Semper Reformanda

As we come into Nehemiah 13, we've walked through the whole book and really saw the ways that Nehemiah was working to reconstruct, to rebuild, to repopulate, to rededicate, ultimately to reform Israel, specifically the city of Jerusalem, to the glory of which it had been, that they would be known as God's people, where they would be his people, he would be their God, and they would be distinct from the nations surrounding them.

There was another reformation that happened in 1517.

It kicked off, and that was through a monk, a Catholic monk by the name of Martin Luther.

And Martin Luther sought to reform the church to get her back to the beauty of the scriptures, of what God had revealed to his people, of what it looks like to be in relationship with him, what it looks like to be in covenant with him, what it looks like to worship him and to trust in his son Jesus for the fullness and satisfaction of their salvation.

And in the Reformation, we see all these different themes that really mirror Nehemiah.

And we kind of see these cycles throughout history of this reforming that needs to take place within the church.

It was interesting that after about a hundred or so years of the Reformation, the reformers who were still carrying on the work, they kind of came up with this slogan.

They came up with this tagline of Sper Reformanda.

Semper reformanda.

So if you know Latin or maybe you've been in the military or something, you got at least the first word, semper, right?

Always reformanda, reforming.

Semper reformanda, always reforming.

This phrase was first discovered in 1674.

So if you think the Reformation started in 1517, in 1674, it was the first time that they were able to discover this phrase, and it was in this devotional book written by I knew I was gonna mess this up.

Jodicus Van Lodenstein.

Jodicus van Lodenstein.

He wrote it in a devotional of his, and they were trying to understand what it would look like if we continued the reformation, but we had not only that, but a spirit of always reforming.

You see, the reformers described their vision of the church in three kind of categories.

There was doctrine, they were reforming the doctrine of the church.

There was the worship of the church, they were reforming that, but they were also restoring and reforming church government.

The great concern of miss ministers like Van Lodenstein was not the externals of religion, as absolutely as important as they are, but rather the internal side of religion.

You see, they all believe that once the externals of religion have been carefully and faithfully reformed according to the Word of God, the great need was for ministers to lead people into the true religion of the heart.

What they were really concerned about was all the work that they had done to reform the doctrine of the church, the worship of the church, the governance of the church, that there would not be real heart change, that they had labored on the external things of religion, but had they created true transformation within people.

That's the heart of Semper Reformanda.

Always reforming, but not just focusing on the externals, emphasizing the importance of the transformation of the inner man.

You see, we can get to a place in our faith and in the life of the church where the external beauty doesn't mirror the internal ugliness, right?

Often we can work hard, and in sacred mission, we've done that for the last three years.

We've worked relentlessly to make this building function and beautify, right?

We've worked hard on our liturgy to make sure that it shaped uh the gospel around our culture.

We we worked hard to understand the leadership structures that we would have.

We we worked hard to make sure our worship music is uh gospel-centered and theologically rich, and we can get so focused on the externals that we neglect the reality that transformation must happen within.

You see, this is where we find ourselves in Nehemiah 13.

Nehemiah 13 is a horrible ending to a story.

Nehemiah 12 would have been a better ending.

Nehemiah 12, because they dedicate the wall and they dedicate in this huge worship gathering, right?

And they're all celebrating, and the joy of Jerusalem could be heard far away, and right there, right?

The sun should set, the credits should roll, and it should say, and they lived happily ever after.

But that's not the story.

That's not reality, that's not the world that we live in, that's not our human experience.

It's fantasy, but it's not truth.

Nehemiah 13 exposes the ugliness and the truth of life experience.

People's hearts.

People's hearts.

You see, Nehemiah, he'd been in Jerusalem for about 12 years.

If you remember, he was the governor of Jerusalem, and he was leading the charge in reforming the city so that they could be the people that God had called them to be.

He had been there for 12 years.

In Nehemiah 1:1b, if we go all the way back to the beginning of the series, uh it says, now it happened in the month of Chislev in the 20th year, as I was in Susa, the citadel.

So as he sets the stage for his book, uh, we find that he was in the 20th year of the King Artaxerces that he was called to go to Jerusalem and start rebuilding the wall.

In Nehemiah 13, 6 it says, While this was taking place, I was not in Jerusalem.

We're gonna get to the what this is.

But it was in not in Jerusalem, for in the 32nd year of Artaxerxes, king of Babylon, I went to the king.

