Building a Great City (Through a Gracious God)
- Stephen Phelan
- Nov 7, 2010
- Series: Building a Great City
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Building a Great City—Through a Gracious God
Neh. 9: 4-37 Mid-City 11/7/10
RECAP: We’re in the book of Nehemiah, and if you haven’t been here, or took a little siesta, then I’ll catch you up to speed. Here is the story of Nehemiah. In 587BC the Babylonians invade Jerusalem, exile almost everyone. Nehemiah is one of those exiles and, as a slave, he works his way up to be the King’s wine-taster. Ordinary dude—drinks wine. His boss had given protection to a group trying to rebuild the city of Jerusalem, but then he pulled the plug, and the rebuilding effort was crushed. Nehemiah is devastated, fasts, prays, gets a crazy idea that he should go and tell his boss to reverse his foreign policy, appoint him to lead the rebuilding effort in Jerusalem, and that his boss should pay for it. He agrees. Nehemiah then rallies the Jewish people in Jerusalem, they start rebuilding the city, he faces all sorts of opposition from Sanballat & the boys, he cleans up the corruption in the city, and in 52 days he does what nobody had been able to do in 141 years. The wall is completed, the basic infra-structure is in place and he gathers the people and reads through a little section from the historical archives, then they have a worship service, followed by a time of confession and listening to God speak through Bible reading. So they worshipped, they listened, they confessed, then they responded in prayer. They spoke back to God and they praise Him for 2 big picture things about who He is:
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Creator
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Redeemer
(1) Creator
We’ll start in v6, “You alone are the Lord. You made the heavens, even the highest heavens, and all their starry host, that earth and all that is on it, the seas and all that is in them. You give life to everything…”
You alone are the Lord. We sang that song last week and we’re going to sing it again this week—you alone are the Lord, the famous one. And you did what no one else has done or can do. You spoke the world into existence. You created—you brought life.
And the Hebrew word that is used for God as a creator in the Bible is a special word that gives rise to the phrase ex nihilo,—that means out of nothing. God is the only one who has ever created out of nothing. Now you can believe that he did it in a really long time (and thus you have an old earth) or a literal 6 day period (and thus a short earth) and be a Christian. The important point is that you actually believe God did it—only he creates out of nothing. He alone is the Lord—the famous one.
Skeptical (Frank Shead): Now, let me talk to those of you who are skeptical of this. Actually, let me let Frank Shead. Frank Shead was a guy who spoke at Hyde Park Speakers Corner in 40s in London. I visited Speakers Corner in London when I went and it is a remarkable place. People giving speeches on all sorts of topics, and the crowd hcckling and engaging. Remarkable place. Shead was known for his ability to dismantle the comments of hecklers. Once, after Shead had described the extraordinary order and design in the universe, one of the hecklers pointed out all of the problems in the world and said, “I could make a better universe than your God.” Shead responded, “I won’t ask you to make a universe. But would you make a rabbit just to establish confidence.”
You may be struggling with the notion of God as a creator, but do you have a better solution that establishes confidence for yourself and others. N
See the God of the Bible has established confidence as a creator. The whole universe speaks of a creator. Freeman Dyson (theoretical physicist and mathematician,) “the more I examine the universe and the details of its architecture, the more evidence I find that the universe in some sense must have known we were coming"[19] For him, as for many, the order of the earth and the solar system points to a master planner. It establishes confidence in a creator God.
23 Degrees: Take, for example, the fact that the earth is tilted at an angle of exactly 23 degrees. Scientists tell us that if the angle were even slightly different, the earth would gradually be encased by an ice cap. It has to be exactly 23 degrees to work.
Establishing confidence through new spiritual life: V6: “He gives life to everything, and the multitudes of heaven praise you.” You can talk to person after person after person who says, “Not only did God create in history, but he is still establishing confidence today by doing what v6 says, “He gives life to everything.” This echoes Jesus teaching in John 3 to Nicodemus on being born again spiritually. He gave me new spiritual life—I was spiritually dead, now I am alive. I was drinking my life away, now I am not. I was a jerk, now I am less of a jerk. See the famous one, Jesus Christ, is famously transforming lives, and very few things establish more confidence than seing your life and those around you transformed.
