The Hardest Work of All (Jake Enns)

We're continuing our sermon series in Nehemiah and we have

heard from how at the start, God burdened Nehemiah's heart with

the need to go and address the problem in Jerusalem.

For Nehemiah, this was a physical journey to undertake,

but it was also a journey of the heart.

It was first the journey of going to Jerusalem to rebuild

the wall, then also journey of the heart and soul and bringing

the people back to their roots, to who they were, the people of

God, to be the people God had called him to be.

In our sermon series so far, we've learned how Nehemiah was

up to the task. He undertook the project and

moved it forward and completed it in a record time, a matter of

less than two months. In all of that, we also learned

how the whole process, there were obstacles to overcome.

There were challenges in the community.

There were serious opposition from out, from, without and

within. But in all of these challenges,

he never once became distracted. He kept His focus, but then

there was another matter to deal with.

And so far we've not touched on that a lot, just a little bit in

chapter 1, verse 6. But in Chapter 9, this really

comes to the surface. Building the wall was a very

important matter, but the reason for building the wall was more

important than the wall itself. God wanted this wall to be

rebuilt because He wanted His name to be glorified, and He

wanted His name to be glorified through these people, His chosen

people, the Jews. Just building the wall was not

what God had in mind. God wanted the wall, yes, but He

wanted it for the purpose of lifting the reproach against His

people. He wanted His people again to be

able to glorify and honor Him as they had in the past.

But to do that, there was more work to do than just building

the wall. What happened next?

We're going to go in, in, in the next thing here.

What happened next is what we want to look into this morning.

This morning we come to Chapter 9 of Nehemiah, and here in the

passage of Scripture, we have the most difficult and the

hardest work of all. Our title.

This morning of title, the hardest work of all.

You see, the most difficult work is not out there somewhere.

The most difficult work in life is always in the heart.

The hardest work of all is always the work of the heart.

There's no more difficult, more challenging work than the work

of the heart. The heart is where the battles

of life are fought and won, are lost.

The heart is where God wants to have first place, but Satan

tells us we should have first place.

We deserve the best. It's easy to work on and try to

change and deal with the outside stuff, the physical, but when it

comes to dealing with the heart, that's a different matter.

And the story of Nehemiah. The wall was built, great.

The reproach was removed from the Jews, great.

The enemies of the Jews recognize this is the work of

the God of the Jews. Great.

But we must think back. What was it that had caused all

the destruction and the catastrophe in the 1st place, a

problem of the heart. What could have prevented the

disaster? What could have prevented all

this? Had their hearts been right with

God to begin with, all this stuff could have been avoided.

The destruction happened because their hearts were wrong.

That forgotten, God turned back on him.

They had rebelled. God sent prophets, they rejected

them, they spurned them, they ignored them, and they just kept

rebelling and on and on. Sure, now on the surface it

looked great. The wall was rebuilt.

You could wrap it up, right? Would not be mission completed.

Physically speaking, yes, but spiritually, the true work still

needed to be done. It's a valid question to ask

what would need to happen in this community of people in

order to not have a repeat experience.

What had gotten them into trouble as a nation in the 1st

place was a matter of the heart. It would be a matter of the

heart that would keep them out of trouble moving forward.

It would be a matter of the heart that would keep them

connected with God and so not to have a repeat or again a

catastrophe, repeat performance, repeat disaster.

They had to do something. And before we could go in

today's chapter, I want to ask ourselves here this morning, how

ready, how willing or how surrendered are we and prepared

to deal with the matters of the heart.

Often times it's so easy to point out where elsewhere,

anywhere except here, where the problem begins in the first

place. At the end of the day, if

repentance does not happen, if we don't own the sin, if we

don't confess and repent, all that outward stuff may look

nice, but it's just behavior modification that doesn't last.

And all the old stuff keeps cropping up and cropping up and

keeps repeating itself. What our relationship with God

really boils down to is that we must repent.

We must connect with the heart. Repentance is something we must

want, not just reluctantly and hesitantly agree.

Oh well, OK, I'm sorry. No, it must happen in the heart,

with full intention, with all of our heart.

