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Ithaca SDA Church

Taylor Hinkle

Building God’s Church- Part 1: The How To’s

Father in heaven, Lord what a blessing it is to be here on this Sabbath, another beautiful sunny day.

Time to spend with you and Lord to draw closer to you and forget about the cares and the worries of this world.

Lord you know the things that are on our hearts and on our minds, the burdens that we have, whether they be with family or our jobs or just other stresses of life.

And Father, I pray that during this time, as we study your word, that you would please draw near to us, that your Spirit would inspire our hearts and our minds with the truth that you have for us this morning that we be drawn closer to Jesus by the love that he has for us.

Now how many of you have ever been discouraged with your current situation?

Has anyone ever struggled with that before?

Maybe you're discouraged about your current pay at work or the number of hours they make you work.

Maybe you're discouraged about the school that you go to or the teachers that you have and you just wish, man, I wish my situation was a little bit different.

Or your family, might be some issues going on there.

And whatever it is, I think we've all been faced with at different points in our life, with severe discouragement with where we find ourselves.

Well, this morning, we're gonna be looking at a man who was quite discouraged and don't worry, we'll be encouraged hopefully before we leave.

But Nehemiah chapter 1 and in the first few verses of Nehemiah chapter 1 we're met with a man who's extremely discouraged about his current situation.

Now he wasn't discouraged about his pay, he wasn't discouraged about his 401k, or he wasn't discouraged about his family, but what Nehemiah was discouraged about was none other than his church.

How many of you have ever been discouraged with your church?

How many of you have ever been discouraged with maybe not even just the other people sitting in the pews around you, but you're discouraged with maybe your own spiritual walk with God, with where you're at, with where you want to be, and you too, like Nehemiah, have a bit of discouragement with your current situation.

This morning we're gonna be looking at Nehemiah chapter 1.

Now, Nehemiah is not a book we flip to frequently.

So it's Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther, Job, Psalms.

So if you find Psalms, just work your way back and go to Nehemiah chapter 1.

Nehemiah chapter 1, we're gonna be reading together what was the situation that brought such discouragement for Nehemiah.

And is there any relation to the situations that we face in our life today?

The words of Nehemiah the son of Hekleliel, it came to pass in the month of Chislev and the twelfth year as I was in Shushan the citadel, that 1 Hanani, 1 of my brethren, came with men from Judah, and I asked them concerning the Jews who had escaped, who had survived the captivity and concerning Jerusalem." Now if we were just to read that, we'd think this has absolutely no bearing on my life.

Well, what was this captivity that Judah, or that Nehemiah is talking about that Judah was in?

You know, as you look through the history of God's people, you realize that God always had a promised land for his people, right?

Abraham, God promised to him that he would give him a great blessing and give him seed and inheritance that was like the numbers of the stars, right?

And there was always this promise of great blessing.

And then we realize that even though the people of Israel had found themselves enslaved in Egypt, what did God do?

He brought them out of captivity into the what?

Well, after 40 years into the promised land.

The people of Israel, when you read the account of 1 and 2 Kings, 1 and 2 Chronicles, you realize that they had a long duration of time where they were in the land of Israel, and in Judah, in Jerusalem, in the land that God had promised to His people.

Were God's people faithful to God or not during that time?

We realized there were some times where they were, but for the most part they were apart from God and they started to do their own desires.

Well because of the unfaithfulness of God's people, God was doing anything he could to reach them.

And sometimes God realizes that the greatest disappointments or the greatest challenges in our lives can bring us to a point where we meet God.

So God allowed the people of Israel to go into captivity, right?

To have an experience where they would, by God's grace, seek after God for mercy.

Well, God had a plan for these people in captivity, though.

We read in Jeremiah 29, in verse 11, he says, For I know the thoughts I think for you, ' declares the Lord.

Plans of peace and not of evil to give you a future and a hope." And we often quote that verse, but if you read v.

10, God was talking to the people specifically who He had just exiled for the next 70 years under captivity.

But God, even in the exile of his people, had a plan to restore them.

