Nehemiah: The Story of Restoration – is there an order to change?
As we continue in the One Story series, Randy Rainwater teaches about how we can bring God’s order to our lives by examining the story of Nehemiah and the return to Jerusalem.
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Notes Transcript Video Audio iTunesGrace Fellowship Church
Randy Rainwater
Series: One Story: Digging Deeper
March 3, 2013
Return: Fix This House
Ezra 1; Ezra 3; Nehemiah 4
If you have your Bibles, open those up. If you don’t have your Bible, just slip up your hand, and we will get you one. You’re going to need it. We’re going to be jumping around here a little bit tonight. We’re going to begin in the book of Ezra, but go ahead and turn over to the book of Nehemiah. Originally those were one book, Ezra and Nehemiah, a compilation somewhat of the writings of Ezra and Nehemiah. As we are going to go through this tonight, we’re going to really camp out in Nehemiah 4.
We’ve been going down this process of looking at the One Story, this journey through the Return. We’ve seen creation and the kings and all of that and then the exile, and now the return, and we’re going back into the return and into this age again of these prophets speaking into this time period. Then we fall on what’s called the silent years, which is far from silent. Buddy and Jon will be getting into that in the future.
I want to start off tonight by asking this question…Does order matter? I have a couple of definitions for you here. Here’s the first one. A permutation is an arrangement of things in a particular order. That’s a permutation. Now a combination is an arrangement of items in no particular order, which is more like a Mexican restaurant, right? A combination. It doesn’t really matter if you eat the burrito or the taco first; they’re both basically the same thing, right? One’s a little bit bigger than the other one, maybe a couple of different ingredients, but it’s basically a tortilla and some meat and some cheese and some salsa inside. That’s a combination.
Now this is what’s interesting. If those are the appropriate definitions, what is a combination lock, a combination or a permutation? What is it? It’s a permutation. See, if you have a lock and you can pull any number up and it doesn’t need to be in any particular order, then it’s not a lock. I mean, all you’d do is turn it and it would open up. What do you call that? Okay, it’s getting going here a little bit. What do you call it when something is named inappropriately? What is that? A misnomer. It’s named incorrectly.
Like a clothes iron. It’s not actually a clothes iron. Why do they call it a clothes iron? Because 200 years ago, it was a piece of iron, and you would heat it up. It’s not an iron. It’s made out of plastic and some little skinny tin or something. So a permutation and a combination. This is the question we’re going to look at tonight. Does that order matter, and does that order matter in terms of things in life changing? I obviously believe it does.
When I was in college, I was working at a camp down in southern Georgia, Indian Springs Holiness Camp Meeting. Has anybody been to Indian Springs Holiness Camp Meeting? Nobody has been to the Camp Meeting. Nobody in the whole room. Okay, very popular place. It’s a Wesleyan Methodist camp and has been there for 150 years or something. I think John Wesley spoke there. I’m just joking.
It’s a really old camp and it’s an outdoor camp. For some reason, they hold this in the first week of August, outside, in Georgia. Okay, that’s a thought from hell. Why would you do a camp outside in Georgia in August? It is just too hot and miserable. If you really rate high and wind up being on the speaking team, they have these little bitty fans up there that move the incredibly hot, humid air across your sweaty face. It’s just a very uncomfortable experience.
I was a summer staffer at this camp. We’re sitting there, and one of my friends was there. It’s a very conservative camp. Girls were, therefore, not allowed to wear jeans because jeans are of the Devil. Instead they wear… Do you call it slacks, women? Ladies, would you call it slacks? Pants? Slacks. Okay, I just don’t want to say the wrong thing.
So she’s sitting there, and she has on a pair of pants, and this yellow jacket lands on her leg. Now I’m pretty good at killing insects. I mean, it’s a gift. I don’t have a lot of gifts, but I have that gift. Here’s the whole secret. If you look at them, they’ll fly away. If you look at an insect, they’ll know you’re getting ready to kill them, and they’ll fly away, because they’re not real smart, but they have some sense of understanding.
