Revival and the Restoration of Worship - Nehemiah: Arise and Build

You're listening to the road with Pastor Teacher Steve Holt.

When you learn to repent, when you begin to give God those areas of your life that you know aren't from Him.

You know that you're in rebellion in your life.

And you and you repent of that, you've given Him.

The first thing that begins to happen in your life is you have a passion for the Word and a passion for worship.

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We hope you are encouraged by today's message from Pastor Teacher Steve Holt.

So turning your Bibles to Nehemiah.

We're gonna go back to Nehemiah and Nehemiah, the chapter we have is super long.

So I'm going to move quickly through it.

The theme today, if you're taking notes, is revival and the restoration of worship.

Revival and the restoration of worship.

God chose in his sovereign plan that we'd be in chapter 8 last week and chapter 9 this week, right as we come into this election time.

There was no strategy on my part.

It was just, we're going through Nehemiah because we're rebuilding walls, and we believe God wants to rebuild walls in our country.

God wants to rebuild walls in your life.

And that takes effort.

It takes effort to rebuild walls in your life.

Every one of us, every one of us have walls in our life that need to be rebuilt and restored.

Amen.

We all have those areas of our life that God wants to come and He wants to bring a revival.

He wants to bring restoration.

So last week, we looked at the fact that God used the preached word.

That when the word was preached, revival happened in the hearts of the people.

And this, there's no greater two chapters in all of the Bible about revival and restoration than Nehemiah 8 and 9.

So we're picking it up now because here's what happens is when God begins to restore your heart, what he restores first is worship.

When you learn to repent, when you begin to give God those areas of your life that you know aren't from him, you know that you're in rebellion in your life, and you repent of that, you give it to him, the first thing that begins to happen in your life is you have a passion for the word and a passion for worship.

It's exactly what happens here.

So look at it in verse 1.

So we're in chapter nine.

Look at this restoration of worship that occurs.

Let me just, before I go into that, let me just say this.

Chapter nine is about the restoration of worship, and it's about the character of God.

In other words, when you worship, what are you worshiping?

I can tell you one thing.

When I first saw Liz, I was I was focused on her outward beauty.

I didn't know her heart, I didn't know her walk with God.

I just saw her.

We were smuggling Bibles in China, and when I saw her, I zeroed in on that little blonde from UCLA.

So we see something when we begin to focus.

And what we're gonna see is a focused attention that begins to happen, which we're gonna call worship to the King of Kings.

Now, on the 24th day of this month, the children of Israel were assembled with fasting and sackcloth and with dust on their heads.

That's why I'm calling, it's part of why I'm calling tomorrow for fasting and prayer.

There's something about fasting that focuses you.

Some of you in this room need to learn the power of fasting.

That there's things in your life that are not going to get broken off until you fast and pray about it.

And I don't know what it is, but there's something supernatural about when you give up what's a basic necessity of your life, which is food, in order to feast not on food, but on God, that somehow seems to get God's attention toward you and answers prayers more quickly.

So they come together, they're fasting.

Then those of Israelite lineage separated themselves from the foreigners, and they stood and 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 one fourth of the day, and for another fourth they confessed and worshiped the Lord their God.

So they come, they repent.

Men and women, the signature of a revival, the signature of a move of God is always repentance.

When God, I mean, think about it.

How hard is it in your life to admit you're wrong?

If you have any thought about the fact that it's easy, ask your spouse if you're married.

Ask your roommate if you're not.

It's hard, right?

It's hard to admit you're wrong.

And repentance is admitting you're wrong.

It's admitting you've made mistakes.

It's admitting that you're going in the wrong direction and that you need to change direction and go back toward God.

That is not easy.

That is supernatural when somebody really repents.

So there's a supernatural work of the Spirit.

Now, when repentance occurs, it opens you up to a new relationship with God in a whole new way, and I'm calling it the restoration of worship.

The restoration of worship.

Look at verse 4.

Why do you think about Nehemiah's all these names?

Yeshua, Bonnie, Cadmil, Shabaniah, Buni.

Now that sounds like a southern name.

That sounds like somebody from the Appalachians, bro.

That this is my boy.

This is Booney.

Booney over here.

She's Bonnie, Shannon stood on the stairs of the Levites and cried out with a loud voice, the Lord their God.

And the Levites.

Alright, I think I deserve some applause for that.

Thank you very much.

Thank you very much.

Alright.

Alright, now look at this.

This is your definition of worship.

