the grain offering and the frankincense. So he is not messing around. He legit throws Tobiah out and throws all his stuff out, like a angry ex-girlfriend throwing her man's stuff out on the street, or like in Lord of the Rings two towers when they had him. He throws worm-tongue out and he's like you would have had me crawling on all fours like a beast Just throws him out of his palace.

Speaker 1: 6:23

This is awesome, but this also reminds us of when Jesus cleanses the temple. Think about that. Where he comes and he sees what's going on, all these exploitation happening in the temple and he overturns the tables of the money changers and he says you've turned my father's house, which is supposed to be for prayer, into a den of thieves. So why is this kind of thing necessary? Why did Jesus, why did Nehemiah take such strong stances against this corruption? Well, it's because the leadership has rejected God's word and they've led the people astray. The leadership is rejected God's word. They've led people astray. Elijah should reject God's word. He ignored the prohibition against Ammonites being in the temple. It prevented the worship of God from happening, which is the absolute opposite of what he was supposed to be doing.

Speaker 1: 7:17

I am incredibly thankful to be at a church like Westtown where we prioritize biblical faithfulness, where we don't reject the Bible. We believe the Bible is God's word and that it is our authority. I'm thankful that we believe that we preach, that we teach, that we're formed by the gospel of Jesus Christ, that we believe that the Bible is one story of God's redemption, that even though man is a sinner, god has provided a redeemer in Jesus Christ to come to live a perfect life, to die a sacrificial death on the cross and to rise again from the dead. Why? Because he is the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father. Except through him, there is no salvation. There's no other name under heaven by which we must be saved but the name of Jesus Christ, our Lord, and that's what we believe here at Westtown Church. We believe that we have the Holy Spirit with us, transforming us, growing us to be more Christ-like. This is what we believe. This is what we try to put into practice. We try to live our lives by this.

Speaker 1: 8:21

However, it doesn't take much to go astray. It doesn't take much to lose sight of what's important, of the core message of the Bible. A little bit of pride, a little bit of neglect of God's word, a little bit of inattention to what God considers to be serious, a little bit of boasting and putting ourselves in a place of receiving glory instead of God, and before you know it, we may stray from God's word so far that we're not even recognizable as a church. It doesn't take much. It didn't take much here in Jerusalem, and the people had completely rejected God's word and were rejecting right worship as a result, and so that's why we always need to be reforming the motto of my seminary. One of the models of my seminary where I attended was Semper Reformanda, always reforming. We always need to be, in other words, looking to God's word as our standard and checking ourselves against God's word to see if there is any unclean thing in us.

Speaker 1: 9:29

And we can do this with God's word because it is not just a book, so it's the living, breathing, active word of God. It is his breathed out word. It is sharper than any two-edged sword and it cuts to the heart, it cuts to the soul of who we are. And so, like Tim Keller says this of God's word, he said if God's word is really true, it will be offending us and correcting us somewhere. Look, this is not a book about how to be happy. This is not a book about how to feel good. This book's not gonna make you feel good. Sometimes You're gonna read this and you're gonna think, gosh, that really kind of hurts. Why? Because we're sinners and there is always something in us that God's word can correct.

Speaker 1: 10:21

The problem is, if we don't like that, we will potentially walk away from it, reject it, potentially even pick and choose what parts of it we wanna listen to and what parts we don't. But the reality is that the entire thing is God's truth and we are to submit our lives to it. So are we willing to do this? Are we willing to open ourselves up to what God's word is saying to us? Are we willing to hear a hard truth that God's word might be saying to us? Because if we are, then reform is possible. Then we can allow ourselves to be reformed by the work of the spirit, through his word, in our lives. If we're not willing to hear it, if we're not willing to humble ourselves and submit to God's word, then we are in danger of straying so far from his word that we will see disastrous effects in our lives. Okay, so verses 10 and 10 through 12 and verse 14, let's see what disastrous effects happen.

Speaker 1: 11:20

In Jerusalem, I also found out that the portions of the Levites had not been given to them, so that the Levites and the singers who did the work had fled each to his field. So I confronted the officials and said why is the house of God forsaken? And I gathered them together and set them in their stations. Then all Judah brought the tithe of the grain, wine and oil into the storehouses. Remember me, oh God, concerning this, and do not wipe out my good deeds that I have done for the house of my God and for his service.

