Priorities for Godly Living

Go ahead and turn in your Bibles to Nehemiah Chapter 7.

Nehemiah 7 · chapter mention

Nehemiah Chapter 7. I was tasked with preaching from

Nehemiah 7 · chapter mention

this chapter as our other pastors had to leave.

One of them left unexpectedly. One was on vacation already.

And so I hope you guys will join me in praying for them as they

return. Hopefully, they'll come back.

I know they will. Yeah.

We're going to look at Nehemiah Chapter 7 today.

Nehemiah 7 · chapter mention

So imagine you're building a house.

Imagine that you've got your lot of land and you've done a lot of

work. You've done all the work of

framing it up. You've dug the foundation.

Maybe you put your basement in Florida.

We don't do basements because they'll just pop right out of

the ground for all the water. But you've got it all framed up.

It's dried in. You got that.

You got windows installed, you got your doors installed, you

got your roof on. Even the siding may be up, but

it's just a shell of a house. The, the, the work has been

really exciting up at this point.

It went from that empty lot to a recognizable home.

That's sort of where we are here in Nehemiah Chapter 7.

Nehemiah 7 · chapter mention

The walls of Jerusalem have been rebuilt, right?

52 days, they've been rebuilt. But now comes the things that

aren't so visible. Things like making sure that

we've got people in there to protect the place, making sure

that the right people are in the right place at the right time,

making sure the garbage is taken out.

All of those things had to be done.

Nehemiah has to organize who's going to actually live in the

city. He's got to figure out who's

going to do that. So he's going to, he's going to

have to do it in order to set set the city up for success.

He's got to set priorities. He's got to count who's there.

And then he's got to appoint faithful, watchful men over the

city. Last week, Pastor Jake preached

a sermon from the chapter of the previous year, Chapter 6, where

Nehemiah describes that completion of the wall.

He rightly pointed out that that distractions come from all sorts

of places, right? They come from outside, from

from enemies, they come from inside, from people who complain

and grumble, and they may even come from our own hearts or from

religious systems. He rightly pointed that out.

And just when Nehemiah and the people were about to complete

the wall, all these distractions came at them.

But what we saw in Nehemiah chapter 6 was that that Nehemiah

Nehemiah 6 · chapter mention

was what? He was undeterred, right?

He he was committed to the mission in Nehemiah 6 three.

I love this verse. It says this, it says, and I

sent messengers to them saying I am doing a great work and I

cannot come down. Why should the work stop and I

leave it and come down to you. Nehemiah was determined to

complete the work that God had given him to do and he did it in

52 days. It's pretty incredible how fast

it happened. So I don't know if you guys had

a chance to read Chapter 7 or not.

Maybe you look at it now, look down at it right now in your

Bibles. It's a lot of names.

I, I was looking at it and I was, I was starting to think

about it. And you might be tempted like we

are in some of the Old Testament passages to sort of like skip

over this, oh, it's just names and numbers.

But but as we look at the Bible as Christians, we have to

remember what Paul instructed Timothy in Second Timothy 316

and 17. When he wrote this, he said all

Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for

reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness that

the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.

Nehemiah 7 is a reminder that godly living isn't just about

the big moments of victory. It's about the daily intentional

choices to protect and build what God has entrusted to us.

With that in mind, let's look at this chapter together.

It's long. I know it's 73 verses.

Most commentary authors divided into two sections.

Dr. Betts, TJ Betts, who he wrote the commentary, they were

using sort of as a guide for this.

He divides it in two sections as well.

He says the first section explains the steps and the

precautions that Nehemiah takes to ensure the right kind of

people are in the right place at the right time and the

leadership for the safety of Jerusalem.

And the second section shows us how Nehemiah is methodical as he

sets out to strengthen Jerusalem's pop population by

taking a census and reading and and all of the returnees.

So Pastor Jake did joke a couple weeks back in chapter 3 that

some of some of it was quite repetitious.