There's no room for half hearted, watered down

repentance. It must be total and complete.

In our time and our culture, a lot of people have this idea, oh

just say sorry and then that's all OK and nothing changes.

A repentant person will focus inward and face the pain they've

caused. When a person's truly repentant,

they don't frantically engage in damage control, isn't trying to

evade consequences. True repentance will not try to

explain away or rationalize what happened.

True repentance is simply a simply is ownership of the sin,

the confession of the sin in a turning away from the sin.

True repentance has no defenses and true repentance makes no

demands. True repentance is willing to go

the distance and take responsibility for the pain that

was caused. We find that in Nehemiah 9 last

Sunday, Pastor Joe preached out of Nehemiah chapter 8 and how

Nehemiah 8 · chapter mention

the people were together and they rejoiced and they, they

listened and they celebrated, which was all good and they

needed to and they should, they should worship God that way.

They had celebrated and so they should.

But the the work was not done, not wasn't complete yet.

There were things that had not been dealt with, things that had

not been addressed yet. Now they're together in Chapter

9 as an assembly before the Lord.

And I want us to take our Bibles.

Read Nehemiah beginning verse one.

We'll read the first 3 verses and then we'll stop Nehemiah

chapter one, verse one to three. Now on the 24th day of this

month, the children of Israel were assembled with fasting, in

sackcloth and with dust on their heads.

Then those of Israelite lineage separated themselves from all

foreigners, and they student confessed their sins and the

iniquities of their fathers. And they stood up in their place

and read from the book of the Law of the Lord their God for

1/4 of the day. And for another fourth, they

confessed and worshipped the Lord their God. 1st we want to

see the word of God made a difference.

It impacted them. What they heard made them

change. They had heard the word of God

and had fallen on fruitful soil in their hearts.

It was producing fruits, fruits of repentance as in Jesus

parable of the sore and the seed.

The seed in this case in Nehemiah 9 was doing what it

should do. Their hearts were prepared.

They had been through a lot of hardships.

They had been in captivity, they had a difficult life behind them

and still a difficult life ahead of them.

But now they were ready. They were thirsty.

James Chapter 1 writes Be doers of the word, not hearers only

James 1 · chapter mention

deceiving yourselves. For anyone's a hearer of the

word and not a doer. He's like a man observing

himself in a mirror. If he observes himself goes away

immediately forgets what kind of man he was, that that happens a

lot. But it was not happening here.

These people had shown their outward appearance.

They they wore sackcloth, they had ashes on their heads or dust

on their heads. That was a way of showing in

those days that they were sorry, they were remorseful, they were

mourning, they were grieving. They took it seriously.

They had intermingled with foreigners what God had clearly

commanded them not to do. In the book of the law.

Ezra talks about that as well. It goes into much more detail

than Ezra, but here they separated themselves from those

it says in verse 2. They stood and confessed their

sins. They Nick and the iniquities of

their fathers. We'll read read that chapter a

bit later on, but not it was just their sins they dealt with

also the sins of their fathers that have gotten them into

trouble in the first place. And after they confessed these,

they read the book of the law. And that's at this point they

were doing the right thing and true healing and restoration

could begin here. So let's continue reading

Nehemiah chapter 4 nine verse 4 rather Nehemiah 9 verse four and

Nehemiah 4 · chapter mention

on He says. Then Yeshua Benai, Cadmium,

Sheba Naya, Booni, Shahabaya, Bani and Chen and I stood on the

stairs of the Levites and cried out with a loud voice to the

Lord their God. And the Levites, Yeshua Cadmil,

Benaiah and Hashabah, Hashabaya, Shahabaya and Hudajah Sheba Naya

and Pathayaha said Stand up and bless the Lord your God forever

and ever. Blessed be your glorious name,

which is exalted above all blessing and praise.

You alone are the Lord. You've made the heaven, the

heaven of heavens with all their host, the earth and everything

on it, the seas and all that's in them.

You preserve them all. The host of heaven worship you.

You're the Lord of God who choose Abraham and brought him

out of Ur of the Chaldeans and gave him the name of Abraham.

