Nehemiah: Theology of the Cross / Life by Grace Alone

Well, it is our last week in the book of Neop.

We've been journeying through this book for most of the spring.

By the end of chapter 12, in Jerusalem, the people have rebuilt the temple.

They've restored worship.

They've rediscovered the word of God.

They've rebuilt the walls around the city.

In chapter 12, last week, we saw how they dedicated the walls.

Everyone is grateful.

Everyone is generous.

Everyone is worshiping.

And they all lived happily ever after.

Well, we would think that at the end of chapter 12, but there's a chapter 13.

It's easy to think, you know, like, oh, and they're all perfect Christians.

And everything in life is lollipops and rainbows.

And that's what we think at the end of 12.

But then we have 13.

Now a lot has happened between chapters 12 and chapter 13.

Remember, Nehemiah was actually a servant of the Persian king.

So after the walls are finished in chapter 12, he goes back to Persia.

He returns to Persia.

So between 12 and 13, 12 years have passed.

So when we jump into 13, 12 years have passed since that 12, all the generosity and the gratefulness and the worship, and look what God has done, and all of that spiritual revival in 12, 12 years have passed when we jump into 13.

And then Nehemiah returns to Jerusalem.

And it is not happily ever after.

The spiritual revival and the worship services are gone.

Everyone has forgotten what's important.

Maybe you remember Tobiah earlier in the Nehemiah story.

When Nehemiah was trying to get these walls built, he had a handful of enemies trying to stop him and limit him.

And Tobiah was one of these enemies.

And Tobiah plotted against him.

Tobiah shows back up in chapter 13 because Tobiah gets his family, a family member, Eliashib the priest, to clear out a room in the temple for himself.

This room is supposed to be for supplies for the temple priests and supplies for the temple workers.

But Tobiah selfishly takes it for himself.

Give himself an apartment, basically, a free apartment.

Nehemiah shows up, chapter 13, verse 8 and 9.

Nehemiah says, 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.

And point number one is this we just sang it.

We are prone to wander.

Lord, I feel it.

We feel our wandering hearts, don't we?

Wanting more of something, wanting something else, wanting something we shouldn't have.

That's why we sing the hymn.

Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it, prone to leave the God I love.

I love this God, and yet I'm prone to wander away.

Here's my heart.

Oh, take and seal it.

Seal it for thy courts above.

Last Friday I went out and cut the grass.

So I did the cut and I blew everything off.

Which once you love a blower, you feel so accomplished with the blower.

Blower fans, anybody else a blower fan?

God, I mean, if you are doubting your productivity in the world or life purpose, just get a blower.

It solves a lot, a lot of angst issues.

So I blew everything off.

I'm an accomplished person.

I'm walking back to my garage, and as I walk back, I cut through the backyard and I see my azalea bed, little azalea bed.

Here's a picture of it up against the trampoline.

That's the azalea bed.

They're not Augusta azaleas.

I know, but they're my azaleas, right?

They're mine.

And I love these azaleas.

They blew them in the spring, and I love them.

They're mine.

And I saw on top of that little bed there of those azaleas, I saw like a weed vine growing on top.

So goodness, I hadn't seen that.

So I put the blower down and I go over and I pull on the top.

It wasn't much on top.

It was enough for me to get my hands on a pull, and as I pull, I look kind of like underneath, and it is just everywhere.

Like it is just wrapped around and it is everywhere.

A little bit on top, but just grow under the surface.

It's just everywhere.

See, Nehemiah 8 through 12 are wonderful.

Get things done, right?

That's the kind of people we are.

Let's get some stuff done.

Let's build some walls.

Let's do it.

We can we can do it.

Improve, build a wall, dedicate it, be thankful, give generously, worship.

We would all say, yes, that's who we want to be.

I want to be that kind of person.

And then we get chapter 13.

Right?

We get finally the weeds pop up and get on top of the Zalea bush.

Now that that weed had been growing all spring.

Right?

It didn't just show up.

Like it'd been underneath, growing, but then finally it becomes visible.

In us is the propensity to wander.

Even in a chapter 12 moment of life, when we're thriving and we're giving and we're worshiping and we're thankful.

Even then is the propensity to wander from those very things we love, from the God we love.

We call this sin.