And after some time I asked leave of the king.

So there's this 12-year period that we find Nehemiah in Jerusalem, reforming the city.

Now I'll make a real caveat real quick.

If you want to get out your Bible or your Bible app or open the app to follow along in the sermon notes, we're gonna cover this whole chapter.

You're gonna want to follow along all these details with me.

But here's what we don't know about Nehemiah.

We don't know how long he was with the king.

When he says he was at service with the king uh at this time where these instances happen, we don't know how long he was there.

He he could have been uh with him for up to a year or even up to seven years, depending on kind of what scholar you listen to.

None of that matters.

It wasn't a super long period of time that Nehemiah was in service to the king.

It says, after some time, I asked leave of the king.

So he wanted to come back to Jerusalem after he had spent some time in service to the king.

Because if you remember, Nehemiah was the cupbearer to King Artaxerxes, right?

As he was leaving to come and reform Jerusalem, he had to leave his post as the cupbearer, and so he had been gone back to the king of Persia to be able to serve him for a short period of time.

While he was away in service to the king of Persia, things in Jerusalem were beginning to crumble.

Even though the work of reformation had been done, the people's hearts were still struggling to obey God.

The external work was finished.

They had reinstituted the Word of God through the reading of the law of Moses.

Well, that sounds like doctrine.

They had rededicated themselves to the sacrifices, feasts, and temple ceremonies that's worship.

They had reinstalled the priests and Levites for their spiritual oversight.

That's church government.

Do we not see the same three reflections that the reformers sought to put into place?

Doctrine, worship, church governance, but yet the anthem of simple reformanda sprung forth because they saw the reality of the inside of man, the inner man, still not transformed.

The internal work was far from being completed.

The people had fixed up the outside, but the inside shows its shortcomings through the telling of three specific instances that we find in the close of Nehemiah 13.

He's gonna walk through three very specific instances, and at the end of each one of them, he's gonna have one of these remember me, oh my God, prayers.

What our scripture reading was for this morning.

He's gonna plea with God to remember him in his zeal for righteousness and his pursuit of obedience to the Lord and of establishing a people who were built, settled, rested upon the Word of God.

So the end of Nehemiah might not be our idea of a perfect ending, but it is most reflective of a true story.

And we enter these three critical scenes, these uh three realities of our experience, and we see this cycle that takes place, this cycle of building up, tearing down, rebuilding, dismantling, reforming, deviating.

This is us.

All three of these instances show the truth of our own experience in being God's people.

So if we look at the first instance, we're gonna see verses one through fourteen.

And what we see in this is relationships that threaten righteousness.

Relationships that threaten righteousness.

In this section of the text, we see two relationships that threaten the righteousness of God's people.

Both of them stem from a relationship with the Ammonite and Moabite people.

So, first relationship.

Let's dive into that one.

This is in the first section one through three.

On the day of the dedication, so on the very day that they were dedicating the wall in chapter twelve, they read from the book of Moses, and in it they saw that God had commanded his people that they should have no relationship with the Ammonite or Moabite people for up to ten generations, that they should actually never be charitable to them.

They commanded this, and so we see in verses one through three, on that day they read from the book of Moses and the hearing of the people, and it was found written that no Ammonite or Moabite should ever enter the assembly of God.

For they did not meet the people of Israel with bread and water, but hired Balaam against them to curse them.

Yet our God turned the curse into a blessing.

As soon as the people heard the law, they separated from Israel all those of foreign descent.

So what did they read?

What did they hear?

Well, as Deuteronomy 23, 3 through 6 says this.

None of them may enter the assembly of the Lord forever.

Because they did not meet you with bread and with water on the way when you came out of Egypt, and because they hired against you Balaam, the son of Baor, from Pathor of Mesopotamia, to curse you.

But the Lord your God would not listen to Balaam.

Instead, the Lord your God turned the curse into a blessing for you, because the Lord your God loved you.

You shall not seek their peace or their prosperity all your days forever.

So this is what they heard in the reading of the Law of Moses.

Now, one thing we have to understand about this passage is this has nothing to do with ethnicity.

This has everything to do with enmity.

Right?

This isn't saying, oh, that we're making race divides here or ethnic divides here.

That's not what's happening.

