1812. The Work And Worth of Worship

Welcome to The Daily Platform. Our program features sermons from through chapter 1, verses 4 through 11, in a message titled, The Work and Worth of Worship. We're in the palace that Nehemiah is facing. One of the things that is significant, if you understand as the book of Nehemiah unfolds and you begin to see some of the opposition that is raised and the things that they are saying, that it's actually not the first time it's happened.

And the last time that it happened during the book of Ezra, actually, it was effective. So the monarch that Nehemiah is interacting with at one point because of things that he had heard said, stopped the building that Ezra was doing. And so it's a very interesting atmosphere in which we find Nehemiah as we come to the first chapter. One of the questions that we have to ask, as we consider this whole book, is if this is about Nehemiah and him living a life on mission, what was the mission? What was it that he was really after? What was it that so burdened his heart that he would disrupt the whole of his life for 12 years to go specifically carry out a particular task?

And in light of that, then, seeing it completed, go right back to his life. What was it that so moved his heart that he was willing to uproot his life to carry out a particular goal? And I would tell you that is, again, you look at the end of the book and you look at him returning back to Susa or Shushan, the palace, that this book is not actually written for us so that we see a guy with great passion about building walls. It's actually not about a guy that had an incredible passion just to see a particular city built and carry out this incredible building program. I would even say to you that this isn't a book where there's a guy that because of what he heard and what he learned said, you know what, what we need in our day is a leader. We just had a leader and I'm going to go if God allow me and I'll show them what a great leader is. I don't think Nehemiah started out with a heart that desired just to be a great leader. You have your finger there, Nehemiah chapter one, and we'll come back there, but I actually want to read a passage of scripture to you from Ezekiel 22 that comes maybe 100, 150 years before the time setting of the book of Nehemiah.

But I think it gives us the landscape, right? The walls in Jerusalem have been laid waste. They've been lying in ruins.

And it's been about 100 years or so, maybe pushing out to 150 depending on your chronology. But Ezekiel said this, And the word of the Lord came unto me, saying, Son of man, say unto her, Thou art the land that is not cleansed nor rained upon in the day of indignation. There is a conspiracy of her prophets in the midst thereof, like a roaring lion ravening the prey. They have devoured souls. They have taken the treasure and precious things. They have made her many widows in the midst thereof. Her priests have violated my law and have profaned my holy things.

They have put no difference between the holy and profane. Neither have they showed or demonstrated difference between the unclean and the clean and have hid their eyes from my Sabbath, and I am profaned among them. Her princes in the midst thereof are like wolves ravening the prey to shed blood and to destroy souls to get dishonest gain. And her prophets have daubed them with untempered mortar, seeing vanity and divining lies unto them, saying, Thus says the Lord God, When the Lord hath not spoken, the people of the land have used oppression and exercised robbery and have vexed the poor and needy.

Yea, they have oppressed the stranger wrongfully. This is exactly the description. If you work through Nehemiah and you see the things that are happening here in the book, you actually are seeing that this is the description. Now listen to the next verse. God says this.

And I sought for a man among them that should make up the hedge and stand in the gap before me for the land, that I should not destroy it, but I found none. And somewhere about 100 years later, the report that Nehemiah receives with the best of hopes about that condition in Jerusalem, in Israel in particular, being turned around, comes to him and it hasn't happened. And thus he says in Nehemiah chapter one and verse two that Hannah and I, one of my brethren came, he and certain men of Judah, and I asked them concerning the Jews that escaped which were left of the captivity and concerning Jerusalem, and they said unto me, The remnant that are left of the captivity there in the province are in great affliction and reproach. The wall of Jerusalem also is broken down and the gates thereof are burned with fire.

