Fast & Furious: Overcoming Spiritual Darkness Part 2 - Nehemiah: Arise and Build

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

Here's what I think the fear of God is.

The fear of God is that sense of dread that would come over us when we know we're out of God's will.

And it is so easy, isn't it?

Just kind of cut that off.

Begin to compromise.

But when the Spirit of God begins to move, he begins to put within us this longing for the love of God and to be in his blessing in everything that we do that can set us free.

That's the fear of God.

That desire to be in the center.

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

We are in the book of Nehemiah.

So if you are a guest with us, we are going through Nehemiah chapter by chapter, and we are in Nehemiah chapter 5.

Nehemiah 5 · chapter mention

And when you begin to rebuild walls in your life, spiritual walls, or maybe build walls for the first time, guys, you're going to have opposition.

You're going to have opposition most of the time from people.

Demons aren't going to come down, or Satan with a little fork and pointy ears and a tail.

It's going to usually opposition to growing in Christ is from people and circumstances that come to oppose you, to discourage you, to make you want to quit.

Same thing's happened with Nehemiah.

He's literally building, rebuilding the walls of Jerusalem, and he's got opposition.

And last chapter, and this chapter, and next week's chapter, is all about opposition.

All about opposition that's what you see is the three-dimensional world.

But almost always there's a fourth-dimensional world empowering the three-dimensional world.

In other words, there's demonic powers using people in your life to stop you, to slow you down, and to discourage you.

That's exactly what's happening here.

And guess what?

It's often economic.

It's often financial.

I love what the greatest, wisest man in the world said in Ecclesiastes 10, 19.

A feast is made for laughter and wine makes merry, but money is the answer to everything.

New Living Translation.

Not the Steve Holt translation.

That's actually in the Bible.

That's New Living Translation.

Here's what it's saying.

It really is true, though, right?

Money affects almost every decision you make.

From where you go get gas to where you shop.

Now that's not true with my wife.

She.

She, I mean, you get, I know what you think I'm gonna say.

That's not what I'm gonna say.

My wife is an activist, man.

You do not get in the way of my woman when she is on, when she's on point.

I mean, when she's pointing something, I mean, whoo! Watch out.

She knows who's on the board of almost every major company.

And if it's got Bill Gates' name on it, we're not shopping there anymore.

So come and look at me go, oh no, we can't go to Costco anymore.

Da-da-da-da.

She's got it all up.

So if you want to know the list, she's got it.

But we're but true, you guys, isn't it?

Finances.

Finances drive everything in your life.

And so what we're going to look at here in chapter 5 is greed.

Put that on the side of your Bible, right?

Greed.

This is about greed and division.

Greed and division.

And there was a great outcry of the people and their wives against their Jewish brethren.

So here's what's happening.

They built half of the wall, you guys.

Half of the wall's been built.

They're making tremendous progress.

And then there becomes a strife within.

How many of you know?

This is what I believe.

I believe the most seminal strategic policy of Satan.

If Satan has a strategic policy team, it's division.

It's division in marriage.

It's division in relationships.

And listen, men and women, it's division in our nation.

Now I grew up in the South.

I never met anybody who was a part of the Ku Klux Klan.

And I grew up in the rural South, part of it, and the suburban South.

So I was part of both in the Atlanta area as well as South Carolina on the Green Age Ranch was.

So I never met anybody in the KKK, but I heard they were out there.

I met a lot of bigots in my time.

But the kind of people I hang out with with you here in Colorado Springs, I've not met anybody that would be classified in that arena.

So everybody that I know, everybody that I've rubbed shoulders with believes that Black Lives Matter.

So why are we divided over it?

Because demons are involved in what's going on.

And they're trying to divide us, and we've got to be uniters, not dividers, and that's only through Christ.

And so when we come to pray, I'm praying for God to move, to break the power of darkness and see the light shine through with a great awakening once again.

Can't God do it again?

So for Jeremiah Lanfear, on Wednesday, September 23rd in 1857, when he started a prayer meeting on Fulton Street in New York City, and five people came, and the next week 14 people came, and the next week 20 people came, and it grew into a mass movement that over two years over a million Americans were saved.