What's happening is there's sin, there's enmity, that they set themselves up, they postured themselves against God's people, and God has cursed them, and God has told them that they are never, Israel, that they are never to seek the peace of the Ammonite and Moabite people.

Because there was this reality where, as the people of Israel were coming out of Egypt, they had to pass through the territory of Ammon.

And instead of meeting them with bread and water, like the passage says, instead of meeting their needs, instead of coming to them to help them, they stood against them.

And then even further, as they were traveling, there's this king named Balach, and he was the king of the Moabites.

And he had hired Balaam, who was supposed to be this prophet of God, to curse Israel because he was afraid of them, because they were too many people.

And through this whole story, right?

Have you ever heard of Balaam's donkey, right?

Donk, the donkey who the angel of the Lord caused to speak to Balaam, like, hey, dude, whatever you're doing's wrong, you need to change your way.

Listen to the angel of the Lord.

Um, Balaam was going to curse God's people, but God turned that around through this divine interaction, and the people of Israel were saved by the Lord.

And so they cursed Balaam because of his wickedness of heart.

They cursed the Moabite people because they were going to destroy Israel.

But here's what happened: even though the Moabites and the Ammonites did not pursue violence against Israel, here was the outcome.

And this is the heart of why the Lord said, You shall not have any relationship with these people.

Numbers 25, 1 through 3, we see this.

While Israel lived in Shatem, the people began to whore with the daughters of Moab.

These invited the people to the sacrifices of their gods, and the people ate and bowed down to their gods.

So Israel yoked himself to Baal of Paor, and the anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel.

What was the heart of this passage, of this separation?

The nation started to influence God's people.

Idolatry and false worship began to permeate into their society, and they went away from the true worship of the living God Yahweh.

There's many of us who might have experienced in our own lives where relationships threatened our righteousness.

We convinced ourselves that, oh, we could be friends with these people and intimately near with them, or I could have this boyfriend or girlfriend, or I could have whatever.

And what we thought is we would be the ones who would actually transform them, but many of us have had experiences where that relationship actually informed unrighteousness in our lives.

It threatened the identity that we had in Christ, and because we didn't consecrate ourselves rightly from the things of this world.

Now we should be a people who engage the world, who run into the world with the light of the gospel, with with with the hope of Christ.

We should be meeting culture on their turf in their terms, but we have to be cautious in the ways that we yoke ourselves with others because often bad company corrupts good manners, as the Bible says.

We see throughout the whole story of Ark of Scripture that it is the foreign nations who do not love God, who do not worship God, who do not fear God, cause God's people often to threaten their own righteousness.

So Israel separated themselves from the people of Amon and Moab to keep themselves undefiled in worship to God.

But then we see the second relationship.

And there's this priest named Eliashib.

And he has this relationship with this guy named Tobiah.

Tobiah is an Ammonite.

That name might ring familiar from the series, but we'll kind of refresh you on who Tobiah is throughout this.

But let's read verses four through seven.

Now, before this, Eliashib, the priest, who was appointed over the chambers of the house of our God, and who was related to Tobiah, prepared for Tobiah a large chamber where they had previously put the grain offering, the frankincense, the vessels, and the tithes of grain, wine and oil, which were given by commandment to the Levites, singers, and gatekeepers, and the contributions for the priests.

While this was taking place, I was not in Jerusalem, for in the thirty-second year of Artaxerxes, king of Babylon, I went to the king, and after some time I asked leave for the king, and came to Jerusalem, and I then discovered the evil that Eliashib had done for Tobiah, preparing for him a chamber in the courts of the house of God.

Now remember, Nehemiah is away in service to the king of Persia.

While he's away, this priest named Eliashib clears out a room in the temple for Tobiah to have an apartment in.

Can you imagine that?

Can you imagine, like, oh Tobiah, who was an Ammonite, an enemy of God, who did not love God, worship God, serve God.

He says, Hey, I want to move into Jerusalem.

And Eliashib is like, okay, well, we've got all this space over here.

We can build.

No, no, no.

Tobiah says, no.

I want a room in the temple.

And Eliashib allows for Tobiah to make space and make a home for him inside the temple where all of these resources that were actually used to give to those who oversaw temple worship, right?

So that they could have a living.

The grain and the oil and the wine, that was for the Levites and priests and singers and gatekeepers so that they didn't have to worry about resourcing themselves through labor that was not focused on the worship of God.