God didn't desire for his people just to be cast off, but God wanted his people to be revived.

Well, after the exile, fast forward, you come to the book of Daniel and realize that Daniel was written during this time of 70 years in exile.

Daniel 1, verse 1 tells us that Nebuchadnezzar is the 1 who took the people of Israel into Babylon.

And now you fast forward 70 years later, and we realize that the king of Medo-Persia came, and the people of Israel were sent back to Jerusalem to rebuild the city.

Now you say, why in the world does that matter?

What's so important about the people of Israel rebuilding their city.

God had a desire for his people to be able to experience the freedom to worship as they choose, right?

They were surrounded by nations of idolatry.

They were constantly bombarded with things that were not of God.

And so God said way back in Exodus 25, verse 8, let them build me a what?

A sanctuary that I might dwell among them.

In other words, God desired to really commune with His people in a very special way in the sanctuary.

But here, as we look in the time of Nehemiah, God's people were called to be sent back to Jerusalem to rebuild the city that God had given them to rebuild the temple to restore the worship of God.

You read Ezra chapter 3, Ezra chapter 4, Ezra chapter 5, and you realize that the rebuilding of God's church that he had desired was prohibited by the surrounding nations to the point where they were held at the end of a knife in order to stop their work.

Now, Nehemiah comes, and there's these men, and this is where we find ourselves in Nehemiah 1.

They come to Nehemiah, and they say, hey, he inquires, What's the condition of God's people?

What's the condition going on in Jerusalem?

And here we have in Nehemiah 1, and verse 7, the answer.

And they said to me, Nehemiah, the survivors who are left from the captivity in the province are there, talking about there in Jerusalem, are there in what?

And the wall of Jerusalem is also broken down, and Its gates are burned with fire.

Now, does this sound like the rebuilding of God's church and the rebuilding of God's true worship was having good progress?

It's pretty apparent that the work of God was not being prospered, right?

It was actually hindered to the point where God's work and God's city and God's people are left dwelling in desolation, and to the surrounding nations it looks like God is completely conquered having no power to restore His people.

Now when Nehemiah hears about this condition, what does Nehemiah do?

4, So it was when I heard these words that I sat down and did what?

And I wept, I cried, and I mourned for many days.

I was fasting and praying before the God of heaven." Now you may be saying, what in the world does this have to do with my life today?

Do we find ourselves as God's people in a similar situation to that of Nehemiah and the people of Israel back in Nehemiah's time?

But you realize that the people of Israel back in the time of Nehemiah were struggling to worship the true God.

They didn't have the ability to worship as they were, they didn't have a spiritual revival, they were desolate, their walls were broken down, they had no security from the enemy, and it seemed like the work of God was coming to a halt on this earth.

Now I could ask you if you felt like that was your current situation in the church you attend and we might get varied answers.

You might say yes, Some might say no, some might be saying things are going great, others say it's going terrible.

What is God's perspective on his church today?

When God looks at the Ithaca Seventh-day Adventist Church and his people at large throughout the whole world, does God see a situation similar to that of Nehemiah, or does God see a situation of prosperity?

We turn to Revelation 3, and we don't have to speculate on the condition of God's church.

We don't need a new study, a new poll, but yet we can just see the prophetic writings where God tells us very specifically the condition of his church today, Revelation chapter 3.

And many of us are familiar with this, but some of us may not be.

Revelation chapter 3 and verse 14 is where we're gonna be starting.

And we're looking at 1 of the 7 churches that are listed in Revelation chapter 1 and Revelation chapter 2.

Now we know that these churches apply to literal times and places in Asia Minor, but we also understand, and it's commonly agreed, that the churches also represent symbolically time periods throughout Christian history.

And as we come to this last church, Revelation chapter 3 and verse 14, the church of Laodicea, it's understood that this is the church that is represented in the present time that we live in today and up to the coming of the time of Jesus.

So in other words, if you were to wonder and you were to ask God, God, what is the situation of your church today?

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Building God’s Church- Part 1: The How To’s

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