I’m not looking at it. You can do one of two things. If they’re in the air, if you’ll just smack really fast, they will not sting you. Now if you get stung, do not sue me, especially if you’re allergic. Please do not, “Randy said I wouldn’t get…” But if you just smack it really fast… I used to entertain my kids. They were pretty amazed. Do you remember this at all, Daniel? Probably not at all. The girls do.
The bug, a wasp or something, would be flying. I would just smack it in the car or something, and it would be stunned. It’d be stunned and I would kill it, or it would die. But if you smack them just really hard, really fast, they won’t sting you. For one thing, the stinger is pointed downward. This is proof that the permutation, the order of things, matters.
So this yellow jacket is on her leg, so I smacked it really hard, and she screamed, right in the middle of the preaching service. I turned to her and I said, “Don’t panic!” and she smacked me! I said, “There was a yellow jacket on your leg,” and she smacked me again because she was scared.
My wife does this. When she gets scared, she hits me. Does anybody else? When Anita gets scared, she hits me. If we’re ever out walking and somebody’s trying to mug us, I’m going to have to be blocking Anita over here while I’m trying to hit them over here, because she starts hitting me when she gets afraid. So my friend smacked me!
Now if I had done this in the proper order, things would’ve been very different. If I would’ve said, “Don’t be afraid; there’s a yellow jacket on your leg. I’m really good at killing them, especially if they’re on people’s legs. I’m going to smack that yellow jacket, and it’s going to be okay,” I would’ve killed the yellow jacket, and she would’ve bought me ice cream. It would’ve been very different than getting smacked. The order of things is really, really important.
The order of restoration… Because restoration is one of those things. It’s like the word hope. We want it. We desire it. We want restoration. As I’m teaching tonight, I would like you to be thinking about this question…What would restoration look like? We’re going to take some time at the end tonight and spend some time asking that question. What would restoration look like?
If you’re in exile, maybe personally, maybe as a family, maybe it’s with friendships, maybe it’s at work, if you’re in exile, what would it look like to come to a place of restoration? A couple of patterns that happen here, and we’ve seen this as we’ve been studying this. I have a timeline here that I just want to point out a couple of things as we’re talking about the return of God’s people.
We also want to say hello to our Internet viewers around the country. You can download the notes there if you go to gfc.tv and you click on the live feed. There’s a little place on the right and you can click on those as well, and you can see this timeline.
At 722, the northern kingdom goes off to the Assyrians. In 605, the southern kingdom is being attacked. Daniel and another group are taken off to Babylon. In 586, the entire southern kingdom falls to the Babylonians, completely destroyed. The northern kingdom basically never recovers. You see some places where some of the people go off and you’ll find them later on, but basically, as a kingdom, as a people, they’re gone forever. The southern kingdom is the people who come back. There’s a return of those people.
In 538, Babylon falls to the Persians. Cyrus, the king who sends them back, is the king at this time. In 537, Zerubbabel…he’s one of the big guys we’ve been learning about. He goes back to restore the altar, to bring back worship. Then…just look at the timeline…in 516 the temple is completed. This is all BC, working backwards. In 586, Xerxes and Esther. So Esther falls kind of in the middle of this thing before Nehemiah and Ezra. In 465, Artaxerxes becomes king. This is the king of the time of Nehemiah and of Ezra…Artaxerxes.
So Ezra returns to Jerusalem in 458. If you look and do the math you have about an 80-year period of time between Zerubbabel and Ezra. This is not just something that just happens all of a sudden. This is a period of time. It takes time. This process of restoration is not something that happens instantly. A lot of us, we’ve done something to mess up our lives and we want this restoration. We want things to just be made perfect right away. There’s a process of time that is in play here. So here’s the first thing that happens.
1. Upward. You have your triangle there. This upward. Zerubbabel rebuilds the altar for repentance and worship. I believe this restoration is a permutation, not a combination. There’s an order to this. Here’s the first thing; it’s the worship. In Ezra 1:1, “In the first year of Cyrus king of Persia, that the word of the LORD by the mouth of Jeremiah might be fulfilled, the LORD stirred up the spirit of Cyrus king of Persia…” (Ezra 1:1) By the way, Daniel is still alive at this. You can read about this in Daniel 10. All of these players are a part of this equation. Esther, Daniel, all these people are a part of this process of restoration.