You found his heart faithful before you and made a covenant

with him to give him the land of the Canaanites, the Hittites,

the Amorites, the parasites, parasites, the Jebusites, and

the Girgashites, to give it all to his descendants.

You've performed your words, for you are righteous.

You saw the affliction of your of our fathers in Egypt.

You heard their cry by the Red Sea.

You showed signs and wonders against Pharaoh, against all his

servants, against all the people of his land, for you knew that

they acted proudly against them. So you made a name for yourself

as it is this day, and you divided the sea before them, so

that they went through the midst of the sea on the dry land, and

their persecutors you threw into the deep as a stone into the

mighty waters. Moreover, you led them by day

with a cloudy pillar, and by night with a pillar of fire, to

give them light on the road which they should travel.

You came down also on Mount Sinai and spoke with them from

heaven and gave them just ordinances and true laws, good

statutes and commandments. You made them to know.

You made known to them your holy Sabbath and your command.

You commanded them precepts and statutes and laws by the hand of

Moses, Your servant. You gave them bread from heaven

for their hunger, brought them water out of the rock for their

thirst, and told them to go in to possess the land which You

had sworn to give them. Let's stop there.

We see in these verses how they came before God.

The Word had impacted them. Now they were worshiping.

Now they were praising. They recognized God for who He

was. The Word of God made a

difference. And as a result, they came

before God and worship, and they began with worship.

Let me ask this question. When we come before God in our

need, what is our first focus? Is it ourselves?

I'm not saying we shouldn't focus on our pain and our

problem, but is that our starting point?

When we become, when we come before God, we must first come

before God because of who God is and what He is.

It never starts with me and you are us.

It always begins with God. At all times.

The focus is God and remains God.

It's always 1st about God and all of life.

In our prayers of pain and sorrow and worship and

rejoicing. Always.

God is the focus. It doesn't mean that our

problems don't matter or that we shouldn't pray about them.

We should and we do. But we must always begin with

Him. Our hearts must always be

pointed to Him, not to ourselves or to anything else.

Notice how often they reference God and mention the word you as

in addressing God. In my translation, the new King

James, it's 26 times you or your is mentioned as as God.

The focus in their praise was totally focused on God and what

God had done. Repentance begins with worship.

This was a reminder for the people to think back, to

remember the history, how God had worked, what he had done,

and and through the stories of who he had been to them.

He'd been faithful right from the start with Abraham, the

generations that followed, all the trials and challenges that

they had met in Egypt and onward.

God had LED them out to the Red Sea to Mount Sinai, had given

them his laws, the Sabbath of rest, the commandments had fed

them with mana. Now here in Nehemiah 9, they

worshipped in prayer and as they prayed, as the prayer continued,

there was a shift in the prayer. The worship did not end with

just acknowledging God from worshipping and praising God,

what God had done. They went into naming what had

gone wrong. So let's continue reading

Nehemiah chapters 9 verse 16 and onward. 9 verse 16 says but

Nehemiah 9:16

but's a keyword here. My translation says but, but

they, our ancestors and our fathers acted proudly, hardened

their necks, and did not heed your commandments.

They refused to obey, and they wouldn't.

They were not mindful of your wonders that you did among them,

but they hardened their necks, and in the rebellion they

appointed the leader to return to their bondage.

But you are God ready to pardon gracious and merciful, slow to

anger, abundant and kindness, and did not forsake them, even

when they made a molded calf for themselves and said, This is

your God that brought you up out of Egypt and worked great part

provocations. Yet in your manifold mercies you

did not forsake them in the wilderness.

The pillar of the cloud did not depart from them by day to lead

them on the road, on the pillar of fire by night to show them

light and the way they should go.

You also gave your good Spirit to instruct them and did not

withhold your manna from their mouth and gave them water for

their thirst. 40 years. You sustained them in the

wilderness. They lacked nothing, their

clothes did not wear out, their feet did not swell.

Moreover, he gave them kingdoms and nations and divided them

into districts. So they took possession of the

land of Sihan, the land of the king of Heshpin, the land of of

AG, king of Bashan. You also multiplied their

children as the stars of heaven. They brought them into the land

which You and brought them into the land which you had told

their fathers to go and possess. So the people went in, and they

possessed the land. You subdued before them the

inhabitants of the land, the Canaanites, and gave them into

their hands with their kings and the people of the land, that

they may do with them as they wished.

