I want to once again turn back to Nehemiah, and I want to pick up where we left off last week. And I want to expound upon where we’re looking at the people of Judah who had repented, and what they’d repented of, and what they’d been involved in doing. As we came to Nehemiah chapter 11, chapter 10 rather, a number of the religious leaders had signed an article stating that they were repenting, and stating that they were ratifying a covenant with God of how they were to live their lives.
And it was going to be much different than it had been the way that they had been living. We looked last week, and we saw that there were three elements that were touched in this really agreement with the Lord, and turning to the Lord for a covenant with Him, and how they were going to live. One was their families.
One was the manner in which they were going to come to honor and to worship God. And the third was their whole perception of who God was. I mentioned last Sunday that those three things are a problem that God’s people are always tempted to turn from, and to embrace worldly ideas in those areas.
And I wanted to bring out the significance of what these people saw their need was, and their ability to walk with the Lord, and what our need is today. So let’s just, once again, read beginning at verse 28, through the end of the chapter, and see what this agreement was dealing with. And the rest of the people, the priests and the Levites, and the porters and singers, and the Nephilims, and all they that had departed themselves from the people, of the hands unto the law of God, their wives and their sons and their daughters, everyone having knowledge and having understanding.
They gave to their brethren, their nobles, and entered into a curse, and into an oath to walk in God’s law, which was given by Moses, the servant of God, to observe and to do all the commandments of the Lord, our God, and his judgment and his statutes. And that we would not give our daughters unto the people of the land, nor take their daughters of our sons. For if the people of the land bring where our evictuals on the Sabbath day to sell, that we would not buy of them on the Sabbath or on the holy day, that we would leave and serve the seventh year and the extraction of every debt.
Also, we made ordinances for us to charge ourselves yearly with the third part of the shekel for the service of the course of our God. And the shewbread and the continued meat offering, and of the continual burnt offering, and of the Sabbath, and of the new moons, and of the set feasts for the holy things, for the sin offerings, and to make an atonement for Israel, and for all the work of the house of our God. And we cast lots among the priests, and the Levites, and the people, for the wood offering, to bring it unto the house of God, after the houses of our fathers, at times appointed year by year, to burn upon the altar of the Lord our God, as it is written in the law.
And to bring the firstfruits of our ground, and the firstfruits of all fruit, of all trees, year by year, unto the house of the Lord. And also the firstborn of our sons, and of our cattle, as it is written in the law, and the firstlings of our herds, and our flocks, to bring to the house of our God, unto the priests that minister in the house of our God. And that we should bring the firstfruits of our dough, and our offerings, and the fruit of all manner of trees, of wine, and of oil, unto the priests, and to the chambers of the house of our God.
And the tithes are ground unto the Levites, that the same Levites might have tithes in all the cities of our tillage. And the priest of the son of Aaron shall be with the Levites when the Levites take tithes, and the Levites shall bring up the tithe of tithes unto the house of our God, into the chambers of the treasure house. For the children of Israel and the children of Levi shall bring the offering of corn, and of the new wine, and of oil, unto the chambers where are the vessels of the sanctuary, and the priests that minister, and the porters, and the singers.And we shall not forsake the house of our God. This is my own prayer.
Dear Holy Father, as we look at what was done at the time of Nehemiah, it wasn’t enough that the walls of the city needed to be rebuilt for the protection of Jerusalem, but it was the hearts of the people needed to be rebuilt so that you would be there in their hearts and lives, and they would see that you were the real protector of Jerusalem. Lord, I pray that you would just speak to us this morning through your word and help us to understand that the same ways in which Satan tempted the people during the time of Nehemiah to take their eyes off of you, and to even place them on the busyness of rebuilding walls, and that their trust would be in the walls and not in you, and how that they had to be brought back to an understanding of where our real strength lies. Lord, that is the same situation that we find ourselves in so often because Satan does not change his tactics. He just attempts to destroy your people with the same means, that we would not trust in you the way we should trust in you, that we would not look to you the way we should look to you, and we should not perceive you are the God that you are. And Lord, may we as your people help to understand the importance of putting a proper perspective into who you are, our relationship with you, and what you have done for us in redeeming us through Jesus. Lord, I pray now that you just speak to us through your word this morning. This we ask in Jesus’ name.