In other words, nothing's changed. And I believe that we are going to have an account here 100 years later of someone that isn't a priest and isn't a prophet, who is from among the people. He's not a prince. All those people that were described in Ezekiel 22. And God finds a man, not a man who was great because he was such a great leader, not a man who was great because he was such a great personality, not a man who was great because he was of such great intellect, and all of those things actually may be true of Nehemiah. But I think God finds a man who is actually focused on the right thing. And his heart is burdened and broken, and we'll see why in his prayer. So look just a little bit at his prayer. Verse 4, Nehemiah 1, And it came to pass when I heard these words that I sat down and wept and mourned certain days and fasted and prayed before the God of heaven, and said, I beseech thee, O Lord God of heaven, the great and terrible God that keepeth covenant and mercy for them that love him, and observe his commandments. Let thine ear now be attentive and thine eyes open, that thou mayest hear the prayer of thy servant, which I pray before thee now, day and night, for the children of Israel, thy servants, and confess the sins of the children of Israel, which we have sinned against thee, both I and my Father's house have sinned. We've dealt very corruptly against thee, and have not kept the commandments nor the statutes nor the judgments which thou commandest thy servant Moses. Remember, I beseech thee, the word that thou commandest thy servant Moses, saying, If you transgress, I will scatter you abroad among the nations. But if you turn unto me and keep my commandments and do them, though there were of you cast out unto the uttermost part of the heaven, yet will I gather them from thence, and will bring them unto the place that I have chosen to set my name there. Now these are thy servants and thy people, whom thou hast redeemed by thy great power and by thy strong hand. O Lord, I beseech thee, let now thine ear be attentive to the prayer of thy servant and to the prayer of thy servants who desire to fear thy name and prosper.

I pray thee, thy servants this day, and grant him mercy in the sight of this man, for I was the king's cupbearer." I would postulate to you this morning that this book is about a man who is consumed with the fact that God is worthy of worship. And he is brokenhearted because his hope was that as Ezra and these exiles returned to the land with a clear mission to rebuild the temple and thus out of the building of the temple, even to build the walls, to restore the city so that it would be a place where God again was rightly worshipped.

Because this is the city, as he reminds God in verse 9, where God had said, I'll put my name there. And so Nehemiah is actually a book where we're going to see some really, really practical things. We're going to get some very, very practical helps with regard to navigating life's difficult situations that will help us stay focused on living life on mission. But if we miss the fact that this book is actually about a man who is passionate about not just seeing God worship, but actually leading people to a place where in their life they choose to rightly worship God, we'll miss the whole point. So I want to look at this prayer in a unique way today. We know what Nehemiah goes to do.

We know what ends up happening by the end of the book. And I want you to see that in this prayer, this is actually his heart in light of that mission. And so I want us to consider this prayer in light of what it teaches us from his perspective about worship.

So I want us to see simply three things. I want you to see the right preparation for worship, the right preparation for worship. And I think we have to see here that it's actually spiritual sensitivity.

Let me give you a little acrostic that I think will help you. Several authors have pointed this out from Nehemiah's prayer and then took it and looked at other prayers in the Bible and found common traits. And maybe this will be helpful to you as you consider prayer.

It's not where we're going to put our focus this morning. But if you look at his prayer, it breaks down into four things. Adoration, confession, thanksgiving. And then there's an S there, and that's supplication. So acts. That'll help you remember.

What are four key characteristics? I'm going to come in and rightly worship in prayer. I think I start with adoration and I think we see that in Nehemiah's life. And then we actually are going to have an example of confession. If I'm broken and distant from the God, I'm coming to worship. Prayer ought to be a time where I come back and confess my sins to him. And then thanksgiving, rejoicing in who God is and what God has done.

In particular, his covenant faithfulness. That as I come to pray, I can come with anticipating faith. That because of what he has done to bring me into a right relationship with him, he's a God that's inclined to hear me. And thus I come with supplication. I bring my requests to him knowing he delights to answer the prayer of his children.

And so I think you'll see that in this prayer and actually in other places in scripture. And I say that to say, I think that's kind of what's going on in his heart, particularly adoration, as we come to this understanding of spiritual sensitivity. Why, when Nehemiah hears this report in the midst of a life that's hundreds of miles away, that's busy, he's doing his job.

He's living out his mission in Shushan the palace. Why would it be so disruptive to him? That he immediately sets aside life and he mourns and he weeps and he says he does it day and night. His heart is incredibly impacted. And I think it's because he is sensitive towards his God. God's people who claim God's name, who are now in God's place where God put his name, are still not worshiping God.

And it crushed him. Young people, you're a believer. You're a Christian. You bear the name of Christ. You recognize and realize what God has done for you to be adopted and belong in his family.

He is your father and you are his child. You understand Calvary and all that Christ did there. The suffering that he went through, the sin that he bore on your behalf. And in light of all of that, that God has done for us, does it impact you if you look around and see other people who claim to know all of that and they aren't rightly worshiping God?