There are only 30 million in the whole country.

Greatest revival that America's ever had.

Why can't he do that again?

Why can't God move like that again?

That's why we're praying.

That's why we're believing God.

God wants us to be a united states of America, not a divided states of America.

But church only Christ can do that.

So Nehemiah walks into a situation where everybody's complaining.

Division is beginning to rip through the Jewish nation.

Verse 2, for there were those who said, We, our sons and our daughters, are many.

Therefore let us get grain that we may eat and live.

There were also some who said, We have mortgaged our lands and vineyards and houses that we might buy grain because of the famine.

There were also those who said, We have borrowed money for the king's tax on our lands and vineyards.

Yet now our flesh is as the flesh of our brethren, our children as their children, and indeed we are forcing our sons and our daughters to be slaves, and some of our daughters have been brought into slavery.

It is not in our power to redeem them, for other men have our land and vineyards.

So basically, what was happening is the rulers and the nobles, in a sense, not unlike what we saw in the movie Braveheart in relation to Scotland at the time with the English lords over the lords of Scotland.

This is not the first time this has happened.

What's happening is these these lords that have the resources are keeping their own people down through the high taxes.

And then what's happening?

The king's taxes come, and with the king's taxes, the only people who have the money are the lords and the rulers.

Sound familiar?

Not unlike the situation we have in America right now.

We won't go down that economic trail.

But most of you know about that.

And the reality is that they were exacting usury.

And what usury is at that time is high level interest rates, probably around 30%.

And then the people didn't have a way to pay, so they had to give up their land, they had to give up their houses, and now they're even saying we had to give up our sons and our daughters.

And it would appear that sex trafficking may be going on right here among the Jews.

And so what is burdening Nehemiah's heart is that he knows the scriptures.

Men and women, he knows the Bible.

He knows the word.

How many of you know, if you don't know the law, you don't know if you're breaking it or not?

So you know, we talk about hearing from God, wanting to hear from God.

99% of everything you need to know from God is right there in this book.

Now we've been led at this church, and Liz and I are led on a regular basis, and most of us on our staff team here are led through visions and dreams.

But our visions and dreams that we get from God are based, okay, in the law of the word of God.

If they contradict, it's not from God.

So Nehemiah knows the word.

And here's what's foremost in his mind is Deuteronomy 15.

What's foremost in his mind as he hears this information, as he hears this complaint, is Deuteronomy 15.

Let me read it to you.

If there is among you a poor man of your brethren, within any of the gates of your land which the Lord your God is giving you, you shall not harden your heart, nor shut your hand from your poor brother.

But you shall open your hand wide to him and willingly lend him sufficient for his need whatever he needs.

Beware lest there be a wicked thought in your heart, saying, The seventh year, the year of release.

You know what the seventh year is called the year of Jubilee.

So in the seventh year they would forgive debts.

Now listen to what he says next.

This is Moses.

The year of release, it is at hand, and your eye be evil against your poor brother, and you give him nothing, and he cry out to the Lord against you, and it becomes sin among you.

Parenthetically, this was the year of Jubilee, by which all debt should be forgiven.

You shall surely give to him, and your heart should not be grieved when you give to him, because for this thing, this is really important, because of this thing, the Lord your God will bless you.

He will bless you in all your works and in all to which you put your trust.

Verse 11.

For the poor will never cease from the land.

Therefore I command you, saying, You shall open your hand wide, your brother, to your poor and your needy in your land.

Here's what he's saying.

He's saying, Look, it's the seventh year of Jubilee.

What does that mean?

That means that if you lend to anyone, you're not gonna get it back because it's immediately forgiven.

So don't hide, don't run from, don't shirk that responsibility of helping the poor, even in the year of Jubilee, in the seventh year.

You're not gonna get anything back, but one thing you are gonna get.

You're gonna get so blessed by God.

God will repay you.

Everybody say that.

God will repay you.

Say it again.

God will repay you.

Men and women, you've got to get that in your heart.

Because when you realize that God repays your generosity, it can set you free.