Amen.
Thursday night I was preaching out of the book of Jeremiah. Unfortunately, I failed to turn on the recorder, so I didn’t get to record it.
And for your sake, there were only three people here. So I’m going to be sharing a few things that we looked at out of there because they’re pertinent to what happened in Israel just about 80 years later. Back at the time of Jeremiah, Jeremiah was called to be a prophet to the nation of Israel, and specifically to the southern kingdom of Judah.
Israel had been divided into two kingdoms, the northern kingdom of Israel and the southern kingdom of Judah. Israel had been taken away into captivity a number of years prior to Judah, and they had been taken into captivity by the Assyrians. Judah was still a viable nation, but they were about ready to be destroyed by Babylon.
When Jeremiah was called by God, he was told, I’m going to place my words on your lips, and I’m calling you to speak my words to my people, but no one will listen to you. What a commission. How would you like to be called to be a prophet or a pastor? And you’re told, preach this word, but nobody’s going to hear, and nobody’s going to listen, and nobody’s going to respond, because the heart of the people of Israel at that time had grown so hard.
On Wednesday night, we looked at a group of people that if I mentioned their name, which I’m going to in about two minutes, I would venture to say if I asked you to show hands, hardly anybody would have ever heard of the Rechabites. But the Rechabites were a group of people who weren’t even Israelites. Their history was they’d come out of the land of Canaan.
They had incorporated into the tribe of Judah as far as where they lived, but they showed more fear for God than the Israelites. One of the things that the Rechabites did is they had a family, and a leader of the family who said, this is the way we will live. And he told them some things that were very odd.
Number one, they were never to live in houses. They were always to live in tents. Why was that? Because he viewed that if you built a house and lived in a city, you would be more susceptible to rebellion against God and to turn from the things that he was going to lay out for them to live by.
The second thing they were to do is they weren’t to be building crops and taking care of fields, but rather they were to be shepherds. They were to take care of herds. Sheep, goats, cattle, that was what their livelihood was to be, and that’s what they were to do.
Again, opposite of what the majority of the Israelites did. The third thing he told them to do was that they were never to drink wine or hard liquor. So you had this people that were an odd people, but yet they were amongst the Israelites.
Now at the time that Jeremiah was preaching, remember I said that the Lord had told him, nobody’s going to listen to what you say, and they didn’t. Jeremiah would come and he said, Thus sayeth the Lord, and the minute he said, Thus sayeth the Lord, everybody would go, Oh, Jeremiah’s back again. Because his Thus sayeth the Lord was that judgment was coming.
Judgment was coming, and it was coming because Israel had intermarried with the nations around them. They were told not to do that. Israel had violated the worship of the Lord in that they had brought in false gods and they had integrated into their worship services those things that were pagan and from the cultures around them and the gods that weren’t gods.
To the point that at Manasseh, and this is why at the time of Jeremiah, judgment finally came because Manasseh, who lived three generations before Jeremiah, had even brought into the temple itself false gods, tore down the true worship, and established a pagan worship system in the temples. And so judgment was coming. God was merciful, he waited, but judgment came.
He sent prophets besides Jeremiah, but no one listened except Josiah and some of the people that lived during the time of Josiah. At the time of Jeremiah, Josiah has died, and Josiah’s sons and one of his grandsons will become kings, and they all show disrespect, dishonor, and hatred and rebellion to God. But back to the Rechabites.
God called Jeremiah one day and he said, I want you to go and I want you to get the Rechabites, and I want you to get all the men of the Rechabites, and I want you to bring them to the temple. And when you bring them to the temple, I’m going to have you doing an interesting thing. I want you to get bottles of wine, and I want you to get glasses, and I want you to set the wine and the glasses before the Rechabites, and I want you to tell them to drink.
So Jeremiah did that. He got all the men of the Rechabites, he brought them in, set them in the temple, set up a table, put vessels of wine and glasses, and that they could drink of the wine, and he told them, drink. Guess what? Nobody drank.