It ought to. And so Nehemiah has an intense personal concern, a broken heart over his own spiritual condition and that of others. You know what, if you're going to rightly worship God, there must be an intense personal concern about your own spiritual condition. And thus in verses six and seven, we see that he has a recognition of the real need. There's an intentional concern. He comes and he asks, I pray before thee now, day and night.

It's an intense concern. It says that he mourned. This gripped his soul. Young person, when was the last time in recognition of the fact that you weren't walking with God, that it actually impacted the way you lived your daily life, that you didn't just say, yeah, I know I'm not right with God, I can still go to class, I can still hang out with my friends and I'll still enjoy life the way that I do. And you so compartmentalize that somehow your spiritual life doesn't really affect the rest of your life. You know, if you're ever going to rightly worship God, that word meaning that you're going to demonstrate his worth, that you're going to understand who God actually is and what place he ought to have in your heart. When you're not walking with God, there ought to be a weight in your soul that calls you to get right with God. The language here tells us that this was a consuming thought to him, and that even to the point that it wasn't just an intentional concern or an intense concern, it actually was an inconvenient concern. Chapter two starts with the rest of the world still turning, his job still to be done, him still in jeopardy because he's now in the court of a pagan king.

And then he lets us know that this somehow was dramatically impacting him. Life wasn't just okay. It just wasn't going to go on as normal whenever God wasn't being worshipped. And honestly, I think sometimes for us, we have so lived our spiritual lives as rote. It's a habit, this is the way I've always lived, this is the way I do life, that sometimes we don't have the right sensitivity to whether or not we're actually living for God. Because we're living, we claim to be a Christian, therefore I'm living for God.

Do you know that that actually is not the right math? Because no one lives for God simply by osmosis. It doesn't just happen by chance. You see, as we talk about life on mission, it actually is a concerted choice, and it starts right here for Nehemiah. He says this is something that matters more than anything else, that is going to change my life if God allows it.

Everything we hear and see about what Nehemiah does, how he impacts people and how he builds walls and all of that is simply a byproduct of a man that decided God is worthy of worship. And because he is, it is something that will change the rest of my life. I live with different goals.

Is it changing yours? You see, sometimes I think we don't simply because of preoccupation. I think sometimes we want to, but then I'm too busy and life happens and things happen. Oh, I should, yeah, but I can't do it now.

I'll do it later. I think sometimes it actually just happens because of apathy, apathos, without feeling or without thought. Sometimes we just don't stop and take the time to say, this should matter to me.

And I hope that's what this chapel is. I hope this is one of those times where from now on you can't walk away and say, well, that doesn't matter. This should matter to you.

Sometimes, frankly, it's just laziness. I know the spiritual disciplines that should be a part of my life, and I just don't ever get there. But really the most damning thing in a right perspective on worship that shapes my life is actually self-righteousness. I'm good. All that hyper-spiritual stuff, that's for somebody else.

I'm good the way I am. Life's not bad for me. God's not cursing me. I'm not cursing God.

You know, it's going along pretty good. I don't need to mess that up by getting more spiritual. Friend, if that's your heart, I encourage you along with Paul to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, knowing that it's God that works in you, both to will and to do of His good pleasure, and discern whether or not you be of the faith. Not just did he have a recognition of the real need, because of an intense personal concern, I want you to see the intense awareness of God. You see here his theology. He stops and reminds himself who God is, that God is an awesome God, that He is one who is worthy of worship. And because He is, and I am in the process of transformation, it's going to take work for me to actually worship Him the way I should.

I need to be changing. But notice that it's not just one side. This isn't because He's just terrified of what God will do. They're already living under this judgment. There's actually a sense of disappointment that they're missing out on the blessing of God that would come from returning. His hope was that they had returned, and knowing the promises of God to be faithful to His mercy, and anticipating hearing of this restored relationship, and it didn't happen, His theology and understanding the goodness of God is what so stirs His soul. He's a God that's ready to pardon.

He is the Father of the prodigal, waiting for His child who's lived a wanton lifestyle, in rejection of His Father, to come back home and be received and be restored. And it's a sin of the people that are keeping their God at arm's length. And thus you see His asking. His asking actually is an action as a result of His belief. His supplication is because of who He knows God to be, because of what He knows His God will do, because His God promised.