Write in your Bibles, definition of worship.

Stand up and bless the Lord your God forever and ever.

Stand up and bless the Lord your God forever and ever.

Blessed be your glorious name, which is exalted above all blessing and praise.

Men and women, worship is blessing God.

It's not you getting a blessing, it's Him getting the blessing.

It's how you live.

In other words, if you're blessing God by having a life of integrity, if you're blessing God with how you handle your finances, if you're blessing God by saying no to an immoral relationship, if you're blessing God by telling the truth and being honest, that's worship.

Folks, that's worship.

That's the life of worship.

Worship is blessing God.

And look at what he says next, verse 6.

You alone are the Lord, you have made heaven, the heaven of heavens, with all their hosts, the earth and everything in it, the seeds and all that is in them, and you preserve them all, the hosts of heaven worship you.

So here's what he's saying.

He's saying, look, the direction of worship is heaven, the definition of worship is blessing, and when you bless heaven, when you bless the God of heaven, you're lining yourselves up with what's already happening in heaven.

So when you come to my house and you come to my living room, it's set up a certain way.

Like when you walk in from the front door, you guys have been there before, you know, like there's a couch right here, and there's two chairs over there, we got the fireplace over there.

Anybody walking in as a guest, if you know, being courteous and mannerly, might think, now, where am I supposed to sit?

Because Steve sits somewhere.

And I don't want to sit in Steve's place.

And so you kind of, you're a little worried, right?

Because that's my living room.

I run my living room.

Well, heaven is God's living room.

He loves his living room, and it's 24-7 worship.

Revelation 4 and 5, it's 24-7 worship.

So when you direct your worship to him, what we're doing, men and women, is we're lining ourselves up with what's already happening up there.

So when you start to take your eyes off election, take your eyes off Trump, take your eyes off Biden, take your eyes off whatever, and we do and we direct him up and we begin to worship him, we're lining ourselves up with all the resources of heaven.

That's pretty good news, right?

Say that's good news.

You're lining yourselves up with what's happening in heaven, and he has the access point now to pour into your heart that which you're missing, which is causing you to grieve, causing you to be frustrated, causing you to be worried, because what's happening is when you take your eyes off your circumstances and put your heart and your mind on Christ, then God now has access to your heart, and when he has access to your heart, he gets your spirit man, and when he gets your spirit man, you get set free.

Because that's the presence of God.

That's what's happening here.

He's saying to the Jews, quit weeping.

You've repented enough.

Take your eyes off your circumstances and all the obstacles.

Remember, they're they're still in bondage here.

They're still under a foreign power.

So you know what I did two days ago?

I picked up Eric Mattax's book on Bonhoeffer to read it again.

The third time.

Everybody know who Dietrich Bonhoeffer was?

All right.

Maybe half of you.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a Lutheran pastor under the regime of Adolf Hitler, who started and developed the Confessing Church against Hitler.

And Eric Metaxis, if you've ever watched any of his podcasts, they're awesome.

He's fantastic.

Anyway, he wrote this seminal work on Bonhoeff, about that thick.

And I was reading it because I'm looking at the lay of our land and I'm saying, you know, Bonhoeffer found joy under Hitler.

I can certainly find joy in the midst of an election that I disagree with.

Hello?

You can too.

But what I see happening in Nehemiah is Ezra saying to them, guys, quit focusing on your bondage and your mistakes and your sin.

Would you now take your eyes off of that?

Put your eyes on me, worship me, trust me, and I'm going to pour my resources into you.

And so here in the rest of the chapter, and it's a long, long chapter.

I'm going to do the best that I can.

We see these character qualities, God.

I want to give you seven.

I'm going to give you seven character qualities that they fill their mind with in worship to God.

Starting at verse seven.

So I'm going to go really quickly through these.

And listen.

I want you to listen.

Alright, listen, guys.

Don't be, don't let the worries of what's happening right now burden you.

Take notes.

Write these down.

Don't miss this.

These are beautiful.

These speak to who God still is.

He's the same as he was then, as he is here.

You are the Lord God, verse 7, who chose Abram and brought him out of Ur of the Chaldeans, and gave him the name Abraham, and found his heart faithful before you, and you made a covenant with him to give the land of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perasites, the Jebusites, the Gergeshites, to give it to his descendants.

You have performed your words for you are righteous.

Number one character quality is that we have a covenant-keeping God, men and women.

We have a covenant-keeping God.