You can become a generous person.

Because God sees your heart.

He sees your love for others, he sees you giving.

And in so doing, he blesses you.

What does it say here?

It says, Because for this thing, the Lord your God will bless you in all your works.

In all your works, and everything that you put your hand to.

Can you imagine that?

Can you imagine that by learning to tithe, learning to give 10% of your income to the Lord, when you start to learn that, that you actually might start seeing blessing in every area of your life?

I mean, that's what he said.

There's a dozen verses in the Old Testament where God says, give, give, give generously.

I will bless, bless, bless you.

You think God might want us to get that?

So, so a few days ago, I'm getting a well put on my property.

And I had the opportunity through a conversation to pray with the foreman there.

And we had a fantastic time of prayer.

Beautiful time of prayer together.

And I was sharing with him, you know, when I got saved and I came to know the Lord, it wasn't through that verse, John 3.16, for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whoever believes in him should not perish but everlasting life.

That's kind of your classic, sort of evangelistic verse.

You know what really got me?

What really got me and still gets me?

I get goosebumps whenever I say this verse.

It's when Jesus said in John 10, 10 that the enemy comes to steal, kill, and destroy, but I came that you might have life and might have it abundantly.

Then that's still, I get fired up over that verse.

I could, to use a southern term, I could preach that till the cows come home.

Because here's why.

Because I grew up religious, man.

I did all the rigmarole of a Lutheran.

I was baptized in a dress at six weeks old.

I was, I went to confirmation class.

I did all that stuff.

I memorized the Ten Commandments.

I'd been an altar boy, uh acolyte, and you name it, did it all.

But I didn't have a personal, vital, dynamic, adventurous relationship with Jesus Christ.

And then Jesus says, I came that you might have life and might have it abundantly, and I was sold on it.

Because I wanted it, I wanted Christ, I wanted to know him intimately, and he promised that there'd be this abundant life that he would bless me if I would trust him.

Men and women, that's what Nehemiah ticked off about is that the nobles had missed it.

And they're hoarding.

They're hoarding.

You guys, America is the most generous nation in the world.

We've given more to world missions than any nation in history.

We are a light on a hill.

And that's what the Separatists and the Puritans believed in with the Mayflower Compact and those documents in the first really weeks of the founding of our country is that we'd be a city on a hill and that we'd be the new Israel.

Yes, we've failed.

Yes, we've made huge mistakes.

Who hasn't?

But God has a great destiny, and I don't think it's over yet.

And God has a great destiny on the Jews till this day.

And Israel to this day.

And Nehemiah has been called by God to call that out to a greater purpose.

Let me give you three things.

If you're taking notes, I want you to write down three things to remember about personal finances that I think we can draw from there.

Number one, number one, everyone deserves a second chance.

Everyone deserves a second chance.

So you can look at someone's life and say, man, they just have made a travesty of their life.

I'm not going to help them out.

No, I believe everybody deserves a second chance.

Number two, always have a generous heart to lend.

Always have a generous heart to lend.

Have a big heart.

Be willing to lend to people.

Be willing to have.

You've been blessed maybe more than them.

And may God use you to have a generous heart.

Open up your home.

Learn hospitality.

Learn to open up your home to others.

Invite them over for dinner.

Invite them over for lunch.

Have people over.

I mean, you can have you can have uh Campbell soup together.

Most people don't even remember what they had.

What they remember is that you had them over and to love them.

And then number three, God promises to always repay you.

God promises to always repay you with your generosity.

That on the level of your giving, he will give it back.

Pushed down, settled, pushed down, pressed in, and running over.

As I've said many times to you before, you know, Liz and I learned 38 years ago about tithing, and we've and we've had a couple times where we missed.

But only a couple times in 38 years, and we made it up.

And we just look at that and just say we just never look back.

It's just awesome.

Well, verse 6 is interesting.

Verse 6 is interesting.

How many believe that leaders should never get mad?

Good, I don't see any hands going out.

Good church.

And I became very angry.

Circle very angry.

I became very angry when I heard their outcry and these words.