Speaker 1: 11:50

So again, elijah had allowed Tobiah to gain access to the temple, and what this meant is that the Levites and the singers did not have the provisions that they needed. They were not able to focus on their work in the temple. They to survive, they then had to go out and farm, all right. So, in a similar way, here at Westtown in 2023, our church staff depends on the giving of your tides and offerings to the church, to the Lord, to be able to have provision, and that's because God wants us, just like you wanted the singers and the Levites to focus on the work of worship, on the work of the church, on the work in that case, it was the operations of the temple. God wanted the staff freed up to be able to focus on that. When they didn't have the provisions they needed, they had to go farm. If I were no longer receiving a paycheck from Westtown Church, I would probably have to go work at Costco or something. You see me there checking your little ID, make sure you're legit, getting into Costco, right? That's probably what I have to do is I don't have any other good skills Even a guy with good skills right? Not me, I just got one. Hopefully it's preaching.

Speaker 1: 13:07

But so Nehemiah saw this corruption going on and he said, no, I will not stand for it, I'm going to bring reform. And so he launches. I mean, he's already kicked Tabaya out, so we got that problem, maru. Now he's gonna launch a capital campaign. He says we are going to restock the storehouse with grain and oil and wine and all the things that are necessary for the Levites and singers to do their work. And he's got a campaign slogan. May not be real obvious here, but here's his campaign slogan why is the house of God forsaken? That's his campaign slogan.

Speaker 1: 13:43

He's trying to get people to understand that their giving is primarily an act of worship. That's why they should give to this campaign. Okay, so let's talk about that. What is our reason for giving to the church? All right, now, I know that I just said that giving helps us pay our staff, and giving keeps the lights on, and giving helps us have ministries like Kittstown and the Kitt's Choir and Operation Christmas Child and our youth ministry, and all these different things that we love to do as a church that we feel like are really important. Those are secondary reasons, though, for why we give right.

Speaker 1: 14:24

The primary reason for why we're called to give is worship. Giving is an act of worship. Let me explain what that means. You see, god owns everything. The Bible says he owns a cattle on a thousand hills. He owns everything, and whatever we have whether we have much or little is a gift that he's given to us, and I know it's tempting to think that we actually own the things that we have, but in reality we know that God is our provider. He provides everything. He could take it away as quickly as he has given it. And so, in response to that, in response to God's generosity toward us, we are called to steward the things that we have, not to hoard it. We are called to steward it, not to say I'm gonna use it for however I see fit. And so this is why God commands the tithe. This is why he says give 10% of your back. Then it was your harvest, now it's your paycheck, right, give 10% of your paycheck to the Lord through the work of the church. And so, if we're not tithing and Americans, by the way, are typically not great at this American Christians give about 2% to 3% of their wealth to the church, which is obviously much, much lower than the standard God has set in the Bible. So why is that?

Speaker 1: 15:39

Well, I wonder, I wonder, if we think, or we miss this whole part about giving being an act of worship. Cause maybe, if you understand that, maybe you start to see okay, wait a minute, this is something required of me for me to honor the Lord with everything that I have. I think it starts there and I think if we start to see that, then we start to believe more that, oh yeah, I really do trust the Lord. I have to trust the Lord, to depend on the Lord for everything that I have, and if I have anything it's only because of him. And so, wow, why wouldn't I want to honor God with my wealth because of that? Why wouldn't I want to show thankfulness to God because of that?

Speaker 1: 16:23

Listen, the Lord says in Malachi 3.10, this might be hard to believe, right, that this is true, that we can really give 10%, live on 90% and not 100, right, that sounds hard. But Malachi 3.10,. He says bring the full tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house, and thereby put me to the test, says the Lord of hosts, if I will not open the windows of heaven for you and pour down for you a blessing until there is no more need. God invites us to test him, to test him to see if he's really going to make good on his word. Do you believe that God will provide for you? Do you believe you can trust him? If you do, he's saying Give the tithe, show it and see if I will not pour out blessings upon you the likes of which you could not imagine.