It was so that they could stay focused in the temple and live, make a living.

That was the purpose of this room.

So what did Eliashib do?

He cleared the whole thing out and said, Hey Tobiah, I've got a great space.

I got a penthouse suite in the temple for you.

Eliashib, the priest, who was appointed over the chambers of the house of God, who was related to Tobiah, verse 4 says.

Eliashib had responsibility and authority.

He had responsibility and authority, and Tobiah was going to exploit that.

Because he was related to him through marriage.

You see, Tobiah was an enemy of Nehemiah and an enemy of the people of God.

We read back through Nehemiah and we see that he was the one who said it displeased him greatly that someone had come to seek the welfare of the people of Israel.

It displeased Tobiah, Nehemiah 2.10.

Tobiah is brought up in Nehemiah 4.3 again.

He's the one that says, This wall that you're building so feeble that even if a fox comes up and lays a paw on it, it will crumble to the ground.

That's that same Tobiah.

And then in 6, 10a and 12, we see Tobiah again.

It says, Now, when I went into the house of Shemiah, the son of Deliah, and I understood and saw that God had not sent him, but he had pronounced the prophecy against me because Tobiah and Sanbalat had hired him.

Tobiah tried to get Nehemiah killed by disobeying God and going into the temple.

So Tobiah is not a friend of God's people.

He does not love God.

He does not fear God.

But here Eliashib says, No, come, come and make a home here.

Too often in our life we allow these enemies of God, people who do not love God, serve God, to make residence in our lives, to set up a home in our very life.

And it threatens the righteousness of God that he has called us to.

And I love how Nehemiah responds to this whole situation.

If we read on in verse 8, we can pick up, or sorry, let's go back.

Eliash, he created a place for Tobiah to live in Jerusalem in the temple, where they stored all the resources to provide the Levites to conduct worship for God.

Right?

And then in 10 he says, I also found out that the portions of the Levites had not been given to them in verse 10.

So that the Levites and the singers who did the work had fled each to his field.

So, so the worship of God suffers because of the relationship between Eliashib and Tobiah through this marriage.

And Eliashib allows Tobiah to come into the temple, and what did they have to do?

They had to get rid of something so that he would have a space to live.

So they got rid of all the resources that provided a living for the Levites, the singers, the gatekeepers.

So what did they do?

Well, they had to go back out into the field.

They had to leave Jerusalem to the surrounding towns and villages because they had to make a living for themselves.

So the worship of God suffered because of the neglect and sin of Eliashib.

How does Nehemiah respond to this situation?

Verse 8, and I was very angry.

And I threw all the household furniture of Tobiah out of the chamber.

Then I gave orders, and they cleansed the chambers, and I brought back there the vessels of the house of God with the grain offering and the frankincense.

So, verse 11, I confronted the officials and said, Why is the house of God forsaken?

And I gathered them together and set them in their stations.

Then all Judah brought the tithe of the grain, wine, and oil into the storehouse.

And I appointed as treasurers over the storehouses Shelemiah the priest, Zadok the scribe, and uh Padiah of the Levites, and as their assistant Hanan the son of Zakor, son of Mataniah, for they were considered reliable, and their duty was to distribute to their brothers.

What does Nehemiah do?

He throws all of Tobias' stuff out of the temple, and he says, Bring back what belongs here.

Bring back the things that God has appointed to be here for his worship.

And often in the church, we're we're doing, if you look at the church in America, what are we doing?

We are clearing out the things that God has appointed to be among the assembly of his people, and we're allowing to set up residence people who hate God, who do not love him, who do not serve him, who do not worship him.

And you're seeing that for churches to be culturally relevant, they're inviting Ammonites in to come in and speak to their children, read story time to them, have the pulpit on a Sunday morning, lead them in worship.

They're trying to be culturally relevant.

They're trying to be friendly and have a relationship with this world.

And what's happening?

The worship of God is suffering because it is only the people of God who can worship God rightly.

Because his spirit has filled them, has caused them to come alive and desire to worship him properly in spirit and truth.

Our relationships can threaten our righteousness.

When we yoke ourselves with those who hate God, and if we are honest with ourselves, if they had their way, it would cause us to give ourselves over to false gods.

We would fool ourselves to believe that people who do not love God or serve God or worship him are ever going to cause our spiritual life to flourish more in him.

No.