“…the LORD stirred up the spirit of Cyrus king of Persia so that he made a proclamation throughout all his kingdom and also put it in writing: ‘Thus says Cyrus king of Persia: The LORD, the God of heaven, has given me all the kingdoms of the earth, and he has charged me to build him a house at Jerusalem, which is in Judah. Whoever is among you of all his people, may his God be with him, and let him go up to Jerusalem, which is in Judah, and rebuild the house of the LORD, the God of Israel–he is the God who is in Jerusalem.'” (Ezra 1:1-3)
So the first thing is they go. The second thing, Ezra 3:3: “They set the altar in its place, for fear was on them because of the peoples of the lands, and they offered burnt offerings on it to the LORD, burnt offerings morning and evening.” (Ezra 3:3) The second thing that happens in this initial part, this upward part, is there is repentance. The third thing is worship.
Ezra 3:10-13: “And when the builders laid the foundation of the temple of the LORD, the priests in their vestments came forward with trumpets, and the Levites, the sons of Asaph, with cymbals, to praise the LORD, according to the directions of David king of Israel. And they sang responsively, praising and giving thanks to the LORD, ‘For he is good, for his steadfast love endures forever toward Israel.’
And all the people shouted with a great shout when they praised the LORD, because the foundation of the house of the LORD was laid. But many of the priests and Levites and heads of fathers’ houses, old men who had seen the first house, wept with a loud voice when they saw the foundation of this house being laid, though many shouted aloud for joy…” (Ezra 3:10-12)
The context of this does not show so much that these priests are sad. They just are worshiping in a different way. By the way, one of the things I love about this place is that we have these multi-generations that worship in different ways. That’s not a bad thing, is it? It’s really not a bad thing.
If you go down to Brookwood, and you go to a game, and if Brookwood was playing for the state title, and they win the state title on a last-second, Hail Mary, 99-yard pass play, what will the kids do? They’ll go crazy and they’ll rush the field. What do the kids pray to the living God their parents don’t do? Rush the field. The last thing you want is your mom and dad out there tearing up pieces of turf. This is what you want your mom and dad doing. You want your mom and dad writing checks to the Touchdown Club so we can return there again next year.
It’s a different way we worship. It doesn’t mean one’s right and one’s wrong. We have to give each generation room to do that. If you come in here on a Wednesday night, it is a pretty amazing experience. If you’ve not done it, you should do it. You’ll love Jesus more. You really will. It is an incredible thing to watch these kids worship. It blesses me.
Dustin and I usually wind up back in there somewhere. I’m worshiping because of the words on the screen, but to watch the kids worship is just a blessing. When I’m going through my week, if I go through a hard time, it is one of those mental images I go back to…watching and listening to our kids worship God. It’s an incredible thing.
Verse 13: “…so that the people could not distinguish the sound of the joyful shout from the sound of the people’s weeping, for the people shouted with a great shout, and the sound was heard far away.” (Ezra 3:13)
2. Inward. We’ve had upward, and now we’re going inward. This is about 70 years later. Artaxerxes is now the king, and in Ezra 7:9, it says, “He had arranged to leave Babylon on April 8…” This is about Ezra. “…the first day of the new year, and he arrived at Jerusalem on August 4, for the gracious hand of his God was on him. This was because Ezra had determined to study and obey the Law of the LORD and to teach those decrees and regulations to the people of Israel.” (Ezra 7:9-10)
3. Outward. We’ve had an upward in worship, we’ve had an inward in the teaching of the law, and now something else is going to happen. Turn to Nehemiah 1. Let’s begin reading at verse 1. “The words of Nehemiah the son of Hacaliah. Now it happened in the month of Chislev, in the twentieth year, as I was in Susa the citadel, that Hanani, one of my brothers, came with certain men from Judah.