And while I was reading this, I read this, this chapter aloud or

I started to, I was reading it aloud in my office to Valerie

during one day this week. And, and she said, are you going

to read all those names and numbers?

And she stopped me. She's like, Oh, I'm zoning out.

And I was tempted to because of a second Timothy here, because

of the second Timothy passage, I was tempted to read all 73

verses, but we've got communion today and reading all 73 would

take the whole time. So we're not going to do that.

I'm going to focus on the 1st 7 verses.

OK, So we're going to look at Nehemiah one or excuse me,

Nehemiah 7, one to seven. We're going to spend most of our

time studying in verses in like the the first three to four

verses. Specifically, we're looking for

what we can see in Nehemiah's character, and then we're

looking for that character to shine through the priorities

that he sets as he selects people to serve.

So there's four priorities that we're going to look at today,

the praise of God, the principles of God or the pursuit

of godliness, the people of God and the purpose of God.

So let's take a look. Nehemiah 7 Now when the wall had

been built, and I had set up the doors, and the gatekeepers and

the singers and the Levites had been appointed, I gave my

brother Hananiah and Hananiah the governor of the castle,

charge over Jerusalem, for he was more faithful and God

fearing man than many. And I said to them, Let not the

gates of Jerusalem be opened until the sun is hot, and while

they're still standing guard, let them be shut and borrow the

doors. Appoint guards from among the

inhabitants of Jerusalem, some of their guard post, and some in

front of their own homes. The city was wide and large, but

the people within it were few, and no houses had yet been

rebuilt. Then my God put it in my heart

to assemble the nobles and the officials and the people to be

enrolled by genealogy. And I found the book of the

genealogy of those who came up at the 1st, and I found written

in it. These were the people of the

province who came out of the captivity of those exiles from

whom Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon, had carried into exile.

They returned to Jerusalem and Judah, each to his hometown.

They came with Zerubbabel, Yeshua, Nehemiah, Azariah,

Remiah, Nahemane, Mordecai, Bilshan, Miss Perth, Bigvi,

Nahum Benai, and then the number of the men and the people of

Israel and it goes on. So the first priority that I

want us to see in these first 7 verses is that Nehemiah

prioritized the praise of God. What we were just doing, we were

praising Godwin Song. Nehemiah prioritized the praise

of God. I've heard it said, and maybe

you have two, that humans were created for worship.

I think I've actually said that here, and if you honestly

consider it, I think you would probably agree with me that we

are designed for worship. I firmly believe that almost

every sin that you can think of can trace its roots back to some

form of idolatry in our hearts. We talked about this back when

we studied First Corinthians. It's extremely easy to get

fixated on something and to make that what you find the most

satisfaction in like yesterday I got really fixated on using AI

to create an app and I was really all into it.

And I, I spent like four or five hours, maybe longer on this

fixation of creating this little app for my phone, which was fun.

But really I could see how quickly and easily if I fed into

that, that it would become an idol in my heart that I would

prioritize it over studying scripture or over spending time

with my family. And that would be sin.

Saint Augustine puts it this way in his work confessions.

He says you have made for us, or excuse me, you have made us for

yourself. And our hearts are restless

until they find their rest in you.

So he's picking up on this idea that we were created to worship

specifically God, and we are restless until we find our

worship and and our rest in you, in God.

We are seeking objects of worship, whether we know it or

not, largely because we're created to worship.

We are restless and bouncing from one thing to another to

fulfill and satisfy that desire to worship until by God's grace,

if you're a Christian, by God's grace, he drew you to himself as

the object of your worship. So Nehemiah knew that the reason

for the city Jerusalem was designed for worship.

The reason for its existence was for worship.

It's made clear in the personnel that he chooses in verse one it

says now when all when the wall had been built and I'd set up

the doors, the gatekeepers, the singers and the Levites had been

appointed The gatekeepers, the singers and the Levites were all

an important part of worship. The of the worship experience in

Jerusalem. They were also an important part

of their protection, yes, but their primary purpose was for

worship. Doctor Betts observes this.