If they can have their way, whether they're conscious about it, purposeful about it or not, it would be that we would turn from our God and that we would go to the idolatry of their own heart.

Nehemiah ends this section with his first prayer of remembrance in verse 14 Remember me, O my God, concerning this, and do not wipe out my good deeds that I have done for the house of my God and for his service.

The second situation that we find ourselves in in Nehemiah 13 is in 15 through 22, and it's selfish ambition over Sabbath rest.

Selfish ambition over Sabbath rest.

Here Nehemiah recounts the people of Jerusalem allowing merchants to come in and sell goods and work on the Sabbath.

They were pursuing revenue over rest in the hurriedness of our life.

How often do we forsake the calling of God to rest, to be in his presence, to worship him on the Lord's day, to be in communion with his people, to be of one in service to the king.

How often do we seek the busyness of life?

And it might work itself out in the revenue of achievement.

It might work itself in the revenue of a bank account.

It might work itself in the revenue of just feeling important with your life.

But often we pursue revenue over rest like Israel.

In verse 15, it says, In those days I saw in Judah people treading wine presses on the Sabbath and bringing in heaps of grain and loading them on donkeys and also wine, grapes, figs, and all kinds of loads which they brought into Jerusalem on the Sabbath day.

And I warned them on the day when they sold food.

Tyrians also, who lived in the city, brought in fish and all kinds of goods, and sold them on the Sabbath to the people of Judah in Jerusalem itself.

You see, the prophet Jeremiah had prophesied to Israel long ago that they would be destroyed if they profaned the Sabbath.

This is the exact thing that got Jerusalem into the condition where they needed both Zerubbabel and Nehemiah to come in and restore the temple and to rebuild the wall so that they could be God's people once again.

Nehemiah reminds them of this truth and challenges them on their perceived forgetfulness and disobedience in verse 17.

Then I confronted the nobles of Judah and said to them, What is this evil thing that you are doing?

Profaning the Sabbath day?

Did not your fathers act in this way?

And did not our God bring all this disaster on us and on this city?

Now you're bringing more wrath on Israel by profaning the Sabbath?

You see, Nehemiah, being the man of action that he is, was full of zeal for the Lord.

He he puts leaders in place to guard the city from sinful pursuits, from pursuing revenue over rest, and to keep the Sabbath holy.

Verse 19 As soon as it began to grow dark as the gates of Jerusalem before the Sabbath, I commanded that the doors should be shut and gave orders that they should not be opened until after the Sabbath.

And I stationed some of my servants at the gates that no load might be brought in on the Sabbath day.

Then the merchants and sellers of all kinds of wares lodged outside Jerusalem once or twice.

But I warned them and said to them, Why do you lodge outside the wall?

If you do so again, I will lay hands on you.

From that time on they did not come on the Sabbath.

Then I commanded the Levites that they should purify themselves and come and guard the gates to keep the Sabbath day holy.

So here's what we see people coming in to try and sell goods on the Sabbath.

Nehemiah reminds the people of God.

Jeremiah had prophesied this, and the fulfillment of the prophecy came through as the Lord God allowed our enemies to conquer us and send us into exile and to destroy Jerusalem.

Do you want to do this exact same thing?

Do you want to repeat history?

Do you not get this through your thick skull yet?

And so what does he do?

He puts leaders in place of the gates so that nobody could come in.

But then they act like it's Black Friday, right?

They are the ones camping out, you know, we go, they're camping outside the door so they could get in and sell other stuff.

And this happens a couple of times.

I love what Nehemiah says.

He cautions them, I'm gonna lay hands on you, right?

Nehemiah is holy enough to lay hands, hood enough to throw hands.

He's ready to do something about it.

Because he's saying, you're not gonna be here and profane the Sabbath in such a way that it brings destruction upon us once again.

The people of God had chosen selfishness over the Sabbath.

Man, when we don't rest, aren't we being the most selfish people we possibly could be?

The reality of your inbox, the reality of your to-do list, the reality of the things that are in front of you, they will always be there.

They are unending, relentless, never giving up.

But the rest of God.

To serve him, to love him, to be in fellowship and communion with him.

We can be busy to death.

You see, their greed and refusal to obey God jeopardize the well-being of the whole city.

Nehemiah concludes this passage with another prayer of remembrance.

Remember this also in my favor, O my God, and spare me according to the greatness of your steadfast love.