And I asked them concerning the Jews who escaped, who had survived the exile, and concerning Jerusalem. And they said to me, ‘The remnant there in the province who had survived the exile is in great trouble and shame. The wall of Jerusalem is broken down, and its gates are destroyed by fire.'” (Nehemiah 1:1-3) That wall represented something. That wall represented security and safety. That wall represented a place they could do commerce.
They could take their goods and create things and leave them there at night and they wouldn’t be stolen by robbers. That wall represented safety for their children, that their daughters wouldn’t be pulled off by evil people and sold into slavery, that their sons wouldn’t be pulled into wars they had nothing to do with. That wall represented they were a people.
It defined who they were, and that wall was broken down. If you read the rest of chapter 1:4-11 (and I encourage you to do that this week), you basically see a summation of 2 Chronicles 7:14. “…if my people who are called by my name humble themselves, and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land.” (2 Chronicles 7:14)
That is basically what Nehemiah is saying in the rest of this chapter. At verse 11, he says, “Now I was cupbearer to the king.” (Nehemiah 1:11) In chapter 2, he goes in and the king sees his cupbearer is distraught. Because he likes this person, because Nehemiah has built this reputation with the king, the king is concerned why Nehemiah is so downtrodden. “What’s wrong with you?”
Nehemiah tells him, and the king gives him permission to go back and rebuild this wall. He gives him letters of passport, these letters of transport that he can go. Nehemiah goes and inspects in chapter 2, but there is some measure of opposition. In chapter 3, there’s a system of rebuilding. He gets everyone involved. It is a beautiful organizational plan that everyone has a responsibility and everybody has a job. It’s a beautiful story.
Then in chapter 4, which is where we’re going to camp out… (This has all been the preamble to the sermon.) The sermon is not going to be very long. Stay with me. Then we’re going to hopefully go deep. I’m going to ask you to be vulnerable here tonight. In chapter 4, we see this building starts taking place in earnest, but there’s a problem.
Chapter 4, beginning at verse 7, “But when Sanballat and Tobiah and the Arabs…” It’s Geshum, the Arab. “…and the Ammonites…” That was Tobiah, by the way. “…and the Ashdodites heard that the repairing of the walls of Jerusalem was going forward and that the breaches were beginning to be closed, they were very angry.” (Nehemiah 4:7)
See, these people who had made their living and gotten their joy from attacking these people, from stealing, from them being at their mercy, all of these, when it says they were not happy… “And they all plotted together to come and fight against Jerusalem and to cause confusion in it.” (Nehemiah 4:8)
Now Sanballat was from Samaria. He was to the north. Tobiah was the Ammonite. He was to the east. Geshum, the Arab, was to the south. The Ashdodites were to the west. What’s that mean? They’re surrounded. They are completely surrounded. They are overmatched. There are enemies on every side who want their demise.
Some of you say, “Welcome to my life. I have attacks at every front in my life. I have no idea how to win this battle.” Some of you feel that raising your kids. You look at the world our kids are growing up in today, and you say, “This is pretty serious stuff.” You also have people in your life who hate it when you’re doing well.
I would also ask, “Are you one of those people?” There are people who just don’t like it when others are doing well. It’s much easier to attack than to build. There’s a good reason for that, because you can attack in force at weak points. People know how to do that. Sometimes things get in complete disarray.
In early February we did the Pursuing Passion conference. It was amazing. We had like 400 high schoolers here. Greg Boone came. Dr. Rosenau came. It was just unbelievable. Taylor Bono came and sang. We took the boys off over in the field. We did a bonfire so big we had to get a permit. It was a good fire.
But it was muddy. It rained like the entire month of February, I think, and it was really muddy over there. Brian, our high school pastor, said, “We have food for you guys.” Somebody somewhere said, “In the middle school room.” Now we had food over there. We had IBC Root Beers and peanuts and other food that men consume. It was all over there across the way.