He says that that as they were stationed all around the city,

all of these people, the singers, the Levites, they, they

serve not only to provide the people with a sense of security,

but a reminder of Jerusalem's purpose, the worship of Yahweh.

And if you look through the chapter, there's a large portion

dedicated to the listing of all the people whose role was tied

to the worship of the Lord. You can look through this later,

but down near the the bottoms half, it lists out all the

people who came for Levites, all the different people for the

worship of God. Nehemiah made the praise of God

a priority. And so I ask you guys this

question. I had to ask myself this

question this week. Is the praise of God a priority

in my life? One reformer famously said that

the human heart is an idol factory.

What are you praising in your life that's taking God's

rightful place? So the next thing on our list of

priorities is we want to prioritize the pursuit of

godliness. We see this priority most

clearly in who Nehemiah appoints as the leaders who will take

over the day-to-day operation of the city.

God expects his leaders to be people who fear him, and we see

several examples of that throughout Scripture that teach

us that principle. In Nehemiah 7 two though, he

says, I gave my brother Hananiah and Hananiah the governor of the

castle charge over Jerusalem for he was more faithful, excuse me,

he was a more faithful and God fearing man than many.

So if you'll remember back from chapter 1, we did get a mention

of, of Nehemiah's brother Han and I who delivered the news to

Nehemiah about the state of Jerusalem's city, about the

state of the people, how the how the city was set up and how it

wasn't, how it wasn't functioning.

We can understand that Nehemiah wanted to place people he could

trust in these positions of authority, right?

So he obviously he chose his brother.

But what stands out to me in the description is, is the character

of this man Hananiah. He was a more faithful and God

fearing man than many. So he looked less like what?

Like Nehemiah was looking less at what the man could physically

do. Although he was probably like

well equipped to do the job. He looked less, or at least he

describes here less, about what he could physically do to do the

actual job and he was more concerned about the man's heart.

He was more concerned about his posture towards the Lord.

Because Nehemiah knew, remember, that Jerusalem was set up to be

a city of worship. So what qualified this man most

for service and protection of the city was his faithfulness to

the Lord and the fact that he was known to be more God fearing

than many in the city. Nehemiah understood that if the

goal of the city was worship, then its leaders needed that to

be a priority in the way they live their lives.

So thinking about this idea of a God fearing individual, I've

been looking back on my own life and questioning, is this a

priority for me? Is this a priority?

Certainly to an extent I think it has been.

But have I put other things in front of this aspect of my

character? Of course, I was moved to ask

myself these questions and I urge you guys to do the same

with me. Have I focused more of my

attention on gaining knowledge? Have I focused more on

developing skills that would further my job prospects?

Have I focused more on doing only what's required of me so

that I can get back to leisure, so that I can get back to to

whatever it is that I find satisfying and leisurely?

Is my desire to be godly stronger than my desire to veg

out or escape the pressures of life through a heavy diet of

sports, social media, television and whatever else you could put

in there? In order to be known as a God

fearing person, we must go beyond the aspiration of

becoming that and actually put feet to our faith.

You can't just want to be a godly person.

You can't just say I'm going to be a God fearing man.

You have to do the work required.

You have to dedicate your lives to the disciplines of of prayer

1st and Bible intake. You have to dedicate your life

to those things. You can't skimp out on them.

So the world tells us that literally everything else.

The world will tell you that everything else will satisfy

you. Everything else is more

important than being a God fearing man.

But that's not what we see. That's not what we see in

scripture. Here's a couple examples.

God doesn't expect you to to to fill that void with anything

else. He says in James 4/6 that James

says God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.

And then in Psalm 1:30, 8/6, it says for the for though the Lord

is high, he regards the lowly, but the haughty He knows from

afar. It doesn't mean you have to be

lowly in in worldly standards. You can, you can have a good

job, you can have a good career. What it means is that the

posture of your heart needs to not prioritize that more than

you prioritize being a God fearing person.