The last instance we see is in summary of verses 44 through 47.

We see the fallout of unfaithful fathers.

The fallout of unfaithful fathers.

In this last situation, we see more clearly the fruit of God's people being unequally yoked with the foreign nations.

We read in verse 23, In those days also I saw the Jews who had married women of Ashdod, Amon and Moab.

So again, Amon and Moab, the Amonites and Moabites, they're coming back to this same thing.

But what was the fruit of that?

What was the fruit of this relationship?

Half of their children spoke the language of Ashdod, and they could not speak the language of Judah, but only the language of each people.

The fallout of unfaithful fathers is that their children didn't even know God.

They didn't know his language.

If they didn't know his language, they couldn't read his word.

If they couldn't read his word, they couldn't know how to be obedient to it.

They couldn't know how to serve him and how to worship him.

They had no understanding of their God.

They fully embraced the relationship with the foreign nations that not only did it cause them to be idolatrous, but it caused their children to not even know him.

And Nehemiah loses control of his anger, right?

This is the nastiness of two things: sin in the heart of people, and unrighteous anger in the heart of zeal.

We see here in Nehemiah verse 25, and I confronted them.

And Nehemiah just goes, he goes, Awal, curse them, beat them, pulled out their hair.

Nehemiah was a rough dude.

And I made them take an oath in the name of God, saying, You shall not give your daughters to their sons, or take their daughters for your sons or for yourselves.

Did not Solomon, king of Israel, sin on account of such women?

Among the many nations there was no king like him, and he was beloved by his God, and God made him king over all Israel.

Nevertheless, foreign women made him even to sin.

Shall we then listen to you and do all this great evil and act treacherously against our God by marrying foreign women?

Nehemiah is at his wit's end.

And you can imagine him as a leader, right?

Him as a leader.

He comes into Jerusalem as it's in shambles, and he leads the charge, where in 52 days the wall is rebuilt.

A two-mile wall that that that stands at its peak, 40 feet high, eight feet thick, 52 days he rebuilds this thing.

And then what does he do?

He reinstates the word of God.

They hear the word of God for the first time in generations.

He institutes the Levites and priests so that the worship of God could happen within Jerusalem.

He sets up to where the offerings of the people that God had commanded them could actually supply a life for the priests and Levites who oversaw the spiritual vitalness of Jerusalem.

He did all this work.

He goes away for a little bit, comes back, and we see at the end of Nehemiah 13, he is at his wit's end because there seems to be no inner man transformation among the people.

And what does he do?

He loses it.

He starts beating people, pulling their hair out.

Sweet Lord, if church discipline ever gets to that level here, find a new church.

Because we have allowed a heart of zeal to produce unrighteous anger.

Now there's an anger that is permitted and actually seen to be in the heart of Christians.

That is right before the Lord.

Righteous anger is being angry at the right things and responding in the right ways.

Righteous anger is being angry at the right things and responding in the right ways.

We should have righteous anger as God's people.

When we look at the tragedy of our headlines this week, we should be angry.

When we look at what the culture is doing around us, we should be angry.

When we see our brother continuing to fall to the same sin over and over and over again, we should be angry righteously.

But we should respond in right ways because we're disciplined by the Spirit.

Because we have self-control of fruit of the Spirit in our life.

We should seek the welfare of those individuals because Christ has sought the welfare of us.

Unrighteous anger means being angry over the wrong things or responding in the wrong ways.

Some of us we have a problem because we're not angry about the right things, we're angry about the wrong things.

You're angry about stuff that doesn't matter.

Stuff that at the end of time will burn up and perish and have no impact on eternity.

And then we get worked up and we respond in the wrong ways because we don't have the fruit of the spirit of self-control over our lives.

And what do we do?

We get men who were strengthened to protect and to provide.

We see them turning into tyrants and they abuse and they oppress and they hurt instead of help.

They uh push down instead of seek flourishing.

You see, these men were unfaithful to the word of God, and as a result, even their own children did not know the Lord or his ways.

It was becoming evident that through though the external work was completed, there was still much to accomplish on the inner man of Israel.

Verse 28, and one of the sons of Yodah, the son of Eliashib, the high priest, was the son-in-law of Sanbala the Horonite.

Therefore I chased him from me.

Remember them, O my God, because they have disecrated the priesthood and the covenant of the priesthood and the Levites.