So he went and he got different vessels, and he made it more attractive, and he set that before them, and he told them to drink. And they said, we will not drink. For we have made a vow that we will not drink of wine, and we are honoring the vow that we have made to our fathers.
Now this was done in the temple, in the sight of all the priests. They were not honoring any vows they made to their heavenly father, but the Rechabites were honoring a vow that they made to their father, their earthly father. Now it’s interesting, because if you look at what had happened, we are now 80 years later during the time of Nehemiah, and these people are remembering what happened 80 years ago, and what caused the people to be taken into captivity of Babylon, and why they remained in Babylon, and they’d been brought from Babylon back into Israel.
And when they came back, everything was destroyed, the temple, the walls, the city, and Ezra had come back, and he had instructed and oversaw the rebuilding of the temple, and when the temple, if you’ll read in the book of Ezra, you’ll find that when the temple was completed, those that were of older years, that had seen the temple of Solomon before it was destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar, looked at the temple that was built, and they wept, because it was nothing like Solomon’s temple. And then the others came back, and all of a sudden, if you remember when we began the study of Nehemiah, Nehemiah got word from his brother and another friend, as they came to visit him in Shushan, the capital of Persia, that the walls lay in shambles, and the people were distressed, and Nehemiah wept. Nehemiah went back, and we saw, and we looked into how he had rebuilt the walls, but he still had to deal with the people’s hearts.
And so he gathered Ezra, and we read how he had had Ezra read the law, and the Levites teach the law, and the people heard the law, and all of a sudden, they realized it wasn’t just the walls that were the problem, it was their lives that were the problem. And they began to repent. I want you to understand, if you look back at the Rechabites at the time, right before Judah was taken into captivity, and the object lesson they gave to the nation of Israel, all they had to do was listen to God.
All they had to do was love their father enough to want to walk and obey him. Here you had these men, the Rechabites, that weren’t even Israelites, but they honored their father enough that they were living in tents, that they were herding herds, that they were not drinking wine, they were doing everything their father had told them to do, even though I’m sure that they were ridiculed. Why do you live in tents when everybody else lives in houses? Why do you herd cattle when everybody else has got fields? Why don’t you drink wine when everybody else drinks wine? You know, it’s interesting today, that’s not much different than the church.
You know, I go back and I remember when I was a young boy, I’d go and I’d hear preachers talk about how we were a different people as Christians. We had different values, different beliefs. We lived our lives in a different way.
Because we weren’t doing it to try and earn favor with God, but to honor God because he told us, this is how I want you to live as holy and righteous people who will honor me. And if you would just keep your finger in Nehemiah, and if you would turn back with me to the letter of Peter. And Peter is writing, and Peter is talking about the fact that you and I are peculiar people.
He talks about the fact that in chapter 2 of 1 Peter, he says in the beginning, well let’s begin at verse 1. We’re for laying aside all malice and all guile and all hypocrisies and envies and all evil speaking. What are those things? Those are things of the world. Worldly attitudes, worldly actions, worldly speech, worldly lives.
We’re to lay them aside. They’re not to be part of the life of the Christian. And he tells us, and he goes on, he says, as newborn babes desire the sincere milk of the word that you may grow thereby.
The thing that should be driving our lives is God’s word. The principles contained within God’s word. Yet how many people today know what’s in God’s word? There are Christians.
Let’s just take one example from what’s happening in the world today with Israel. I’ll tell you, it’s one of the things that’s very distressing to me. The Bible is very clear.
God is not done with Israel. You look at the Bible, it talks about the fact that the barometer of where we are in the last days is Israel. God tells us in prophecy, what’s happening to Israel will tell you how close you are to the end.
And what you see happening in Israel today tells us that the barometer is moving. And when I hear nations that can look at what happened to Israel on October 7th and condemn the perpetrators and the murderers, instead of condemning them, they uplift them and say they’re the heroes? And there are people, there’s a big march. And I forget which country it is in.
To support the murderers. And to kill the Jews. My Bible tells me we’re getting close.