Being a God fearing person means you pursue godliness with your

life. And Nehemiah recognized again

that if Jerusalem would become the light, shining the glory of

God to the world, showing the people who God is, not just

Israel's people, but all of the people who God is, then its

leaders needed to be more capable in, or excuse me, needed

to be more than capable in pragmatic day-to-day issues.

They would need to be more God fearing than most.

And so he chose his brother and he chose Hananiah, who was

recognized as a more God fearing man than most people.

As Christians, we should all strive to become more God

fearing people. God fearing people are concerned

with what God concerns himself with.

And God is very concerned about people.

So that moves us to our Third Point, Prioritize the people of

God, Nehemiah, prioritize the people of God.

And you'll see that that my, my reference goes from verse 4 to

73. We're not going to read them

all. It's a lot of people.

One of the things I remember most from our time back in

Louisville, KY was something that my pastor would say quite

often from from the platform, but often whenever we had

private conversations with him. He knew that most of the people

like my age or people that were there just for seminary would be

moving on. He knew that we would be moving

on to to serve in churches or to serve as missionaries across the

world. And, and one thing he would say,

he would often say something, something similar to this.

It's not exactly word for word, but this would be the sentiment.

He says if you don't love people, you don't have any

business becoming a pastor. If you don't love people, you

don't have any business being a missionary.

If you don't love people, you have no business being a

seminary professor or a teacher. When I worked in retail, every

so often you'd hear somebody that worked with you say, I

don't know, maybe you've heard somebody say this.

This job would be pretty great if it weren't for the customers.

That's the attitude that a lot of people take.

And while that's humorous, it's also absurd.

There's no room for this type of attitude.

Not not in secular world, but certainly not in, in ministry.

And if you're not like in ministry, like like a

professional ministry, like not paid staff, who cares?

There's no space for that kind of attitude either amongst the

people of God. So we have to prioritize the

people of God. People need to matter to us

because they matter to the Lord and we see that and how the Lord

Jesus interacted with people. We see it and how the apostles

treated people. But concern for people is not

only found in the New Testament, it's found throughout the Bible.

Here in our text, we see it as well.

God's people have been Nehemiah's concern from the

beginning of the book. So look back with me.

If it's too small on the screen, I apologize.

Look back with me and Nehemiah won.

If you need to turn back in your turn back a couple pages in your

Bible, it is pretty small on the screen.

I'll read verses 5 to 10 and I said, Oh Lord God of heaven, the

great and awesome God who keeps His covenant in steadfast love

with those who love him and keep His commandments.

Let your ear be attentive and your eyes open to hear the

prayer of your servant that I now pray before you day and

night for the people of Israel, your servants confessing the

sins of the people of Israel, which we have sinned against

you. Even I in my Father's house have

sinned. We've acted very corruptly

against you. We have not kept the

commandments, the statutes, the rules that you commanded your

servant Moses. Remember the word that you

commanded your servant Moses, saying, If you're faithful, I

will scatter you or excuse me, if you're unfaithful, I will

scatter you among the peoples. But if you return to me and keep

my commandments and do them though you are outcast or in the

uttermost parts of heaven, from there I will gather them and

bring them to the place that I have chosen and make my name

dwell there. They are your servants and your

people whom you have redeemed by your great power and your strong

hand. In Nehemiah's prayer, you see

that he prays for the sake of people, specifically God's

people. He doesn't immediately open

himself up to the concern of of the walls.

He doesn't it's like immediately concern concern himself with the

state of the city. He's reminded of the promises of

God to those who are faithful, and so he prays for them.

He prays for their forgiveness of sins.

And the list of people here in Chapter 7, it's almost

identical. If you look at Ezra chapter 2,

Ezra 2 · chapter mention

it's almost identical to that list.