Even when we are thriving, there's a sin rem growing under the surface.

Even the most put together among us are not really fully put together.

And the reason why you feel imperfect is because you're imperfect.

The reason why you wander from the very things you love is because you're a sinner.

To accept that I am imperfect or I am a sinner, that is just to acknowledge the reality that who we are and the world we live in.

Chapter 13 is just full of this wandering, these compromises.

Nehemiah 13, 10 through 12, the people stopped giving to the temple.

Nehemiah 13, 15 through 22 is where Nehemiah addresses the people stopped practicing rest on the Sabbath.

Nehemiah 13, 23 through 25, the people married pagan people groups.

And the New Testament, Paul explains sin this way, Romans 5, 12 through 14.

Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned.

For sin indeed was in the world before the law was given, but sin is not counted where there is no law.

Yet death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sinning was not like the transgression of Adam, who was a type of the one who was to come.

Now, Paul gets pretty theological there.

What he's saying is the law, right and wrong, is given to us for us to see the reality of which who we are.

The law, right and wrong, is given, and as soon as you become aware of law, what is right and wrong, you and I, we become aware that we are not perfect unto the law.

We are like Adam.

If you read the Genesis story, we're like Adam.

We're prone to wander, prone to want the thing, the fruit that we were told not to want or to go after.

And we all need Jesus.

Point number two is this sin is best understood as idolatry of the heart.

We see that in Romans 1, where Paul says, sin is idolatry.

When we worship the created thing instead of the creator, the created, all the good stuff that we love, and some of it really good stuff.

But when we love it more than the creator, when we esteem it and value it more than the creator, now we're in idolatry and it shows the sinfulness of our hearts.

Pastor and author John Ortberg, he asked these questions for me.

These are questions always helpful to me, for me to see my own idolatry and wandering.

Do I feel like I have enough money and possessions right now?

Or do I feel like I need a little more?

Do I have enough power and control in my life, or do I feel like my life needs more?

Is there a relationship in my life which I am so attached that I have to have it for my life to have meaning?

What am I willing to betray of my values in order to obtain that one thing?

What desire is so strong in me that it controls my thinking?

And you can see how the idolatry of our hearts and the sin in our hearts can actually imprisons us from the freedom that God wants for us.

We're prone to wander.

And it's so easy to get stuck in the shame of that wandering.

But Paul's point is that the path of condemnation, of just wallowing in the condemnation of the reality of our sin, is not our full story.

If so, then this reality of chapter 13 would just be the most depressing thing imaginable.

What our story is, is justification by grace.

That's the real story of our lives.

That you are fully known in the chapter 13 of your life, in the wandering.

Fully known and fully loved by Jesus.

While we are Adam in Christ, we understand and rest in our redemption.

Point number three is this: while we are prone to wander, God is devoted to pursue.

We see this as Nehemiah's a picture of Christ.

He's an Old Testament picture of Christ.

He's showing coming back to Jerusalem in their wandering state.

He's addressing all the issues.

He's not just staying in Persia.

He's coming back, he's coming toward them.

Romans 5.8, but God shows his love for us in that while we are still sinners, Christ died for us.

This week I kept thinking about that needy woman in John 4.

Do you remember the story?

Jesus is headed to Galilee and he goes through Samaria, which was an odd route because the Jews despised, hated, avoided the Samaritans.

And yet here is Jesus at this well speaking to a woman that he should not be speaking to.

He's in a place he shouldn't be.

And it's a beautiful image of how Christ pursues you in your weakness.

And all the ways that we feel beat down or worn out or weary or exhausted or guilty or ashamed as an outsider that Jesus pursues you, right?

There.

John 4, 7 through 9.

A woman from Samaria came to draw water.

Jesus said to her, Give me a drink.

For his disciples had gone away into the city to buy food.

The Samaritan woman said to him, How is it that you, a Jew, like how like how why are you speaking to me?

Jews don't speak to me.

How is it that you, a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a woman of Samaria?

The most famous painting of the scene is Annabel Karachi's, Christ and the Samaritan woman.

It is painted around 1600.

Here's the picture, the painting.

Jesus is calmly seated and he's speaking while the woman, the Samaritan woman, sits listening intently.

That water jar is there.