Because it says the whole world will rise up against Israel. And God loves Israel. Why? Because they’re perfect? Because they’re not sinners? No, I just got done telling you.
They’ve been hard-hearted, stiff-necked people just about throughout their whole existence. But it’s interesting. There are two wives in the Bible.
The Bible talks about God the Father created Israel. And he made them his wife. And the nation of Israel, who was his wife, became an adulterous wife.
Read the book of Hosea. That’s all about… Hosea is symbolizing who God is. Gomer is symbolizing who Israel is.
And it shows you what kind of a wife God’s got. But it’s still his wife. He even goes so far as in the scripture he says, I’m going to write you a letter of divorcement.
But he doesn’t. He calls them back. He orchestrates events in the world that result in Israel being scattered from the land more than once.
Yet he continually calls them back. And the scriptures tell us, in the last days, he’s going to call them back. And they who left as two sticks, that is Israel and Judah, two different nations, yet they were one people and really one nation.
They’re going to come back. These two sticks are going to come back. So the people, the Church of God of George Armstrong, that teaches that we’re Israel, what’s happening in the replacement theology today in many churches, that the church has become Israel, it’s a lie.
Because God has said in his word, and if God’s word isn’t true here, then how is it true in salvation for us? But God said that they’re going to come back, and those that were two nations are going to come back as one. When they came back in 1948 to create a new nation, they’d been coming back, God had been calling them prior to that, but they got back and in 1948 they became a nation. Never before in the history of the world had a nation been separated from its land for 2,000 years, and yet come back as a viable nation, came back with the same name as the nation, came back whose language had been dead, virtually dead for 2,000 years, and reestablished that as the language of their nation.
You go to Israel today, the official language is Hebrew. At the time of Jesus, Hebrew. At the time of Moses, Hebrew.
God isn’t done with Israel. The world wants to be done with Israel, because why? They want to be done with God. That’s the whole point.
Who is the spirit and the power behind the world systems that rise up in rebellion against God? I saw an amazing thing, I saw a video of a house with kill the Jews on the side of the house, and it was a Jews house, and it wasn’t in an Arab country, it was in a European country. But as you look at this, Peter goes on and tells us that we’re to have the word of God as what’s in our hearts, and we’re to believe the word of God is true, and that’s every speck of it, including what’s happening with Israel, and Israel is precious to the Lord. And anyone who thinks it’s not, you don’t believe your Bible.
You need to examine your relationship with Christ. And it’s interesting, it says here, If so, be ye have tasted that the Lord is gracious, to whom coming as unto a living stone, disallowed indeed of men, but chosen of God and precious. And he’s speaking of Jesus.
The world rejected Christ, but to the Lord he’s the precious living stone. Then I want you to see what he tells about you who are believers in Jesus Christ. It says, ye also as lively stones are built up a spiritual house and holy priesthood to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God by Jesus Christ.
Just like at the time of Nehemiah, the people had forgot what their sacrifices were about. Their sacrifices weren’t just killing of animals. Their sacrifices just weren’t shedding of blood.
Their sacrifices were to be directed to the fact to remind them that these animals were where they should be. Because of their rebellion, these animals were dying, because without the shedding of blood, there is no remission of sins. And the sacrifice could not be complete, because it wasn’t a perfect sacrifice.
And it had to be done over and over. But it should have reminded them instead what they did, is they abandoned the sacrificial system the way God had established it. They quit offering those sacrifices properly, and they began to offer false sacrifices that were displeasing to the Lord, which did nothing to point to Christ, but rejected Jesus as the Redeemer, and rejected God as their Creator and Sustainer of life.
And as they did that, they grew harder and harder in their hearts. I want to tell you today.
What Peter just got done here, every one of us has the ability to offer sacrifices to God, but they’re a different sacrifice, they’re a bloodless sacrifice. Because Jesus’ blood was shed for us to enable us to do a sacrifice that’s a living sacrifice. Some of the elements of this sacrifice, a sacrifice of praise, a sacrifice of worship, a sacrifice of prayer, a sacrifice of honoring the Lord in all that I do, a sacrifice of dying to myself and my self-centered needs and coming alive to God.
