Andrew Fountain - Rebuilding Jerusalem / Mobilizing the Church
- Artist: Andrew Fountain
- Title: Rebuilding Jerusalem / Mobilizing the Church
- Album: Newlife Church, Toronto
- Track: 1
- Genre: Mobilize
- Year: 2018-01-14
- Length: 39:39 minutes (15.92 MB)
- Format: MP3 Stereo 44kHz 56Kbps (VBR)
Link to Video:
Rebuilding Jerusalem / Mobilizing the Church Sermon notes - Rebuilding Jerusalem / Mobilizing the Church
- Over the past year the core leadership at Newlife has been formulating our core vision
- Really it’s the vision Jesus gave us: to make disciples of all nations and bring them up into maturity
- We’ve been communicating this vision in different ways, but today I want to focus on what I believe it looks like for 2018
- I just have two words:
- I want to look at a story about Jerusalem that teaches us some practical things regarding how to mobilize the church
The Story
Introduction
- Remind of captivity
- Kingdom divided after the death of Solomon
- Northen Kingdom (Israel) became corrupt faster and was taken into captivity by the Assyrians
- Southern Kingdom (Judah) became increasingly idolatrous
- resisted the prophets and were taken by the Babylonians
- Black Obelisk (substantiates the biblical account)
The cities are left in ruins
- Two generations later
- a small percentage returned with Ezra
- State of the city of Jerusalem
- very few lived there (11:1–2) —rubble and desolation
- a vicious circle, just like some inner cities have become
- but vital if the Jews were not to become mixed in with the nations
Back in Babylon
- The Persian Empire had overthrown the Babylonians
- The emperor Artaxerxes ruled from India to Greece
- Nehemiah’s job: cupbearer
1. The Events
- Nehemiah arrived and visited the walls
- Four Km of them (had been up to 7m thick in some places about width of a regular street)
- Heaps of rubbish (Read 2:11–16)
Jerusalem is a picture of the church, both worldwide and local
- When you compare us to what God wants us to be, we are in an awful mess.
- We could get compressed by the infighting, weakness, false teaching and lukewarmness.
- We are way short of what God is intending us to be
- He had opposition (2:19–20 Ancient archaeological records mention all three of these)
- He was wise (did this in secret)
- Good organization, yet his confidence was in God
- So with great enthusiasm, they started to build
Depressing?
- Sometimes building the church is depressing
- Nobody would actually even live there to start with (chicken and egg)
- You may be wonderfully gifted at embroidery but when dirt needs shifting...
- Willing to be organized?
- Many of them worked long hours
- Many even left the harvest
- Yet God says that for everything we give up for him we will receive back many times more
- 4:1–3 mocks and ridicules
- v8 actual hostility
- v10-12 threats – low morale
- later told the authorities to try to get the work stopped
- later spread false rumours about an assassination attempt agains Neh to make him hide
- Satan tries to shut us down by fear
- Then Satan tried another approach:
- Pretended to be friends
- Tried to turn friends against Nehemiah
- What is the remedy?
- Jesus said “Watch and Pray” See v.9
- They encouraged each other See v.14
- They were quick to help those under attack See v.16, 20
- The parts of our “wall”
- Gifts and interests
We want you to be the person God wants you to be. (+we will train and mentor you)
Updated on 2018-01-16 by Andrew Fountain
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