Speaker 1: 17:22

Now. That does not mean, as some prosperity gospel churches preach, that if you give God a hundred bucks he's going to slip you back 10,000. It's not what that means, because it says until there is no more need. It's saying he's going to provide for everything we need. But it also means there are blessings to be had here that are far greater than anything material right. When we are generous as the Lord commands us, we find contentment, we find peace, we find increased faith, we find increased thankfulness, we find increased generosity. I mean generosity, breathes generosity. We find investment, we have skin in the game now, in the church, in the kingdom, in what's going on around the world. These are eternal blessings that cannot be had without depending on the Lord, without being willing to be generous. So Nehemiah presents all this to the people and they restock the storehouses they give, they fill it up. But there are more issues that he has to deal with.

Speaker 1: 18:32

He's going to read the book of verses 15 through 22. He says in those days I saw in Judah people treading wine presses on the Sabbath and bringing in heaps of grain and loading them on donkeys, and also wine, grapes, figs and all kinds of loads which they brought into Jerusalem on the Sabbath day. And I warned them on the day when they sold food Did not your fathers act in this way and did not our God bring all this disaster on us and all this city? Now you're bringing more wrath on Israel by profanying the Sabbath. As soon as it began to grow dark at the gates of Jerusalem before the Sabbath, I commanded that the doors should be shut and gave orders that they should not be opened until after the Sabbath, and I stationed some of my servants at the gates that no load might be brought in on the Sabbath day. Then I commanded the Levites that they should purify themselves and come and guard the gates to keep the Sabbath day holy. Swear this also in my favor, oh my God, and spare me, according to the greatness of your steadfast love.

Speaker 1: 19:32

So now the people of Israel have stopped observing the Sabbath. They're conducting business as usual on Sundays Well, I guess it was Saturday for them. Their Chick-fil-A's were all open seven days a week. It was a mess. And so Nehemiah says hey, do you guys remember what happened the last time Israel did this? No, well, here's what happened.

Speaker 1: 19:53

God sent you into exile and a primary reason was because you did not observe the Sabbath. I mean, god actually says I'm now sending you. This is back when they sent Judah into exile, so about I don't know 70 or so years before. Nehemiah Fact check that please. That might be wrong. He says I am going to give the land the Sabbath it has missed out on for all these years, and in order to do that, I have got to remove you from the land. I mean, that's the way that God values Sabbath, the one day a week when we take a break, we don't do our worldly work and we focus on the Lord and on rest. And Nehemiah is saying this is so important, this is so serious, this matter of Sabbath, that I'm actually going to physically bar anyone from conducting business in the city. I'm going to close the gates and anybody that's trying to get in to conduct business will not be able to get in. Anybody that wants to lead the conduct business will not be able to leave and we are going to do Sabbath by golly, and maybe they didn't like it at first, but he's successful in reforming the city in this way and we'll talk more about Sabbath in a minute. But there's another issue verses 23 through 29.

Speaker 1: 21:32

In those days also, I saw the Jews who had married women of Ashtad, ammon and Moab, and half of their children spoke the language of Ashtad and they could not speak the language of Judah, but only the language of each people, and I confronted them and cursed them and beat some of them and pulled out their hair, and I made them take an oath in the name of God saying you shall not give your daughters to their sons or take their daughters for your sons or for yourselves. Did not Solomon, king of Israel, sin on account of such women? Among the many nations, there was no king like him and he was beloved by his God, and God made him king over all Israel. Nevertheless, foreign women made even him to sin. Shall we then listen to you and do all this great evil and act treacherously against our God by marrying foreign women. And one of the Jews of Jehoida, the son of Elijah the high priest, was the son-in-law of Sanballot the Horonite. Therefore, I chased him from me. Remember them, oh my God, because they have desecrated the priesthood and the covenant of the priesthood and the Levites.