And they took their strong cities in a rich land, and

possessed houses full of goods, cisterns already dug in,

vineyards and olive Groves and fruit trees and abundance.

So they ate and were filled and grew fat, and delighted

themselves in your great goodness.

Nevertheless they were disobedient and rebelled against

you, cast your law behind their backs, and killed your prophets,

who testified against them, to turn them, to turn them to

yourself. And they were great

provocations. Therefore you delivered them

into the hand of their enemies, who oppressed them in the time

of their trouble. When they cried to you, You

heard from heaven, and according to your abundant mercies, you

gave them deliverers, who saved them from the hand of their

enemies. But after they had rest, they

again did even before you. Therefore you left them in the

hand of their enemies, so that they had dominion over them.

Yet when they returned and cried out to you, you heard from

heaven. And many times you delivered

them according to your mercies, and testified against them, that

you might bring them back to your law.

Yet they acted proudly. It did not heed your

commandments, but sinned against your judgments, which, if a man

does, he shall live by them. And they shrugged their

shoulders, stiffened their necks, and would not hear.

Yet for many years you had patience with them and testified

against them by your spirit and your profits.

Yet they would not listen. Therefore you gave them into the

hands of the peoples of the lands.

Nevertheless, in Your great mercy you did not utterly

consume them nor forsake them. For you are a gracious, for you

are God gracious and merciful. We see here a naming of the sins

of the past, the history. So they acknowledged and owned

the sins of their fathers for that community of that it was

going to go. They had to go back and retell

the story. They did not retell the story to

remind God as if God had. Some have forgotten history.

They needed to retell the story because they needed to be

connected to that history in order to bring it to the surface

and to break free from it. A person can never become free

from what is buried and not addressed.

It was the sins of the past still impacting them on that day

that to acknowledge and address the connections of their present

situation to where it all came from.

I've said this in the past and it bears repeating, and I've

heard this from a counselor who said this buried pain never

dies. Here the Jewish people

acknowledged what had happened and what had gone wrong.

They were assembled before God and they remembered, and they

prayed in repentance in order to break free.

That is hard work all among all the blessings of God.

These people, their forefathers, they had not obeyed even in this

chapter. They separated themselves from

the foreigners that they had been aligned with and and

connected with it. They shouldn't have been.

They had at times when things went well, they had turned away

from God and had rebelled. That paid the price

catastrophically. Here in this state, they reflect

on the past and they recognize the sins of their fathers and

they named them and see this is so very key.

You see what they did not do, just as important, what they did

not do. They did not deal in

generalities. They did not go over their sins

of their fathers lightly, as if they were not so serious.

They called it what it was. And for me, it's worth noting in

the new King James translation that I read the numerous times

they and them and their talking about their fathers.

Perhaps you've noticed in the reading how this is a constant

theme coming through. Their fathers had committed the

sins and they were part of it and had created this, this

situation, and they were not innocent.

Their fathers are not innocent. They had inherited it.

They were part of it. Here's a picture of a community

in repentance. They were experiencing a

revival, coming back to God and doing it collectively.

You know, churches have had revival meetings in the past,

and I've been part of them and they're great and it's all good.

I don't hear of repentance meetings.

Think about that. It's hard to get people to come

to a prayer meeting. How difficult would it be to

come to a repentance meeting to deal with the heart?

I've been to two such meetings in my lifetime and all my years

of living. Powerful, very powerful.

They can only happen when the burning desire for it comes.

It's hard work. To be unrepentant is to be

rebellious. And these people wanted to break

free. What is it that drives this

prideful resistance to repent? Our flesh doesn't want to Our

flesh will fight to the NTH degree whatever we need to do.

I'm not guilty. I'm innocent.

I only But to repent, we have to let go of our pride.

It has to break. The story of the prodigal son is

an excellent example of this in Luke chapter 15.