The list are a result of painstaking attention to detail

and are organized in a way that shed some light on the people's

roles and standing in the community.

Concerning this long list of names and numbers, Warren

Weirsby writes this. He says the important thing is

not to count the people, but to realize that these people

counted. In leaving Babylon they did much

more than put their names on a list.

They laid their lives on the altar and risked everything to

obey the Lord and restore the Jewish nation.

They were pioneers of faith who trusted God to enable them to do

the impossible. I don't know about you, but I

when I read something like this I am tempted to overlook it.

So in my temptation to overlook this list of names and numbers

found here in the MI 7 and in Ezra 2, there are the exact same

list. There's like very few

differences in the name spelling or the number next to a name.

But my my temptation to overlook this could be exposing the sad

reality that not only do I overlook passages in scripture

like this list of names, I often overlook flesh and blood people

in my life like I am tempted to overlook people in my life.

Often I'm guilty of being the type of person described my by

my by pastor back in Louisville, not one fit to serve the Lord in

ministry. Often I find I do the opposite

of what Nehemiah did. Usually when I'm informed of an

issue someone's facing, I immediately look to pragmatic

things. How do we fix this?

How do we how do we come up with a solution to sort this out?

What tangible thing can I do? Nehemiah's first concern was for

the people. He prayed for these people.

Friends, we must be concerned with the people of God.

We must concern ourselves with what God concerns himself with.

And so Nehemiah did that. He prioritized the praise of

God, the people, the principles of God or the God, the pursuit

of godliness and the people of God.

And now we come to our 4th priority that we've seen.

He prioritized the purpose of God.

If you've been attending here for more than a year, you've

heard one of our US pastors say at one time or another that the

that the Bible as we see it, is telling one big story, 1 grand

narrative of how God is accomplishing his will.

It's one big, beautiful story of redemption and reconciliation.

Our Sunday school curriculum is built around it.

Our Wednesday night curriculum is built around it with teaching

a class on on biblical theology to show you how it's working.

In Genesis 12, one to three, we get the promise that God made to

Abram that the families of earth shall be blessed through him.

And here in Nehemiah, we're seeing that God is making good

on his promise. He's using the ministry of

Nehemiah as part of his fulfillment of this plan to

bless the nations through Abraham.

And in this list we see a name that pops up later in Scripture.

I went through verse 7 on purpose, even though I said I

wasn't going to read names. I read some of those names in

the in the MI 77, we see the name Zerubbabel.

So we see it. They came with Zerubbabel and

then the other guys that are hard to pronounce and the number

of them and it tells us the list.

We see this name come up again in another genealogy in Matthew

chapter 112 to 13. It pops up in the genealogy of

our Lord Jesus. It says this.

It says and after the deportation to Babylon, the

Konaya, the father of she'll tell and she'll tell the father

of Zerubbabel and Zerubbabel the father of Abid and Abid the

father of Achim and Achim the father of Azer.

This is this is pointing out excuse me and pointing this out.

Doctor Betts says this He compares the painstaking work of

Nehemiah with the work of the Lord and carrying out his

purpose in the grand plan of redemption.

He writes this he says to today's reader, these lists may

appear tedious and even meaningless if we fail to read

them in light of the promises of God and their ultimate

fulfillment in the Lord Jesus Christ.

The painstaking work of Nehemiah pales in the face of God's

meticulously and wondrously weave tapestry of his work of

redemption through his Son. Nehemiah was moved by God to do

a great work. He was moved to tears when he

heard about the state of Jerusalem.

He was moved to action and was bold when given the opportunity

to do something about it. His life was marked out by

obedience and steadfast faithfulness when faced with

opposition. And today we've seen how he

demonstrated his character through what he prioritized.

We're probably safe to assume that Nehemiah didn't know

exactly how God will full fulfill his ultimate promise of

blessing to the world. What concerned Nehemiah was the

reality that the place and the people of God we're not

fulfilling the purpose of glorifying God.