Speaker 1: 22:34

Now, before I say anything else, I want to be clear that this is not the Bible prohibiting interracial marriage. That is not what this is saying at all. I mean, if you want to go back and read about Rahab and Ruth, they were both from other races and they ended up marrying into the people of God, and so that's not what this is. This is a prohibition against believers marrying unbelievers. So let's just be clear on that. But this is the reason why there's a prohibition there that when a believer marries an unbeliever, the risk of being turned away from the Lord is great.

Speaker 1: 23:10

This is what happened to Solomon when Solomon married his 700 pagan wives. I mean, probably should have been a clue that that's not a good idea, but anyway, whatever wisest man that ever lived and all. But look what happened in 1 Kings 11-4. Look at what it says. When Solomon was old, his wives turned away his heart after other gods, and his heart was not wholly true to the Lord, his God, as was the heart of David, his father. And so Nehemiah here is saying if that can happen to Solomon, who's the wisest guy that ever lived it's gonna happen to you too. You're gonna turn your heart away from the one true God and worship a different God, a false God.

Speaker 1: 23:58

And so he institutes reform here. He does so. He kind of brings new meaning to the term. I'm about to go Old Testament on you, because he's like beating people and pulling out their hair, and I don't think that's really the way he should have gone about this. We don't do it that way here, just in case you're wondering. So nothing to worry about with that. But regardless of his tactics, he does really effectively reform Jerusalem. It's kind of incredible. Look at what verses 30 through 31 say. He says Thus I cleansed them from everything foreign and I established the duties of the priests and Levites, each and his work, and I provided for the wood offering at appointed times and for the first fruits. Remember me, oh, my God for good.

Speaker 1: 24:48

So I want to close with a couple of applications I think are pertinent from this text. One is sort of the inverted relationship we have with God when we stray from God's word. Two, how does Nehemiah point us to Jesus? So the first thing is, when we stray from God's word, inevitably what we'll do is we'll invert God's design and subvert God's authority. And we see that in this text with. We already talked about money a little bit. We also see it with Sabbath and marriage.

Speaker 1: 25:21

Okay, so Sabbath and marriage are both what's called a. They're called creation ordinances. In other words, they were established as part of the creation. They're not just arbitrary rules that God has given us. They're actually part of how God has designed our world to function. Okay, so our world is designed to function where we have a seven day week and where one of those weeks is a day of rest, where we are called to take a break, come to church, worship God, refocus our lives on Him. That is not some arbitrary command that the Jews made up. That's from God, because he rested on the seventh day of creation. Okay, and so when God established these things I mean because they are His creation ordinances what that does is it means that he also has authority to command us to observe them.

Speaker 1: 26:09

Okay, so when we reject these things, or when we rather when we reject God's word, it's not just some passive no. I guess I just don't believe we're actually sort of a power play that we're making against God, because we're kind of saying I'm not posturing myself as God over my own life and I don't really believe God has authority over me. So this is an invert of the creator-creature distinction, where we recognize God is creator and we are just His creatures. So when we do this with Sabbath, what we're saying is God says he's Lord over our time. God says he's Lord over everything we have, that he's our sole provider and that we can actually rest and he's going to keep on being our provider and the world's going to keep on spinning. But when we reject Sabbath, we're kind of saying no, I actually think I'm Lord of my time, I actually think I am my sole provider.

Speaker 1: 27:08

In fact, I don't know that I can stop working, because if I do, how am I going to provide for my family? It's kind of like with my foot right. I hurt my foot playing softball and they told me to stay off it for a couple of weeks and I haven't really done that. I guess you know stubborn and all, but why haven't I done that? Well, it's because I can't stay off my foot. I got so much to do. There's so much to do around the house. I mean, I got to help with the dog, I got to help with the kids, I got to help cook all this stuff and it's kind of like I'm saying I'm just way too important. They can't survive without me, right? That's well-placed laughter there. That's good, that's good.

Speaker 1: 28:01

But do we see that that's what we're saying when we reject Sabbath. We're saying this world can't spin around without me. I can't take a break. Because, why? Because I think I'm kind of like God. But do you see, do you know what he says? What God says about keeping Sabbath, specifically in his word. He says in Isaiah 58, isaiah 58, 14,. He says essentially, this is my word. He's saying like, if you will trust me on this, take my word at this, keep my Sabbath, I will. He says I will make you ride on the heights of the earth. Like that sounds so cool, like I don't even really know what it means. I just know that I can't get that on my own. I can't get that from being a workaholic. I can't get that from living a stressed out, caffeine-fueled, anxious life where everything is scheduled on Google Calendar. I can only get that by practicing Sabbath, because the Lord has commanded me to do that and he says it's for your good and for your joy.