And Peter goes on and he says, Ye are lively stones are built up into spiritual house, a holy priesthood to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God by Jesus Christ. Wherefore also it is contained in the scripture, Behold, I lay in Zion a chief cornerstone, elect, precious, and he that believeth on him shall not be confounded. Did you hear that? He that believeth on him should not be confounded.
What does confounded mean? Confounded means I really don’t know what’s going on. Confounded means I’m confused. Confounded means I really don’t have a grasp on the truth.
We’re not to be that person. As a matter of fact, the whole book of Proverbs is geared around the fact that the believer is to live a different life. And it’s to be driven by the wisdom of God and the application of that wisdom on a daily basis.
And if we are understanding God’s wisdom and that’s part of our life, we will not be confused and confounded when it comes to things. Is this evil or is this good? Is this real or is this unreal? Is this something I should do or something I should not do? Why? Because God’s word will be there and it will help make things very clear. We’re not to be a confounded people.
And it says,
Unto you, therefore, which believe in his precious, but unto them which be disobedient, the one which the builders disallowed, the same is made the head of the corner, and a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense, even to them which stumble at the word being disobedient, whereunto also they were appointed. But ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, and holy nation, a peculiar people, that ye should show forth the praises of him who hath called you out of darkness and into his marvelous light. You have been called with a calling.
And it’s not just to escape hell, but it’s to bring glory to God through your life. People say, why was I created? What is my purpose in life? Well, how does God want to use me? I don’t care what your profession is, but wherever God places you, as long as you’re not in a profession that violates his character, but it doesn’t matter if you’re a janitor or if you’re the President of the United States, everything you do with your life should bring glory to God. Everything with your life should be part of your worship of him.
And what’s happened, I believe, to the church, is what happened to Israel. The focus came off of God and went on themselves. Where am I going to find a wife or a husband for my kids? Wow, there are some really good-looking mobile girls.
There are some really handsome and wealthy mobile guys. Maybe I’ll take my daughter and my son over there. God won’t really care.
And I realize, as parents, you don’t have the final control over who your son or daughter marries, but you can have a great influence by what you instruct them and teach them and show them what’s important as they’re growing up. I want to tell you how many young people today get married, not because we have in common a love of Jesus, but because, wow, is she good-looking or wow, is he good-looking or wow, look at the job they’ve got or wow, look at the things they can do or wow, what about the heart? You realize the most important thing of a husband or wife is their heart and their relationship with God. God’s very clear.
Principles don’t change. Purposes for specific actions regarding those principles may change. But the principle itself doesn’t.
Just as God told the Israelites, do not marry the pagans around you. The Apostle Paul writes to the church, he tells us, do not be unequally yoked together. Guess what? That’s the same principle.
Why? Because if you’re unequally yoked, you’re going to be pulling in two different directions. At two different rates of speed. Two different desires.
And your house and the center of your home is going to be a constant turmoil. And ultimately one will have to give in. And unfortunately when I have seen young men or young women that have been believers in Jesus and wanted to grow in the Lord and they end up going and marrying an unbeliever, what I see is that oftentimes the believer ends up going the way of the unbeliever.
Not that they lose their salvation. But guess where their children go? Their children follow the way of the world. Because that’s their natural born propensity with sin at their heart.
If they don’t become a believer in Jesus, and if they don’t have instruction given within the home on how they’re to live and where they’re to go, and that instruction is consistent, and you have a mom and a dad that are going the same direction, dad leading. Oftentimes mom being the day-to-day one who’s giving it because she’s with the kids more than dad. But he’s the ultimate authority saying, yes, we’re for Christ.
Yes, we’re having a godly home. And yes, there will be discipline if there’s not godliness in this home. But today in the church, I look at activities of the church and it’s like we’ve forgotten what godliness is.
When I see what’s happening in the church today, and I had someone who was very close to me send me a deal they were thinking of going to this church, and the first Sunday they had Formation written across the front of the congregation. Formation has its ties to Eastern mysticism. It has its ties to contemplative prayer.