Luke 15 · chapter mention

The younger son despised his father, had no use for him

except he wanted his father's money and his father complied

and gave him the money. He's proud and he's arrogant,

has a life all figured out. And his father gives him the

money and he left home not knowing the disaster he was

creating for himself. He's told he squandered his

father's money. And the famine comes in the land

he hires himself with to a pig farmer and he becomes hungry

even in that job. And it's at that point the man's

pride breaks. He's ready to come home, He's

repentant, surrenders himself. Let me ask this question.

What road do you think was easier or more difficult for the

young man? The road to run into the

wildlife or the road to come home and repent?

I believe you know the answer. The road to repentance is always

a hard Rd. but it must be travelled.

Well he did. This guy did repent in the

parable. He travelled the road of

repentance, literally came home and was restored.

But how many people today live for whom it takes their whole

lives before they ever get to the point where they come to the

point where they break, they confess, and they get right with

God? They have to hold on, they have

to be in charge, they have to be in control.

And I'm concluding myself in this here in Nehemiah 9, the

story was read. The law of God had been read.

The people understood, they worshiped as they commanded,

they looked and they saw, and they named what had happened.

The next step here now is a request.

Let's read Nehemiah 9, beginning verse 32.

Now, Now, therefore, see, now it shifts here, Now therefore, our

God, the great and mighty and awesome God who keeps covenant

in mercy, Do not let all the troubles seem small before you

that has come upon us, our kings, our Princess, our

priests, and our prophets, our fathers, and on all your people,

from the days of the kings of Assyria until this day.

However, you are just in all that has befallen us, for you've

dealt faithfully, but we've done wickedly.

Neither our kings nor our Princess, our priests nor our

fathers, have kept your law, nor heeded your commandments and

your testimonies which you testified against them.

For they have not served you in their Kingdom, nor in the many

good things that you gave them, or the rich, large and rich land

which you set before them, nor did they turn from their wicked

works. Here we are servants today.

And in the land that you gave to our fathers to eat its fruit and

its bounty, here we are servants in it.

And it yields much increase to the kings you've set over us

because of our sins. Also they have dominion over our

bodies and our cattle at their pleasure.

And we are in great, in great distress.

And because of all this we make sure a sure covenant and write

it, our leaders, our Levites, and our priests, to seal it.

The next step here is a request. They make the request with

brokenness and humility, and that's the final one.

God's Word brought them to humility and surrender.

They make the request. The people come to the point

where they had nothing to prove, nothing to look to in their own

lives. They saw the simplest just

surrendered. No more resisting, no more

fighting, just surrender. They were now at the point where

they needed to be in order to receive help.

They were needy, they were broken, they were done.

All that was left Now, Lord, here we are.

We've hit rock bottom, and that's where sometimes we need

to go to come to the end of ourselves.

And for some people, that's where things have to come to

before they are ready to listen. Let's note again this last

passage especially. Notice their words.

Do not let all the troubles seem small before you that has come

upon us, our kings, our Princess, our priests, our

prophets, our fathers, and on all your people from the days of

the kings of us here until this day.

Notice they're pleading, they're begging.

It was everybody, everybody's involved.

The acts of rebellion by their nation had come full circle and

the consequences had been and were still painful.

A question that comes to my mind is I'm pondering this and

reading this, looking ahead into our own future.

What future hardship will the generation of tomorrow

experience because of our sins as a church, as a community?

Are we living today so that when our grandchildren look back,

will they be able to say that we were people of integrity, godly

character? Will they see that?

Or will they say our fathers went wayward, they rebelled and

we're paying the price and as a result, they're in it as well?

And Nehemiah's time, it was that generation who had fell to to do

the hard work of owning, confessing, and repenting of the

sins of their fathers and their own.

It was that generation that looked back and recognized and

took ownership of what had happened.

And God was gracious to them. Just notice the complete

acceptance and complete surrender of these people.

They had done the hard work of owning and and confessing and

repenting. Notice their words again in 33.

You are just meaning God and all that has to befallen us, for

you've dealt faithfully. But we we have done wickedly.

They accepted it. God's not wrong and punishing

evil. He's just in doing so.