(2) Redeemer
v7-37 Redemptive History: Now, in verses 7-37 the people begin to pray back to God and give thanks to him for his redemption in history. This is why we often refer to the Bible as a story of redemptive history because that is who God is, that is his character—He is a Redeemer.
Pattern: Calls into relationship, makes covenant, rebellion, consequences, cry out, deliverer, as soon as things get easy, rebel again. (Abrahamic, Mosaic, Davidic, New Covenant)
V7: God calls Abraham into relationship
V8: covenant…implied rebellion
V9-12: bondage like in Egypt & God hears their cry and sends a deliverer in Moses and parts the Red Sea, he gives the law
V13: Mosaic covenant and then the cycle starts all over again in
v16: “but they, our forefathers, became arrogant and stiff-necked, and did not obey your commands.” Pattern continues through v37
As I read this, this begs 2 questions: (1) why? Why does God keep redeeming us when we blow it? (2) is God going to grow weary of redeeming us at some point and say, “I have had enough.”
v17 answers these 2 questions. V17 is really the center of this prayer. V7-37 are built around this verse. In fact, this verse is a quote of Exodus 34:6, which, as far as I can tell, is the most quoted verse in the Old Testament. This was the verse that Israel sang about, hoped in, repeated in their sleep. It was how they knew that God wouldn’t give up on them, that his redemption wouldn’t end. B/c v17, more clearly than any other verse in the Old Testament, defines God’s Character. This is who He is: “You are a forgiving God, compassionate and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in love.”
Slow-mo: Let’s go in slow-mo here. You are a forgiving God. Listen to what Charles Spurgeon says about this. I would call your attention to the expression, "a God ready to pardon," (he was using KJV, so it says pardon, not forgive); not a God who may possibly pardon; neither a God who upon strong persuasion and earnest pleadings may at length be induced to forgive; not one who, perchance, at some remote period after we have undergone a long purgation may manifest a mercy which is now in the background, but a God "ready to pardon,"—willing and more than willing—ready, standing prepared, or to use another Scriptural expression, "waiting to be gracious."
Friends, do you know this? it isn’t maybe, it isn’t hopefully, it isn’t if I can make a good case, it isn’t whether you catch God in a good mood; God’s forgiveness isn’t like pulling the lever of the slot machine and hoping you come up with all forgiveness.
Me this week: Oh, this is so important in your spiritual journey. Here is how it helped me this week. This week I turned to one of what the Puritans called my “darling sins.” You know, your little pets, your darlings, the ones that you keep going back to over and over again. And there was a voice, that voice of the enemy that was there, “Right back there again, huh. Pitiful.” And that shame-inducing voice, if you listen to it, can keep you in a sin-inducing rut for a long time. And then I remembered the very verse I was preaching on—My God stands ready to forgive. That is who He is. Hebrews 4:16 speaks to this in a slightly different way: “Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.”
Sometimes people will come to me and say, “I know that God forgives me, but I can’t forgive myself.” And I often refer them to a response of Tim Keller’s that has been really helpful to me. Keller puts it this way in his book Counterfeit Gods: When people say, "I know God forgives me, but I can't forgive myself," they mean that they have failed an idol, whose approval is more important than God's." An idol is simply this: it is something other than God that you have built your life around.
Career: Imagine that you are the CFO (chief financial officer) of a small business of 10 employees. You love this business and it slowly begins to take over more and more and more of your time and energy and thoughts. It is slowly becoming the center of your life. And then, one day, at work you get a letter from the IRS and the state of CA and realize that you have made a huge mistakes in your accounting. Nothing intentional—you just did the math wrong the last 3 years. And you crunch the numbers backwards and forwards and you realize that the mistakes you made will end up shutting the company down and they do. And you can’t forgive yourself. You have destroyed the owner’s dream, you have ended the jobs of 10 other people and you no longer have the thing that was at the center of your life: your job. You are paralyzed every time someone asks you, “So, what do you do?” And you say, “I know God forgives me, but I can’t forgive myself.” No, what you are saying is this, “My real god, my career, won’t forgive me.” That is the thing that is most foundational to me. The approval of the people I worked with. The power and influence that I carried from being a CFO. I no longer have those things.