Abram means exalted father.

Abraham means exalted father of a multitude.

Listen to me.

God wants to multiply his dominion in your heart.

He really does.

He doesn't want you just to be an exalted father.

He wants you to be an exalted father of multitudes.

In other words, he's looking for a multiplication ministry in all of your lives.

If you're a mom, you're called by God to something that is going to have an impact on your family, you as fathers, to have an impact on your families, in your job, with your finances.

God doesn't want you just for you, He wants you to multiply out to make an impact on others with the kingdom of God.

So tomorrow, that day we come.

I don't believe God's done with America yet.

I believe there's great days ahead for America.

I believe he wants to multiply that which we have to other nations.

But we are definitely in an adjustment period.

Hello?

It's an adjustment period.

And it may not be easy, but some of you in this room, you need to run for office.

Some of you in this room now start thinking bigger than you thought before.

Your life's not just for you, but God's gonna use you in this community.

We're gonna do those turkey dinners for these apartments over here because we want to multiply the kingdom into those apartments.

Because God has created us to have dominion.

And what I mean by dominion, I don't, I'm I'm not talking about dominion theology as it's sometimes exalted in ways that are that are inappropriate, but I'm talking about the dominion of Genesis 1.28.

God gives us dominion to calm and push back darkness.

And every one of you have that anointing because you have the Holy Spirit live within you.

So he took Abram, who's just a pagan idolater, and he turns him into a man of God that brought forth the nation of Israel, and we've been given, church, we've been given that same gift as Abraham.

Galatians 3.

Therefore, he who supplies the Spirit to you and works miracles among you, does he do it by the works of the law or by hearing of faith?

Just as Abraham believed God and it was accounted to him for righteousness, therefore know that only those who are of faith are sons of Abraham.

And the scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel to Abraham beforehand, saying, In you all the nations shall be blessed.

So then those who are of faith are blessed with believing Abraham.

Now, this is the part I don't want you to miss this.

That the blessing of Abraham might come upon the Gentiles in Christ Jesus, that we might receive the promises of the Spirit through faith.

So Abraham obeyed God.

He walked by faith, God multiplied his faith out, and that those promises of Scripture are yours.

They are mine, they are ours, and therefore, even our country today, men and women.

God wants to see the abundance of his blessings poured out through believing people.

Some of you in this room have a mountain to climb.

Some of you in this room have a mountain to climb, and there's a promise at the other end.

And you have not been willing to take that step.

And Abram was called to take his son Isaac up to that mountain to slay him.

And God's calling some of us to surrender things to him so that the abundance of his blessing can be released over your life.

I want to challenge you today that you are of the lineage of Abraham.

And to take those steps of faith and to climb that mountain will not be easy, but it only happens through worship.

And we're gonna go into worship in a few minutes.

And when we go into worship, we're gonna take our eyes off ourselves, aren't we?

We're gonna take our eyes off our circumstances, and we're gonna lift our hearts up to him.

Verse 9.

You saw the affliction of our fathers in Egypt, and you heard their cry by the Red Sea.

Secondly, we have a prayer-hearing God.

God hears our cries to him, and he wants to bring forth miracles in our life.

And church, I'm just saying again that as we begin to worship him, as we begin to exalt him with our lives, God increases our faith.

God increases our faith.

That increase of faith is what parts sees in our lives.

Verse 13.

You came down also on Mount Sinai and you spoke with them from heaven, and you gave them the just ordinances and true laws and good statutes and commandments.

You made known to them your holy Sabbath.

Thirdly, God speaks to us.

God speaks to us.

In church, God speaks mainly through the word.

Love visions and dreams.

Love visions and dreams.

God's led us in almost all the major decisions that my wife and I have made have been through visions and dreams, but it was always based in the foundation of God's word.

So it's in God's word that he builds up our faith.

He's living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, working through the word in our hearts and in our lives.

He continues.

And told them to go in to possess the land which you had sworn to give them.

Generous God.

A generous God.

Because we struggle, don't we, with rebellion.

Look at verse 16.

But they and our fathers acted proudly and they hardened their necks.

They did not heed your commandments, they refused to obey.

And they were not mindful of your wonders that you did among them.

But they hardened their necks, and in their rebellion they appointed a leader to return to their bondage.

But you are God, ready to pardon, gracious and merciful, slow to anger, abundant in kindness, and did not forsake them.

Fifthly, a gracious and merciful God.

Some of you here this morning have been running from God.