It's a symbol of both her task, of why she's there, but it's also a symbol of her deeper thirst.

It's a symbol of our thirst, that her soul, our soul thirsts for something more.

The core of who we are keeps thirsting.

You remember what Jesus says to her?

He says, I'm living water.

This week I uh when I was looking at this painting, the thing that hit me was I had always I always imagined the woman in John 4 to be much more beat up than this.

She's looking pretty good.

I mean, I was like, isn't that interesting?

I was like, I think I've in my mind, the John 4 woman is just, I mean, she's had five husbands.

She's on the sixth guy.

She's had a lot of life happen to her.

In my mind, I've always imagined this woman to be just worn out and weary and wrangled, right?

She looks pretty good.

I mean, you wouldn't know that her entire life is a mess.

And I realized most of us look pretty good.

Like we dress up really well.

Even while there's all sorts of stuff going on inside of us.

And I love that Jesus knows that.

He knows that we dress up really well.

And he knows everything that's still going on inside of us.

He knows all of that, he knows all of that about me.

And I can put on my did denims, and I can put on my Oxford button-up, and I can look pretty good.

And there's still all sorts of stuff going on.

And while you and I are prone to wander, Jesus is devoted to pursue us.

Nehemiah 13, 29 through 31.

This is how the chapter ends, how the book ends.

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

Thus I cleanse them from everything foreign, and I established the duties of the priests and the Levites, each in his work.

And I provided for the wood offering at appointed times and for the first fruits.

Remember me, O my God, for good.

So two prayers conclude the book.

Remember them, O my God.

Verse 29 and verse 31.

Remember me, oh my God, for good.

Point number four is this is what Nehemiah 13 tells us.

We are securely God's beloved in Christ, but we need ongoing renewal.

Both those things are true.

We're securely God in Christ.

Securely beloved, on the cross, the full forgiveness is given you.

Fully forgiven.

You're fully forgiven, and you're fully righteous, fully given, fully beloved in Jesus alone.

Not your performance, not your pretending, nothing of you.

All of that is true, and we still need ongoing renewal.

Because life in me and you, we're not Nehemiah 12.

We want to be.

We would love to be.

It's our heart to be Nehemiah 12 people.

Grateful, generous, worshiping.

But the reality is a lot of life and a lot of us is Nehemiah 13.

But isn't it interesting that Nehemiah didn't end the book in chapter 12?

Because chapter 12 is just such a glorious high note.

What a way to end the book with chapter 12.

Remember, last week we talked about these, he had these two kind of like worshiping procession parades.

I mean, that's a way to end the book.

That's how we would end the movie.

We built the wall, we worshiped, everything's good.

And just the problem with that is as good as that is, as much as we want that, it's just not what life or our lives or Christian faith is like.

Reality feels much more like the weather this week.

How many times did it rain this week?

How many times in one day?

I think one day it rained like five times in one day.

There was a day we the staff went to lunch.

We walked down to get pizza.

Micah's pizza, thank you very much.

Walk down to get pizza.

On the way back, it's a six-minute walk.

It poured on us, it became beautiful out, and then it drizzled again.

Six minutes.

That was six minutes.

There's like three different weather fronts.

That feels a little bit more like life.

Like just really beautiful seasons and moments and times we're thriving, and then times when life really hits us, and life becomes complex and dynamic, and somebody hurts us, or we sin and we mess up.

Nehemiah 13 exists because we're flaky.

And we need Nehemiah 13 because we are not perfect.

Our lives are not Nehemiah 12 as much as we want them to be.

Nehemiah 13 declares, left to ourselves, apart from grace, apart from Nehemiah returning, the picture of Christ coming to us, apart from that, we're a mess.

Even as Christians.

And this is how Nehemiah points us to Jesus, because all of the law and the rules and the vows and who we should be, Nehemiah 12, is not enough to get us to stop from wandering.

Our performance for God is not enough.

We need God towards us, constantly toward us, for us.

Only the grace of God, by the work of the Holy Spirit in us, alive and flowing in our lives, can give the power to truly overcome sin.

Romans 8, 3, for God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do.

By sending his own son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh.

500 years ago, Martin Luther, the theologian, he coined two terms.

So this is a point that the Catholic Church was going, and then Luther comes along, he begins to read the Bible for himself.