Speaker 1: 29:10

We see this with marriage too. Marriage is not commanded of all people. It is a creation ordinance. But obviously not all people are commanded to be married. But God did institute it as to be between, he said you know, for this reason, a man will leave his father and mother and cleave to his wife. So he institutes it as an institution that's between one man and one woman only. It's complementary. And why? Again, this comes back to worship. It's for God's glory, and it's for the creation of life, the procreation of life. It's for our joy. This is what marriage is for.

Speaker 1: 29:52

When we reject God's word, we then tend to remove that part about it being for God's glory and instead we say, oh, it's for our happiness. And then it's conditional, right, as long as I'm happy or as long as you're happy, then we can stay together. If not, then we're just going to split apart. And then now we have gone so far as a society to think we can redefine marriage to where marriage is open to anybody marrying anybody and multiple people can actually be married altogether. This is an inversion of God's design, because it's not designed to be that way, and it's a subversion of God's authority, because we're saying we have authority over marriage, which, if you really follow this down the stream, we're saying we have authority over life, because where does life come from? It comes from a marriage relationship, or at least it's intended to. We have authority over life, not God.

Speaker 1: 30:47

When we reject God's word, everything does this, everything inverts. Up is down. Two plus two is three. Good is evil, evil is good. It's madness. And this is why we need reform. This is why we need constant reform, daily reform to every single day.

Speaker 1: 31:09

Look to God's word as truth, as our rock-solid foundation, to every single thing, even when we don't like it, even when it feels painful to look at God's word and say God, I don't know how this it makes any sense, but I'm going to trust you. And we need particularly to preach the gospel to ourselves, to remember the glorious truth of the gospel starts with the fact that God is God and we are not. That is glorious If you really sit and think about how awesome that is. That is that that is. Maybe that's the greatest thing you've heard today. God is God and we are not.

Speaker 1: 31:48

And the other good thing about that is that means we have a redeemer who can save us from ourselves. I mean, he doesn't just save us from our sin, he saves us from the things that we then do because of our sin. So he's saving us from ourselves, and that means we have a far better future. We have a hope in Jesus Christ. And that leads me to the last thing, which is how does Nehemiah appoint us to Jesus here?

Speaker 1: 32:13

In many ways, but one is that Nehemiah left Jerusalem, went away and came back and brought reform. And in a similar way, in a greater way, jesus, after he died and then rose from the grave, he left us bodily, ascended into heaven. He sits at the right hand of God, the Father. He has not left us alone because he's sent us his spirit, but he's going to return. This is what the Bible promises. He's going to return, he's going to set things right. He's going to, he's gonna make it so that we live in a new heaven, new earth, and we will never need reform again. We will always be with the Lord and we will be like him. In the meantime, like I said, we have his Holy Spirit, and so what we always know is that we are his church. This is his church. It's what Ephesians 1, 22, and 23 says says and he put all things under his feet and gave him his head over all things, to the church which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all.

Speaker 1: 33:14

West town is Jesus's church. It's not a man's church, it's not a group of men's church. It's not your church, it's Jesus's church. You are his people, you are his church. That's that. Maybe that's the most comforting thing you've heard today. I don't know. But we are also not just his church, but we are his blood-bought people. We were purchased by his blood.

Speaker 1: 33:34

1 Peter, 1, 18, and 19. You were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers, not with perishable things such as gold or silver, not with material things, but what? With the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb, without blemish or spot. There's power in the blood, because it means that if we are purchased by Christ and redeemed by him, then no one can take us away from him. We are always his people, we are always his church. West town is his church. No matter what happens, west town belongs to Jesus. He is our provider, he is our Lord. He's purchased us by his blood, so let's look to his word, always submitting our lives to him, being willing to be reformed by him. Let's pray.