Thus I cleansed them from everything foreign, and I established the duties of the priests and Levites, each in his own work, and I provided for the wood offering at appointed times and for the first fruits.

You see at the end of Nehemiah, just an exhausted man.

He's exhausted.

He beat up all these dudes and pulled their hair out, right?

Cursed them.

Finally, he's probably all wheezy.

You ever seen like a fighter at the end of three rounds?

He just can't barely even stand up.

And here comes old Sanbalat, the Horonite, right?

Tobiah's buddy coming at Nehemiah.

I could just imagine he probably picks up like a stone or a sword and he's just like, dude, you really want this right now?

And chases him out of Jerusalem.

A tired man who loves God.

His ambitions are right.

He loves God.

He loves God's people.

He wants to see the glory of God reign in Israel.

But he sees the heart of man.

Nehemiah closes the book with the last plea for God to remember the work of righteousness that he has labored in.

This is the end of this epic story of reformation.

What is the end of it?

It's a tired man who pleads, Remember me, oh my God, for good.

At the heart of Nehemiah 13, really at the heart of the whole book of Nehemiah, we see this the reformation of the external does not ensure the renewing of the internal.

The reformation of the external does not ensure the renewing of the internal.

The end of Nehemiah shows us the all-true story of self, the cyclical propensity we have in the highs and the lows of our own faith and conduct.

Nehemiah had tirelessly worked to get Israel to a renewed state.

While his efforts were in regard successful, the striving for cleaning up the external seemed to have led to a neglect of the inner man.

Or was it just simply in this context of the newly restored city, men had space to be weak.

Men had space to wander from the God that they had recently rededicated themselves to.

Don't we see that in culture today?

Strong men who make good times.

Now we're celebrating weak men who do not lead their family, who do not protect them, provide them, lead them spiritually.

We celebrate the beta male of culture.

And what are these weak men getting us?

Hard times.

What about in the church?

Men left the building for so long.

And it provided hard times.

Now we need strong men in the church who fight for sound doctrine, who contend for the righteousness of God being expressed in his people, who who strive to see worship done rightly, to take ownership and responsibility.

We need strong men to make good times in the church.

You see, we have a propensity as people to simply focus on the external and give little, if any, effort toward addressing the internal realities of man.

I'll run through these quickly as I'm well over time.

And these kids are doing awesome.

You guys understanding everything I'm saying?

Yeah.

Rock and roll.

I'm gonna quiz you later.

Many of us, we live as though the external is all that needs changed.

We live as though the external is all that needs changed.

This is the mantra of culture.

Man intrinsically is good.

And all we need to do is set up the right rules, the right legislation, the right policies, and we will get the utopia that we so long for.

All man needs is a little bit of fencing around him because ultimately he is good.

And this reality is creeping into the church where we believe that we can legislate the kingdom come.

Where we can bring about the kingdom on earth through our own efforts of these external changes and policies, because ultimately man is good.

We want the kingdom without submission to the king.

And I'm sorry to tell you, it won't happen because we don't just need rules, policies, legislation.

We don't just need something coming down the pipeline from Capitol Hill.

We need renewed hearts, we need the transformation of the Holy Spirit, we need the power of a resurrected Christ renewing us from the inside out to bring any true and real change because we are wicked in our nature.

Jeremiah 17, 9 says, the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately sick.

Who can understand it?

This is the working anthropology of man in the sight of God.

Why did God bring the flood of Noah to destroy the earth?

Because he saw that every thought and intention of man was wicked.

That's why the flood had to happen.

God in his mercy spared some in Noah and his family that through Noah Christ might come and spare some in his mercy and grace.

We don't just need to change the external of man.

The man needs a new heart.

There is nothing we can do in society that puts the right rules and resources around people that will cause them to flourish properly.

Because the external is not the only thing that needs changed.

Some of us, though, we believe we live as though the external will change the internal.

We believe the external will change the internal.

We put all these rules inside because we believe that it is actually what we do that creates who we are.

Praise God that that's not the message of the gospel.

The message of the gospel is not just, hey, clean yourself up, try harder, be kind, be nice.

You can go to any place in public and you'll see like a hundred soccer moms with shirts that say, like, be kind on it.

Or be nice, be a good human.

News flash, sweetheart, can't happen.