You've been running from God and you've been rebellious to God, and the gracious and loving and merciful God is calling you home.

It's time to come home.

Come back to Him.

He wants the things that you're carrying.

He wants you to give it to Him.

To carry, to continue to carry the burdens you're carrying is only going to lead to addictions and depression and despair.

Will you not surrender it all to Him today?

Give it to Him.

Verse 20.

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.

Forty years you sustained them in the wilderness, and they lacked nothing.

Their clothing did not wear out and their feet did not swell.

Now I'm a I'm a Calvinist with a seatbelt on.

There's a lot about Armenianism, Calvinism, some of you don't know what I'm talking about, that we don't understand.

I am so okay with mystery.

I say that as a preamble to this.

I don't believe it was God's will, according to this and countless other passages in the Old Testament, that Israel was supposed to be set free from Egypt, come to the Red Sea, call out to God, he opens up the Red Sea, they come through, Pharaoh's army gets drowned, they come all the way to the promised land and then just leave them there for 40 years.

But because of their lack of faith and because of their fear of what they were gonna have to deal with to enter the promised land, God gave them what they wanted.

Now I don't believe things are done yet, but I will say if next week the election results are the same.

And if and if Trump has given in to the election results, we get what we deserve as a nation.

But you know what?

I don't have to get what the nation deserves on me.

We may deserve something nationally, but in my heart I want to walk and I want to possess the promises of God for my life.

How about you?

So it doesn't matter to me in one sense.

I'm responsible for the whole family, I'm responsible for this church, I'm responsible to a certain extent for this city, and so are you.

And I would rather be under the abundance and the blessings of God than the discipline of the Lord.

And that's my choice.

And so what happened is they came to the promised land, they couldn't take the promised land.

They said that, oh, these they're giants in the land, and we were like grasshoppers to them.

And that's why when Moses sent the second group in 40 years later, he said, Can you not make any pronouncements to the whole crowd?

Just come talk to me first.

Man, I want to walk in that kind of faith.

How about you?

We can't.

He's a Holy Spirit empowering Father.

Now look at verse 22, because this is where this is where God wants it to go.

Moreover, you gave them kingdoms and nations and divided them into districts.

So they took possession of the land of Sihon and the land of the king of Heshbon and the land of Og, the king of Bashin.

You also multiplied their children as the stars of heaven and brought them into the land.

And he goes on and on with all these possessions, men and women, you are called to possess your land.

That's you.

That's your spirit, man.

God wants to possess those lusts in your life and that greed in your life and that struggle with anger.

That's what God does.

He possesses these areas of our heart that he might take possession of our lives.

And as we journey with him, we are taking back that ground and we are rebuilding the walls.

And he wants to rebuild those walls in your life.

That's exciting.

All you parents out there with kids in your arms right now.

Love it.

Even when they're screaming, it's okay.

Oh, it really is.

Do you guys realize at Pentecost they had child care?

They when the 120 were up in the upper room, there were no kids there.

It was just quiet.

Holy Spirit fell in everyone.

Oh I bet there were screaming kids and all kinds of family stuff going on.

God showed up.

God loves it.

I love it.

You should love it.

God loves abundance.

God loves noise.

God loves loud kids.

I like kids running through this church and doing what they do.

Because this is their church, and I want them to love this church because I didn't like church when I was a kid, and so I want kids to like church here.

I had to wear my little bow tie and my little clip tie, and oh, I hated it, and it was like the worst, and I would fall asleep.

And you guys remember any of that?

You remember that coming up in the main kind of mainline churches and stuff?

No, man, let's be happy.

Let's walk in joy and abundance.

And that's what he's talking about here.

He's saying he's a kingdom-possessing God and church.

He wants to possess your kingdom.

And it's a lifelong journey.

It's a lifelong journey.

It's two steps forward and one step back.

We still struggle with anger.

We still anybody frustrated over the this past week?

Anybody a little depressed?

I was.

Someone came up to me and they were they were really mad in the first service.

And he just and I said, dude, I love it.

I'm glad you care enough about our country that it makes you mad.

But let's turn it around and let's possess our own kingdom by walking in the power of the Holy Spirit and overcoming our circumstances, not letting our circumstances overcome us.

You've been listening to The Road with Pastor Teacher Steve Holt.

We hope you have been blessed by today's message.

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Thanks again for tuning in today, and be sure to listen to the next edition of The Road with Pastor Teacher Steve Holt.