He discovers this idea of justification by grace alone, through faith alone, and Christ alone, and he starts to write about this and read about this.

He's discovering this.

This is amazing what we have in Jesus.

And he coins these terms, theology of glory and theology of the cross, which is about how do we think about life?

How do we think about being Christian in this world?

A theology of glory says this maturity and life, like life where you flourish, is at the top of an endless incline of improvement.

So this is the delusion that life is at the top of this incline.

It's Nehemiah 8 through 12 without the reality of 13.

It's the law without grace.

It's all the rules without Jesus.

And like I said, it's not that we don't want to be Nehemiah 12 people, it's just that we're not.

We just don't pull it off.

We are prone to wander.

And this is why ideologies and theologies of moralism or prosperity will always end up crushing you and making you feel worse about yourselves and exhausting you.

So Luther, coming from Jesus and from Paul, he gives us the term, the idea of the theology of the cross.

That God provides salvation, wholeness, and fulfillment as I die into Christ.

So life is in honestly facing your sin and your weakness and your guilt and your shame.

We confess that we're prone to wander.

We confess at Nehemiah, this is who we are.

And we collapse into Jesus as we voice our mistakes and our needs.

We say stuff like, I just need help.

I need help.

I want to be Nehemia 12, I want to be generous, and I want to be worshiping, I want to be thankful.

But I'm discovering all these other parts of my heart, my motives.

Jesus, I need help.

And in that we remember how good and lovely and sufficient and enough He is for us.

Years ago, I saw this chart, a representation of what the Christian life can look like, the shrinking of the cross.

We could call this a theology of glory chart, way of life.

So we become Christians, and over time we realize how holy God is and how messed up we are, right?

You can see that as it moves from left to right.

Time goes by, some more we have a conversion, and inevitably what's going to happen is you're going to grow aware of God's holiness and how good and holy and right and loving that God is.

And you will, you will become aware of your own flesh and sinfulness.

If you don't become aware of it in your outer behaviors, you will certainly become aware of it in your own heart and how you think about people and your motives.

And if Jesus' loveliness and sufficiency stays the same for you throughout time, you will have to fill the gap with something else.

And often what we fill the gap with is our performance and pretending.

Because we discover the difference between who we should be and who we are.

And if the cross does not fill that gap, if the grace of God does not fill all of that and Jesus is getting bigger and bigger and bigger for you, you will fill the gap with your pretending and your performance.

And that's why you're so worn out and condemned.

But there's a theology of glory, and there's a theology of the cross.

And here's the other chart that I saw.

That over time, as we're growing aware of this difference, who we should be and who we are, God's holiness and who I am, I don't have to fill the gaps with my performance and my pretending to be righteous.

I can let Jesus get bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger.

Let me close with this quote.

This is Dane Ortland in the book Deeper.

Christian growth is, among other things, growth in sensing just how impoverished and powerless we are in our own strength.

How hollow and futile our efforts to grow spiritually are on our own steam.

The point in all this is that we must come to face to face with who we really are, left to our own steam.

Christian salvation is not assistance, it is resurrection.

The gospel does not take our good and complete us with God's help.

The gospel tells us we are dead and helpless, unable to contribute anything to our rescue, but the sin that requires it, Christian salvation is not enhancing, it is resurrecting.

So we're Nehemiah 13 people, we want to be Nehemiah 12 people, that presents a huge problem.

But fortunately, all of Nehemiah is sending us into the New Testament to cast our eyes, put our hearts in Jesus.

He knows all of it, and he still pursues you.

He knows all of you and he still pursues you.

Let's pray to God.

Heavenly Father, we're so grateful that you hear the prayer at the end of the Emaih, remember us.

Remember them, remember me, remember me.

And thank you that you you did, and you have.

Thank you that Jesus came to do the thing that law, to do the thing that our performance and our pretending cannot do.

That in Jesus we have all the full forgiveness of God, in Jesus we have all the full righteousness.

May any part of our lives of trusting and worship and generosity and gratefulness come out of our secure belovedness in Christ alone.

May we all the more rejoice in, cast our eyes upon and behold Jesus as he gets bigger and bigger for our hearts and our lives.

In Christ's name we pray.

Amen.