And even as you strive and strive to be kind and be nice, Christ was not nailed to a cross and then hit a cosmic.

Timeout.

Wait, hold on.

Did I say um you guys should just be nicer to one another?

I forgot that part.

Okay.

Uh, if you could get me down off this cross and you guys could just be nicer to one another, I don't have to go through this.

No, Christ was nailed to a cross because we are incapable of niceness.

Kindness in the way that produces the flourishing of life, that produces the kingdom of God, that produces his presence dwelling with his people.

We can't be nice enough, kind enough.

You see, we always act within the church.

We have this propensity of younger brothers becoming elder brothers, in that we put all of this legalism around who we are, and we believe that that's going to actually change us, that we're going to become something through the things that we do.

But we have the whole teaching of Christ flipped.

It's not what you do that makes you who you are, it's who you are that determines what you do.

Matthew 12, 33, Jesus saying this to the Pharisees either make the tree good and its fruits good, or make the tree bad and its fruit bad.

For the tree is known by its fruit.

You see, it's the tree that produces the fruit.

It's not the other way around.

You can't go around gluing bananas on an apple tree and expect it to become a banana tree.

No, the apple tree produces apples.

Why?

Because it's about what the tree is in itself.

This is why we need to be new people.

We need to be transformed by the power of the gospel.

We don't need to just work on the externals of religion to try and make us good people.

It's impossible.

It is an exhausting practice of failure.

But the hope of the gospel for us, church, is that Jesus transforms us from the inside out.

Jesus transforms us from the inside out.

Jesus is not as concerned with the externals of religion as much as he is with the transformation of the inner man.

He doesn't come to just clean you up on the outside.

He comes and meets you in the mess that you are, and he transforms you from the inside out.

The prophet Ezekiel prophesied about what would come in the finished work of Christ, the Messiah who had come for his people, and he says, This, and I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you, and I'll remove the heart of stone from your flesh, and give you a heart of flesh, and I will put my spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules.

If we were to unpack that prophecy in Ezekiel, what's happening first?

The first thing that's happened is not walking in the statutes and obedience of God.

The first thing that's happening is that the heart of stone in your chest is pulled out and he puts a heart of flesh in there.

And then he puts his spirit within you.

That's the inner transformation of being, so that we might rightly walk out the obedience of God that he calls us to.

We can live right lives if we can live right lives if we seek inner transformation first by the power of the gospel.

One of the core values of Sacred Mission Church is transformation, obedience, and righteousness.

But it's our second core value, because our first core value is Jesus first and foremost.

If we don't have the finished work of Christ applied to us, if we aren't given new hearts and putting his spirit within us, then that transformation is impossible.

If anything, it's damning.

For us to seek to be different people without the power of the Spirit and the hope of the gospel is self-righteousness and God will reject it.

We are only found favored and blessed and earning of his fellowship and relationship because of Christ's finished work, not because of our fetal work.

So our hope is this.

Our vision for the church.

We declare with the reformers sempre reformanda.

Semper reformanda.

You see, the reformers saw the great danger of their day.

And it wasn't in false doctrine, it wasn't in superstition, it wasn't in idolatry, but it was formalism.

Formalism that we would learn how to play church.

The danger of formalism is that the church member could subscribe to true doctrine, participate in the worship in a biblically regulated church, and yet still have no faith.

You see, that's the danger of us.

Sacred mission, we love good theology.

We love to be able to proclaim right phrases and truth.

We love worship that's centered around Jesus.

We love the expression of the church rightly.

But listen to me, you can be here for 20 years and learn like an infant to regurgitate the right answers.

And you can pride yourself on right theology, and you can pride yourself on the liturgy of the church and the way that you function within it and never have true faith.

But your right answers to questions in Bible study does not save you.

Be afraid of that, be cautious of that.

I don't care if you can quote Calvin front to back.

If you don't have a new heart, it doesn't matter.

Martin Lloyd Jones says it like this the minister of Westminster Chapel in London in the 20th century, he says this the Christian faith is ultimately not a matter of doctrine or understanding or of intellect.

It's a condition of the heart.

So what did Van Lodenstein mean by his famous phrase, Semper Reformanda?

Always reforming.

It'd probably be something like this.

Since we now have a church reformed in the externals of doctrine, worship, and government, may we always be working to ensure that our hearts and lives are being reformed by the word and by the Spirit of God.

Let's pray.