We also had some breakfast items down in the middle school room, and 150 muddy boys took off running, and there was no turning them back. They got to the middle school room, and by the time I got there, there was mud everywhere. I mean, it literally looked like A Christmas Story when those hounds go in and they tear that turkey apart; there are leg bones of animals lying around on the floor and stuff.
It’s easier to mess something up than clean it. Our interns stayed for like three hours that night and cleaned and cleaned and cleaned. What takes five minutes to mess up takes hours to clean up. You know that in life.
Here’s the second thing I think is just an amazing, amazing passage of Scripture. Verse 9: “And we prayed to our God and set a guard as a protection against them day and night.” (Nehemiah 4:9) Look at verse 9. What a great verse of Scripture. We prayed to our God and we set a guard. I think that’s a great way to live. We pray to God and we lock the doors. We’re not going to be stupid.
What does Jesus say when the Devil says, “Jump off the top of the temple”? What does he say? “You don’t put God to some ridiculous test.” Lock your door. Wear your seatbelt. Take your vitamins. Only eat sausage once a week. All those things. All those kinds of things. So pray to God and set a guard.
Nehemiah 4:10: “In Judah it was said, ‘The strength of those who bear the burdens is failing. There is too much rubble. By ourselves we will not be able to rebuild the wall.'” This is what Nehemiah is saying, “We’re praying to God.” “And our enemies said, ‘They will not know or see till we come among them and kill them and stop the work.’ At that time the Jews who lived near them came from all directions and said to us ten times, ‘You must return to us.'” (Nehemiah 4:10-12)
So there is this 10 times. There is great urgency. The Jews who live near these walls are very afraid because they know the enemies have surrounded them and they are going to overpower them. “So in the lowest parts of the space behind the wall, in open places, I stationed the people by their clans, with their swords, their spears, and their bows.” (Nehemiah 4:13) We are fighting for our future.
“And I looked and arose and said to the nobles and to the officials and to the rest of the people…” Listen to this. “‘Do not be afraid of them. Remember the LORD, who is great and awesome…'” That goes back to, “We will pray, and then we will set a guard.” And listen. “‘…and fight for your brothers, your sons, your daughters, your wives, and your homes.'” (Nehemiah 4:14)
Sometimes we forget what it is we’re fighting for. Sometimes we forget. We think it’s just about us, but no, it’s not. We’re fighting for more than this. We’re fighting for the future of our children. We’re not just fighting for what’s going on in us. We’re not just fighting for our marriage; we’re fighting for the future of our children.
We do this thing and have done this thing for about the last 10 years called Campus Thrive. It’s on public school campuses. It’s completely student led. I go. I carry the sound system in, I set it down, I stand against the wall, and the kids take over and do everything. It’s beautiful. It’s chaos, and it’s beautiful. As a part of this thing every week, they do this prayer time. Kids will come up one after another, and they’ll say, “Will you pray for my mom and dad?” “Lord, I pray for my mom and dad. I pray for my family.”
Or they’ll do their testimony, and this is kind of the typical testimony. “I grew up in a Christian home, and I got into about the second grade, and mom and dad started fighting, and they got divorced. Life has been hard, but in the midst of that, I’ve seen God at work in my life.” We’re not just fighting for ourselves. We’re fighting for so much more than that. We’re fighting for our sons and we’re fighting for our daughters. We’re fighting for our future.
Verse 15: Stand together. “When our enemies heard that it was known to us and that God had frustrated their plan, we all returned to the wall, each to his work. From that day on, half of my servants worked on construction, and half held the spears…” (Nehemiah 4:15-16) Now do the mental math here. Half of them worked on construction; half held the spears.
“And the leaders stood behind the whole house of Judah, who were building on the wall. Those who carried burdens were loaded in such a way that each labored on the work with one hand and held his weapon with the other.” (Nehemiah 4:16-17) That tells me that about two-thirds of the hands are on defense here. Two-thirds of the hands are not about building; they’re about defense.
We have to live that way sometimes. We have to remember there are people and ideas that want to take away the things that matter to us and are true, and as we rebuild the walls, we have to remember we have to be ready to resist those things.