So I was I was in a conversation with a man, Joel Otman, with FEC United, Faith, Education, Commerce United, a new kind of conservative movement that's being raised up and everything.

I think they've already got 100,000 members.

We were on the phone together.

We were on the phone together.

Actually, it was a Zoom call.

It wasn't a phone, a Zoom call.

I said, Joe, why did you do this?

You've got a family, big family, you've got you're a Christian, you're committed, it's your church, you've got a multi-million dollar company.

Why would you do this?

He says, I got ticked off.

I said, he said, I wish I could just say, you know, I saw it written in the clouds or something.

No, I just got mad.

I got mad at the direction of our state.

I got ticked off at the direction of our country, and I wanted to do something about it, not just talk about it.

And so that's what he's doing.

One of the magazines I like to read is Inc.

And Inc.

magazine is for entrepreneurs.

Here's what it says about anger.

I just looked it up.

What is what about anger?

Is anger a good thing or a bad thing?

I think anger is always a bad thing if it's self-centered.

If it's toward someone in a selfish way.

But God can use it when it's toward a vision that God is on.

God, so I'm gonna call it God-fearing anger.

God-fearing anger.

Number one, it says in Ink magazine, it was talking about two things about anger.

Number one, it focuses your convictions.

Anger can focus your convictions.

Some of you young people, it's not a bad thing if you get angry at yourself because you're doing a poor job.

And God's focusing on you changing so that you can focus your convictions.

Number two, it generates confidence in an objective.

It can generate confidence in an objective.

So Nehemiah gets upset.

He's frustrated.

He's Nehemiah the lion hearted.

He's Nehemiah the lion hearted.

He's angry, but he's gonna do something about it.

Now, this is really important.

Look at verse 7.

After serious thought.

Turn to your neighbor and say, after serious thought.

After serious thought.

Think about what he's gonna do right now.

Think about what's about to happen.

Nehemiah needs the nobles and the rulers on his side to rebuild the walls.

So conventional wisdom might say.

So I think what he did is he got angry, he's frustrated, and now he's thinking it through.

He's thinking it through.

Who am I gonna fear?

Am I gonna fear man?

Or am I gonna fear God?

So after serious thought, I rebuke.

Nobles and rulers, and said to them, Each of you is exacting usury from his brother.

So I called a great assembly against them.

Folks, you can't, from that verse, you can't even, we can't even understand how risky this was.

He's basically standing alone, and he's standing for the poor who have nothing.

And you're gonna read in just a second that they have nothing against all the resources.

I mean, who's paying for the building blocks?

Who's paying people to do what they're doing to build this wall?

But those who have the resources, he's taking a massive risk.

But he fears God.

He believes God is going to reward him.

Verse 8.

I said to them, according to our ability, we have redeemed our Jewish brethren who were sold to the nation.

Now, indeed, will you even sell your brethren?

Or should they be sold to us?

Then they were silenced and found nothing to say.

By the way, this is before there was social media.

Then I said, What you're doing is not good.

Should you not walk in the fear of our God?

Underline that.

Would you not walk in the fear of our God because of the reproach of the nations, our enemies?

I also, with my brethren and my servants, am lending them money and grain.

Please let us stop this usury.

So probably it's 30, 40, maybe 50% interest they're charging.

These people are having to sell their kids into slavery.

They're losing all of their farms, all of their lands.

And look what he says.

The key here is not just to come against them for the breaking of the law, but he's saying, you don't fear God.

Men and women, when I see the kind of stuff that's coming out of Washington, D.C., when I see the kind of stuff that's coming down from Governor Polis in our education, he has no fear of God.

That's dangerous ground to be on.

Dangerous ground.

And I'm telling you, church, the fear of God can be the greatest blessing in your life.

Many of you have read John Bever.

John Bever, I know John Bevere, and I was in a Zoom call with him a few months ago, and we were talking about the last days, we were talking about what's happening right now, and one thing he said really resonated, and he said, he said, he said, you guys, the next great move of God is going to be a fear of God awakening.

I think it's absolutely true.

There's going to be a fear of God awakening.

Here's what I think the fear of God is.