And typically people respond by saying, “Yeah, but my concern isn’t so much how this impacts me, but how what I have done impacts others.” But, remember, you are not their God—God is, and you must trust him to work redemptively in their lives through this trial. Yes, you should be repentant and do everything you can to make amends for what you have done. But what you need to know more than anything else is that your true God, the God of the universe, stands ready to forgive the mistake you made.
See mistakes you have made, along with the rest of humanity, have destroyed his kingdom. But has has forgiven you for that, and he is able to repair the damage that you have done and build a new kingdom that is coming down from heaven. He stands ready to forgive and work redemptively and when you taste his forgiveness it will remove the shame & guilt, for in Jesus there is no condemnation.
Balsamea: Let me apply this to Balsamea. It is our core conviction that what the community of City Heights needs more than anything else is to experience a God who stands ready to forgive.
Why We named it Balsamea to remind us of this.Your like—Balsamea—now what does that have to do with a God who stands ready to forgive. Glad you asked; let me tell you the story behind the name b/c you will be telling this story for years to come. Our marketing people advised us that there are 2 ways to go with a name. Either your really self-evident in the name (i.e Boys and Girls Club) or you use a name that means nothing to anyone like Balsamea. Why? Because it invites a story, “What is Balsamea? Why did you name it this?” So let me tell you.
See there is this great passage in 2 Sam. 5:24 where David looks out into the valley of Rephaim and he sees Philistines as far as the eye can see. And he says, “God, we have a problem out there. What should we do about it? Should we go attack?” And God says, “When you hear the sound of boots marching in the tops of the Balsam trees, then you will know that it is time to act.” Well, we all know that humans don’t march in the tops of trees. So what God is saying is this, “I am going to send an army of angelic warriors and I’ll take care of the problem. Then you just move in behind me and I’ll graciously use you in the process.
Well, such is the case in City Heights. Mixed in with all of the glory and beauty of this community, there are a host of problems, much like the problems David saw. And we are convinced here at Harbor that we can’t fix them, but Jesus can—He stands ready to forgive, and that is what the people of City Heights really need.
So Balsamea, is a value-orienting name; it re-orients us to this central value that only Jesus brings renewal and healing to City Heights. It orients us to a gospel of weakness, of powerlessness. It orients us to listen for boots in the Balsam trees, or as Steve Brown says, for the soft sound of sandaled feet. And when we hear the boots or sandals in the Balsams, then we go, knowing that our Redeemer goes before us, and that He stands ready to forgive because He is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger.
Slow to anger—see that is the part of the verse that we haven’t covered. And, well, that part of the verse really completes the story. See it doesn’t say that God never gets angry. If so, he would be a god who cares less about injustice—he wouldn’t get angry about a woman being a raped, about a child being molested. But God does care about these things—they make him angry.
See Ex. 34:7, right after talking about God standing ready to forgive, compassionate and gracious, slow to anger and abounding and love, says “yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished.” But how is it that God can both forgive and not leave the guilty unpunished? A God who stands ready to forgive, but yet doesn’t leave the guilty unpunished.
The answer lies in the cross. On a Friday, God got mad, really mad, because the wrongs done by all those who were and are and ever will be united to Christ were transferred to him. And Mark 15:33 says that at the 6th hour darkness came over the whole land until the 9th hour—that means from noon to 3 PM, the lights went out. See darkness, in the Bible, often symbolized God’s anger over injustice, just as it did back at Sinai when darkness covered the mountaintop as God’s people worshipped idols, just as it did with Pharoah when darkness covered the land.
Don’t you see, my friends—the cross is how you know that God stands ready to forgive. Because if you are in Jesus, it would be unjust for him to do anything other than forgive you. Jesus has already paid the price for you. It is finished—your debt has been satisfied. Will their be consequences to your sin that you face in this lifetime—yes, you’ll still face those; but will there be forgiveness—yes, it is guaranteed. You have been redeemed, by Jesus! Have you been redeemed?