But he wants to show mercy and it had been hard for them.

He said we are servants today in this country that you've blessed

us, our fathers with, to eat its fruit and its bounty here.

We are servants in it. It gives much increase to the

kings, not us, who you said over us because of our sins.

Also they have dominion over our bodies and our cattle at their

pleasure, and we are in great distress.

The bounty that could have been theirs was not theirs because of

their sins. There's a metaphor here for us

to learn from. We never know what may happen

once we start on a path of sin, no matter how light, how

innocent, benign we may think it is actions of consequences.

The people who led this repentance assembly wrote this

down in final verse 8 and says and because of all this, we make

a sure covenant and write it. Our leaders, our Levites and our

priests seal it. This was a covenant and they

sealed it in writing. And correct me if my information

is wrong, but as far as I know in in reading history, I love

history, we never again find the people of the Jews ever again

going to idol worship. Not ever, not ever.

They were cured. They did a lot of things wrong,

but idol worship was never a part of their lifestyle again,

ever. They kept it out.

Let's wrap this up. I believe the work of repentance

is the most difficult journey because means death to self.

We don't want it. Our earthly nature wants to

live. I want to close with this little

bit of an illustration of my own life.

I was 17 when I gave my life to Christ.

And that was the biggest part of my challenge was the repentance

part. Oh, I wanted to, I wanted to

follow Jesus like like a lot of young men did.

But the journey of repentance was the most difficult.

I had to come to a point where I just surrendered and was willing

to own it. I had offended God had broken

his laws and I was responsible. And I remember it was January, I

think January of 1982 was the first one up in our family that

morning before before sunrise. And I was outgoing and and

meditating, walking, and I remember the agony.

Pastor Joe Reddest the verses out of Psalm 51 and that verse,

and I have it in my notes here. We didn't talk about this

beforehand. That verse popped into my mind

as I was going for a walk. The sacrifices of God are broken

spirit, a broken contrite heart. These are God you'll not

despise. When I came to that point, I

didn't care anymore. I just want to be free.

David did not write this Psalm from the mountaintop.

He wrote them when he was in the valley of of of of pain and

agony of what he'd done as a as a king.

He had killed Uriah. He had he had committed adult

with Bathsheba, killed her husband.

He's confronted and he repented. You see, we cannot avoid

repenting if we're going to get right with God.

We can we can sin and think that's going to be easy.

No, it won't be. Sin means death every time

someone once thought you can't, you can't talk your way out of

what you behaved yourself into. We can be thankful God has

provided a way out of salvation. We heard that this morning in

our prayers. All sin carries the death

penalty. Jesus died for that.

That's taken care of. But where are we today?

I want to close with the following verse of the

Philippians. And this is what Jesus did on

our behalf. He says, Let this mind be in

you, which is an awesome Christ Jesus, who, being in the form of

God, did not consider it robbery to be equal with God, but made

himself of no reputation. Taking the form of a

bondservant, coming in the likeness of men, and being found

in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became

obedient to the point of death, even death on the cross.

Therefore God has exalted him and given him the name which is

above every name. But at the name of Jesus, every

knee should bow of those in heaven and those on earth and of

those under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that

Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father.

The work that we have to do is hard, but he has been an even

harder task. And as an innocent man dying for

the sins of sinful people, and we are offered that gift today,

we need to repent, come to Christ and receive forgiveness.

Jesus did the hard work, but it's not going to be easy for

our flesh. It's going to be hard.

It's the hard work of the heart. So let's surrender ourselves in

repentance, ever sins, embrace the gift of forgiveness and

mercy for us, and let's walk in freedom and newness of life in

relationship with Jesus and with one another.

Bow with me for prayer. Lord, we don't know what journey

yet you may have for us as individuals and as a church.

We know that in and of ourselves we all stand guilty and

condemned. We have nothing to give to you

except our sinful broken hearts. Lord, we know that we need to be

reminded of this. We need to live and practice

this a privilege. You'll have mercy and grace.

You'll show us your grace and give us the strength to do the

hard work of denying yourselves, letting go over pride and

humility and repentance. Turn to you and walk with you in

Jesus name, Amen.