Verse 18: “And each of the builders had his sword strapped at his side while he built. The man who sounded the trumpet was beside me. And I said to the nobles and to the officials and to the rest of the people…” (Nehemiah 4:18-19) So listen. The nobles and the officials are working. In 3:5, the nobles are standing around; they’re not helping. But they’re working now. Their lives depend on it.
“‘The work is great and widely spread, and we are separated on the wall, far from one another. In the place where you hear the sound of the trumpet, rally to us there. Our God will fight for us.'” (Nehemiah 4:19-21) “So if there is an attack, you blow the horn, and wherever we are, we will come.”
That’s what we’re supposed to be as a church, people, amen? When one of us is down, when one of us is struggling, when one of us is being attacked, we sound that trumpet, and we respond. We don’t respond by saying, “Look at them”; we respond by saying, “We will go to that wall and we’ll build on that wall and we’ll fight that enemy together.” When we do that as a church, the world will see that. The world will say, “I want to be a part of something like that, something that matters like that.”
Verse 21: “So we labored at the work, and half of them held the spears from the break of dawn until the stars came out. I also said to the people at that time, ‘Let every man and his servant pass the night within Jerusalem, that they may be a guard for us by night and may labor by day.’ So neither I nor my brothers nor my servants nor the men of the guard who followed me, none of us took off our clothes; each kept his weapon at his right hand.” (Nehemiah 4:21-23) They stayed on ready to go, to work or to fight at a moment’s notice, at the sound of the horn.
We’re going to give you guys tonight some time at the end of the worship set to consider this question…What would restoration look like in my life? What would it look like in my marriage? What would it look like in my family?
There have been what we call Great Awakenings. There were three in the United States, several in Europe. My university, Asbury University, had two. At one, in England, it happened in the late 1700s, it started off with this little short preacher. His name was John Wesley. There’s a statue of him in my hometown. He was like 4’11”.
John Wesley, who was very small and very thin, changed England. He preached. He got chased out of towns by thugs. There is one story where he says, “Preached in a field. They let the bull out on me.” Then later that night, “Preached in the town square. Hundreds saved.”
Wesley had a young man who he led to faith, a member of Parliament, named William Wilberforce. William Wilberforce was fighting against slavery in the late 1700s. In 1791, Wesley wrote Wilberforce this letter, and he said to him, “I know you’re standing alone.” You can look this up. If you email me, I’ll send you a copy of it.
He said, “I see not how you can go through your glorious enterprise in opposing that execrable villainy which is the scandal of religion, of England, and of human nature. Unless God has raised you up for this very thing, you will be worn out by the opposition of men and devils. But if God be for you, who can be against you? Are all of them together stronger than God? O be not weary of well doing! Go on, in the name of God and in the power of his might, till even American slavery (the vilest that ever saw the sun) shall vanish away before it.”
Wesley wrote that six days before he died. It was the last letter he wrote, and he wrote that to Wilberforce. Wilberforce was inspired by that letter and by the testimony of his old preacher John Newton, who was a slave trader, who wrote that great hymn “Amazing Grace.” Newton wanted restoration in his life, but he couldn’t face the fact that he knew 20,000 slaves had died at his hands on his boats.
Every time he would start to write his testimony, he would break down, but he finally said, “I have to tell this story.” He went before Parliament, and he told that story. Wilberforce, encouraged by the words of Wesley, went to Parliament, and slavery was outlawed there about 60 years before here. But if it hadn’t been outlawed there, how long would it have taken here? What would we still be like as a nation?
I’ve seen restoration and revival. What it usually takes is it takes somebody willing to be brave enough to be that person who will go that distance, who will set that course for revival. There was a guy named John Harper. A lot of you probably haven’t heard of him. He was a custodian. He had this wonderful wife who loved him. He wanted to be a pastor.
They had this little girl. They named her Nana. She was the apple of his eye. Not long after she was born, his wife died. At about the same time, his great desire to be a pastor came true, and he was called to a church, and he started preaching, and he was an amazing preacher. D. L. Moody invited him to come and preach at the Moody Chapel, which later became Moody Bible College. It’s where Pastor Buddy went, and a lot of other people. It has had an impact on the world.