God gave him the ability to desire and the desire to begin

the restoration project that would point forward to what God

would ultimately do through Jesus.

And so where does that leave us? What does prioritizing the

purpose of God mean for us today?

I think we need to remember the central message from last week's

sermon. We have to be laser focused on

the mission that we've been given.

We have to be able to say, as Nehemiah said when he was

challenged and confronted by Sambalot, I'm doing a great work

and I cannot come down. Why should I?

Why should the work stop and leave it while I come down to

you? What is the great work we're

supposed to be doing? Nehemiah and Ezra worked hard to

rebuild the city of Jerusalem. The group had 400 years of of

silence ahead of them. They were preparing a city for

worship because there was God. God put it in their hearts to do

this because God knew even though they didn't that they

were going to be 400 years of silence where he wasn't going to

speak through his prophets. He wasn't going to do anything

He wasn't. This is they needed to get it

set up so they could worship our perspective.

They were looking forward. Our perspective is one that

looks back. We can see what God has done

throughout history. We know that eventually this

tapestry that he's weaving, he's weaving through the people like

the Zerubbabel and all these connections that we see, it

eventually leads to the birth of Jesus, God in the flesh, who

came to deal with the sin problem once and for all.

He came in the flesh. And our perspective too though

is one is 1. Looking forward, just like

Nehemiah and Ezra. So when Jesus will return and

make all things new. And until that day comes back,

or until that day comes, we have to remain focused on the

Commission handed to us from the Lord Jesus when he commanded his

disciples to go and make disciples of all nations,

baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and of the

Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all I've commanded you.

And behold, I'm with you always to the end of the age.

This is the mission we have in front of us.

This is God's purpose to get the gospel to as many people as we

possibly can. Our mission must be centered on

the good news, right? The good news that Jesus came to

save sinners, that he died on the cross for, for the

forgiveness of sins, and was raised on the third day.

So hopefully today I've demonstrated that you can glean

quite a bit from a passage or a chapter such as this one.

It just takes work. It takes some study.

It takes thinking about like, all right, what is he saying?

Maybe it takes looking up a name and figuring out where else it

where else we see it in Scripture to find out what what

this might mean. Remember that all Scripture is

breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for

proof and for for correction. So today I'll put the priorities

up again. Nehemiah praise prioritize the

praise of God, and so should we. He prioritized the pursuit of

godliness and so should we. He prioritized people,

specifically the people of God, and so should we.

And he prioritized the purpose of God making.

Make praising God and glorifying him a priority in your life.

Ask the Lord to reveal idols in your heart.

You are an idol factory. You will make one.

If you don't put like put Jesus in your life and make him first.

You will make an idol that's going to be first in your life.

As you do this, as you as you put Jesus first, it'll lead you

to becoming a more God fearing person, someone who prioritizes

his walk with the Lord over the any other skills you may develop

and make loving people a priority in your life.

If you have a broken relationship in your family, ask

the Lord to help you with healing.

Take the initiative in the healing process and rely on God

to do the work. Pray for the people that God has

connected to connected you to pray for them.

Pray with them. Remember that one of the best

ways that we prove to the world that the good news of the gospel

is real is how we treat each other.

So make loving people a priority in your life.

And finally make the purpose of God your purpose.

Luke tells us that the the Son of man came to seek and to save

the lost Luke. That's that's the central theme

of the book of Luke. And it's, it's, it is our

purpose. Our purpose is God's purpose,

Jesus purpose he came to seek and to save the lost.

Our purpose is to point people to him because he's the only one

that can save them. So it's good news, right?

Let's pray. Father, thank you for for this

passage in Nehemiah. Thank you for Chapter 7.

Thank you for these names. Thank you for this good news.

It's pointing toward what we'll be doing when we observe the

Lord's Supper. Hopeless this morning to to

focus our hearts and our minds affections on you.

I pray these things in Jesus name.