The fear of God is that sense of dread that would come over us when we know that we're out of God's will.

When we know we're not in God's will.

And it is so easy, isn't it?

To just kind of cut that off.

Begin to compromise.

But when the Spirit of God begins to move, he begins to put within us this longing for the love of God and to be in his blessing and everything that we do that can set us free.

That's the fear of God.

That desire to be in the center.

And he's saying, this is economics, you guys.

You don't fear God, so you're ripping people off.

You're just lung sharks.

You're just Jewish lung sharks.

That's what you are.

Now repent.

Because in Nehemiah's heart is Deuteronomy 23.

Deuteronomy 23.

Here's what it says in Deuteronomy 23, Moses to the Jewish nation, you shall not charge interest to your brothers.

Interest on money or food or anything that is lent out at interest.

To a foreigner you may charge interest, but to your brothers you shall not charge interest.

That the Lord your God may bless you in all to which you set your hand in the land to which you're entering to possess.

Leviticus 25.

Leviticus 25.

Take no usury or interest from him, but fear God.

But fear your God that your brother may live with you.

You shall not lend him your money for usury, nor lend him your food at a prophet.

And so you've heard us talk about this.

Some new information this week.

Pastor Al David Kennedy went up to Castle Rock and looked at this fantastic ministry up there that's giving away food to the poor.

We want to become a part of it.

We're looking at maybe doing a greenhouse.

And I believe God wants us to have one of the best state-of-the-art food banks in our city to help the poor, to lend to the poor, to bless the poor.

And the way we're thinking of doing it, we don't know all the details, but there'd be this relationship by which, as you're getting food from us, you're also then serving and helping us give food to others.

So it's not just an outstretched hand, it's a hand that grasps the other hand and lifts them up.

Lifts them up.

Because God tells us to remember the poor.

Nehemiah is saying, remember the poor.

If you remember the poor, I'll be generous with you.

If you'll be generous to others, I'll be generous to you.

Some of you are caught financially, economically, in a straitjacket you can't get out of.

And it may sound counterintuitive.

It is counterintuitive.

Kingdom of God is often counterintuitive.

That the very thing that you might be so concerned about, you're supposed to actually release.

You're actually supposed to be more generous in the midst of your poverty so that God can bless you and open the windows of heaven over your life and begin to make a new you.

Because you know what?

Poverty is usually mental, not financial.

And when you start thinking generosity, you usually usually start setting free with a vision of how God can use you to make more, to give more.

The principle is blessed to be a blessing.

Blessed to be a blessing.

Genesis 12.

Verse 11.

Restore now to them even this day their land, their vineyards, their olive grows.

So he's talking to the nobles.

You need to restore to them, even this day, their lands, their vineyards, their olive grows, their houses, also a hundredth of the money and the grain, the new wine and the oil that you have charged them.

So they said, We will restore it and will require nothing.

It's a revival, man.

This is like a revival.

Can you imagine if this kind of revival hit our country?

We'll restore it and we'll require nothing from them.

We will do as you say.

This is like the fat cats.

I mean, these are the fat cats.

We got about 20 fat cats that run our country.

You imagine calling a meeting and saying, you know, you're ripping people off left and right.

And we're kind of tired of it.

And so, why don't you start doing the equitable thing and restore to people that which you've stolen?

And say, okay, yeah, we will.

I mean, that's the level of a miracle that's happening here.

Restore now to them this day.

They said in verse 12, we will restore it, and we'll require nothing from them.

We will do as you say.

Now, this is the part I like.

Right in the margin or write in your notes, trust but verify.

Trust but verify.

That's it.

We have a religiously spiritual term for trust and verify.

It's called repentance.

Then I called the priest and required an oath from them that they would do according to their promise.

Hello?

Okay, okay, okay, all right, all right.

You guys are gonna restore everything?

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, right.

You know?

Alright, priests, Levitical priests, you guys come up.

Now this is Noah, and this is Joshua, and this is Jeremiah.

They say they're gonna restore everything.

Would you just jot that down, date, time, little contract here with God?

He doesn't believe them.