It's not, oh God, now I know how I've been living, you know what, if you could do this in spite of what you said. This actually is a plea that God would be merciful and compassionate, and that He would do as He said and bring the people together, because He does a work in their heart that starts with Nehemiah of actually getting right with God. And thus, He has an intense desire for God's involvement and intervention in His life and in the life of His people. Do you want more of God's involvement in your life? God, I don't want you to be a God that just sits over there somewhere and I'm self-sufficient. I want you involved in the details of my life.

The major I'm choosing, the relationships I have, the pathways where I'm going. God, I want to walk with You. I want to talk with You. I want the guidance and leadership of Your Holy Spirit in my heart. God, I want my conscience to be fine-tuned.

I want to walk in a way that I know I'm living confidently and pleasing You. God, I want You more involved in my life. That leads to the prerequisites for worship.

And we see these then in Nehemiah's life. I think you see clearly a personal brokenness. He uses all kinds of personal pronouns here. I and we, there's no more pride. It's brokenness. God, I'm not coming to barter with You. I'm actually coming, and He uses the word beseech here twice, I'm coming begging. I'm not coming because I deserve anything.

I'm coming broken. God, would You please, in spite of me, work in my life? I think then there's a personal honesty in verses 6 and 7. This isn't a statement here of a few bad things that they have done. He's actually capturing the condition of their hearts, and He leads this nation in His own heart to the admission of their sins and acknowledging that they are sinners who are distant from God.

There's a personal honesty, and then 8 through 10, you see then a personal humility. God, You are right, and You are fair, and You are just, and You are good. And this is our fault. He could have turned this around and said, God, look what You've done. You've cursed these people, and You've broken them, and look at the disaster that You have made.

This wasn't about God and God's fault. He sees their own brokenness, and in humility, He comes before God and says, Oh God, I need Your help. Young person, if you're not walking with God today, I challenge you, if you're going to get right with God and worship Him as He deserves, start with brokenness and honesty and humility, and then look what that produces. We're going to see what happens throughout this book because of what is going on in Nehemiah's heart. And because of the desire of his heart and the brokenness of his own spirit and his own humility, you're going to see these principles come out over and over and over again as opposition comes. They're going to prey upon his pride, but this humility is here in his heart, and thus he's protected. You're going to see them prey upon his fears, and you're actually going to see his heart protected because of his fear of God and understanding that God will be his protector. You're actually going to see him be tempted to do something that King Saul did in offering sacrifices that he never should have offered, and he's tempted to go into the temple. And he says, What man am I that I would go into the temple? You see, his heart is protected because he has personally gotten right with God, and thus as he goes to this nation, his heart is to lead them in rightly worshipping God that I think you're going to see in this massive crescendo that comes in chapters 8-10 of this book as they're called back to worship, and you actually see the brokenness of spirit come to the nation, and thus the product of worship, or what happens, is a personal and a corporate repentance.

And there's some of you right at the beginning of this year. And if you're going to begin to live life on mission, that's where it begins. There's some of you today that need to go and get along with God and say, Oh God, I am not walking with you the way I should be. For some of you, that is just that laziness and apathy and you just really haven't actively begun living out your faith the way you should. Run to God. There's some of you that it's self-righteousness, and there's some of you that it's sin that has crept in, that you've not gotten right with God, and you've come back here in this condition, and you've hoped for a new beginning, and the reality is you've already begun hiding. And you're building out lives of covering because there's something there.

Oh friend, don't live a secondary life of covering and hiding. Just get right with God. Because you know what? It leads to spiritual cleansing. This nation gets right with God. And thus it leads to spiritual healing and restoration.

Oh, the walls may be just emblematic. The work got done. But it's because of the work of what God was doing in their hearts that this external work got done. Their hearts are changed.

Their motivations are changed. And thus you see them living with a statement that to me resonates throughout this whole book because it's in the heart of this man, Nehemiah. You see spiritual power and rejoicing because Nehemiah could announce the joy of the Lord is my strength. There are some of you sitting here and you are longing for victory over besetting sin.

And it trips you up and it trips you up and it trips you up. And young people, you need this process that Nehemiah lays out for us because it was authentic to him. This is where his heart really was. And you want to live life on mission and you want to live with the freedom of knowing the joy of the Lord as your strength, even in combating temptation. Start today by returning to the Lord, repenting, getting honest, being humble, seeking God, and getting right. You've been listening to a sermon preached by Dr. Alan Benson from the study series called Nehemiah Life on Mission. Thanks for listening and join us again tomorrow as we continue the study preached from the Bob Jones University Chapel Platform.