He preached there and did such an amazing job that he was called back from London to come back and preach again. He got on board a ship, and he made his way back, but halfway through, that ship struck an iceberg. The ship was called the Titanic. That ship went down, and he took his beautiful little girl, now 6 years old, and put her on a lifeboat. The captain of that lifeboat said, “We are not full. You’re a father. You’re a single father. We have room for you.”
He said, “No, there are people on this boat who do not know the Lord. I need to stay.” He stayed on that boat until it went in the water. Four years later they had this reunion of Titanic survivors. Story after story of people who survived said, “He came to me and asked me if I knew the Lord. He came and asked me if I knew the Lord, and he shared his faith with me.”
This one man said, “I was in the water, and I was dying. I was going down, and he came to me and he asked me if I knew the Lord, and I said, ‘I want nothing to do with God.’ He took off his lifejacket, and he put it on me, and he said, ‘You need this more than I.'” That man said, “I left that scene, and I began to search the claims of Christ, and today I follow him.”
Restoration is not always a beautiful thing. Revival is not always a beautiful thing. Sometimes it’s a very, very messy thing. I think there’s an order to it. I think it starts with our worship. I think as we study the Word of God together, then I think we will begin to see some of those walls built up, and the changes happening.
Nehemiah goes on to talk about their nation and taxation and restoration of them as a people. It’s an amazing story if you continue to read through it. This week, I was in the car with a student who used to be in my D-Group. He’s an intern here now. His name is Josh. We were talking about our D-Group.
When my son Daniel was a freshman, I said to him, “If you want to be in somebody else’s D-Group, that’s fine. I’m happy to be your D-Group leader. You can have somebody else.” I think he was just being nice to me, and he said, “No, Dad. I want you to do it.” Jeff Brex and I had this group…it started off with about 15 boys.
For four years they came to our house. We would take turns. Jeff’s wife would fix dinner, or I would fix a big country breakfast, biscuit and gravy and hash browns and sausage and bacon and cinnamon rolls and eggs. It was amazing. My flour for my gravy comes from Kentucky, by the way. It’s a special flour. We would eat.
I think if you would ask any of those guys, “Was D-Group real organized and systematized?” I think they would probably say no. Jeff and I many a time would get together and say, “This was kind of messy. This was not the orderly thing we wanted it to be.” But Josh and I were talking. By their senior year, there were 12 of those guys who faithfully came.
Six of those guys are going into ministry or missions. Five of those guys are going to be elders. I can just tell you…they’re going to be elders. The pattern of their lives, they walk with God. There’s one guy we’re praying for we have not given up on. But if you would’ve asked Jeff or me in that process, “Is this smooth? Is this pretty?” I think we both would’ve said when it was all done… I think we both felt somewhat failures as D-Group leaders, that it wasn’t all we wanted it to be for these guys.
Family devotions at our house is like that. If you see family devotions at our house, it is not clean and neat and organized and beautiful. It’s pretty messy, but God creates beautiful things out of rubble, doesn’t he? God creates beautiful things out of things that no one else thinks could be beautiful, because he’s God. Let’s pray.
Lord, we come before you as his people, and we pray for restoration, that we could be a people who worship you upwardly, that we would be a people of the Word, that we would have who we are changed inwardly, Lord, that we would then out of that go and we would rebuild the walls, the walls of our families, the walls of our lives, the walls of our community, the walls of our schools, the walls of our cities, the walls of our nation. We look, and they’re beat down, and the enemy is attacking at every point, and we feel too weak to fight off the invaders.
But Lord, I pray tonight by the power of your Spirit that not only would amazing things happen in this room tonight, but Lord, that there would be restoration that begins here, processes that begin here, pouring the Word in the lives of these kids whom we love. We do not come and just fight for ourselves. We fight for our sons, for our daughters, for our wives, for our husbands, for our families. We fight for our future, because our future is worth fighting for. We will pray and stand guard until you come back.