Then I shook out, so you I can tell he doesn't believe.

Look what he doesn't say.

He takes a I shook out the fold of my garment and said, So may God shake out each man from his house and from his property who does not perform this promise.

Even thus may he be shaken out and empty.

God's gonna get his stuff.

And you can either generously give it, or it'll come other way.

And all the assembly said, Amen.

And praise the Lord.

And the people did according to the promise.

Folks, repentance means our actions follow our convictions or our promises that we make.

And some of us here today, you've never been set free into generosity.

You've never been set free.

God wants to set you free.

He really wants to set you free.

It's really, really exciting.

It's exciting to get up in the morning and know that everything you own is God's.

And he can have it.

And I mean that.

Even my 325-point bull elk that I shot, I shot it with a muzzle load.

Okay?

Not only kidding, it's not that important to me, but God sets you free when you begin to surrender all your bondages to Him, and money is often a bondage.

I think when you get set, if you haven't been set free financially, then there's probably about a dozen other areas you haven't been set free.

Dave Ramsey constantly says, you get a man's pocketbook and you've got his heart.

And I think it's really true.

That where our treasure is, there will our heart be also.

So what's happening here is Nehemiah is charging in as a bold, aggressive, assertive leader, and he's challenging the fear of God to take over.

And then he lives what he's teaching.

Verse 14.

Moreover, from that time I was appointed to be the governor in the land of Judah from the 20th year until the 32nd year of King Artaxerxes, 12 years.

Neither I nor my brother ate the governor's provisions.

But the former governors who were before me laid burdens on the people, took from them bread and wine, besides 40 shekels of silver, so they got a salary, and then they had these big feasts.

They taxed the people, is what he's saying.

Yes, even their servants bore rule over the people, so even the servants were ruling over the people, but I did not do so because of the fear of God.

This is a revival of the fear of God.

Indeed, I also continued the work on this wall, and we did not buy any land, so he's not taking any, he's not making a profit off the people at all.

All my servants were gathered there for the work.

He made everybody work.

And at my table were 150 Jews and rulers, besides those who came to us from the nations around us.

Now that which was prepared daily was one ox and six choice sheep, also fowl were prepared for me, and once every ten days, an abundance of all kinds of wine.

Yet, in spite of this, I did not demand the governor's provisions, because the bondage was heavy on the people.

Remember me, my God, for good, according to all that I have done for these people.

So leadership is by example.

And for Nehemiah, he wanted to model generosity.

And he even sacrificially gave up what he could have had in order to show and to model something that was a blessing to the people because he could see the burden on it.

I read somewhere.

We the people.

Anybody heard of that phrase?

We the people.

Vote in November.

Every week you can register to vote back there.

Thirty million evangelicals did not vote in the last election.

Vote! For God-fearing men and women.

Vote.

Be involved.

We started a public policy ministry two weeks ago.

Amy's leading that.

A week and a half ago.

We got a lot of cool stuff coming down.

We'll be hearing you guys will be hearing about it.

You guys have a Tuesday meeting.

Thursday.

Thursday meeting this week at six.

I'll be there.

If any of you want to be a part of that, come to the library.

Three things.

So jot these down.

Three things we learned from Nehemiah in this chapter.

A lot, but I'm just going to give you three.

Number one, he's calling out and requiring the best from the Jews.

Nehemiah as a leader is calling out and requiring the best from his people.

That's what we need.

We need leaders in America.

We need leaders in our churches that call out and require the best from us.

Number two, he's modeling one who seeks God.

He is modeling one who seeks God.

So Nehemiah is not asking the people to do anything that he's not already doing.

So he's modeling a God seeker.

And then number three, he's living a sacrificial life of integrity and generosity.

He's living a sacrificial life of integrity and generosity.

He fears God.

So he's living that life.

Aren't those the kind of leaders we want to follow?

That's why we have a public policy ministry.

That's why we're telling us, we're talking about voting.

Because if we can continue to raise up in the days ahead men and women in office who have integrity, generosity, love, they care about the people, we the people, they come to serve, man, we can turn this thing around.

We can turn this thing around in a mighty way.

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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