It has its ties to, not the Bible. Oh, they use Bible verses, by the way, out of context and improper application. And they’re totally confounded because they don’t fear the Lord.
So you’ve got pastors promoting it. You’ve got youth ministers making it the center of their youth ministries. You’ve got women instructing literally auditoriums full of women about how to really be drawn closer to Hinduism than to Christianity.
And yet if I ask most people, do you know what contemplative prayer is? Do you know what centering prayer is? Do you know where their roots are? Do you know what they’re really tied to? Do you know where they come from? Most people don’t have a clue. I think it’s a great way to pray. You just empty your mind and look within yourself and wait for God to speak.
My Bible doesn’t tell me that. Hindu gurus tell you that. Even some churches will teach you how to have a Christian mantra to help you get to speak better, pray better.
And when that happens, you’ve been drawn closer to hell than heaven. Because you’re taking your eyes off of the Word of God and you forgot that you’re a living sacrifice and that God speaks directly to His people through His Word and that we’re to come directly to Him unashamedly, boldly into His throne room with our prayer requests and we don’t even know how to pray properly but His Spirit will intercede on our behalf. Those are all things in His Word.
The church abandons it. So you’ve got the family being destroyed. You’ve got worship being destroyed.
But you’ve got God being destroyed. Who is in control? Who is in control of your life and my life? Ultimately, God gives us freedom of choice so we can say, well, I’m in control but who am I accountable to? And why do I feel a level of accountability? When we lose our perspective of who God is and that, number one, we lose our awe and reverence of the Lord. We were studying Hebrews in the adult Sunday school classes this morning.
Just turn with me. I want to read Hebrews chapter 12 verse 28, 29. The author is written to the Hebrews and he says,
Wherefore, we receiving a kingdom which cannot be moved.Let us have grace whereby we may serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear.
I want you to understand the kingdom that you’ve been called into through Jesus Christ our Lord is a kingdom that will not be moved. The whole chapter 12 is talking about the fact that there’s coming a day where this world is going to be disappearing.
And the author of Hebrews is writing this to the Jewish Christians and telling them don’t put all your eggs in this world because one day it’s going to be gone. And he’s saying have a proper perspective on things. And he concludes this portion of the letter by saying Wherefore, we are receiving a kingdom which cannot be removed.
We’re in the process if you’re a believer in Jesus Christ you’re in the process of being prepared for that kingdom. Otherwise, if there didn’t need to be any preparation in our lives if God didn’t need to give us opportunities to serve him if God didn’t need to place before us opportunities where we could be used for ministry to bring glory to him and bring rewards to him to cast at his feet he’d just take us to heaven the minute we got saved but he doesn’t. He leaves us here because he’s taking us through the process of being conformed to Jesus’ image to Jesus’ character.
There used to be a deal and it was a big deal I suppose about 10, 15, 20 years ago it was get the acronym right the what would Jesus do? And all Christians were supposed to say what would Jesus do in this situation? But the problem is really a lot of them were where if Jesus revealed to them the answer from his word they were like the nation of Israel when Jeremiah came up and said thus saith the Lord and everybody goes, oh no, not again. I gotta hear that again. What would Jesus do? If I go to a music festival and it’s more pagan than it is Christian but every once in a while they throw in a Christian term into the song.
What would Jesus do? Well, he’d probably get up and walk out of the festival if it was supposed to be honoring his name because he drove out the money changers of the temple because they said they were there to help the people worship him and he said you are enemies. He drove them from the temple because they were there to line their own pockets and exalt themselves. I know a guy who has got some pretty strong connections in both the Christian music and the worldly music field and he was telling me one of the things that makes this member of their family disgusted is when he works for Christian bands how many of them are more worldly he said dad you wouldn’t believe what happens behind the scenes the things they do and then they get in front of people and it’s all about money and power and position.
Why do we worship Jesus? Why do you come here on Sunday to honor the Lord and to worship him because he has redeemed you? I trust that’s the reason. And when we leave here we should leave realizing we are Jesus’s ambassadors. One of the things that’s been really encouraging to me is the ambassador we have for Israel right now is Mike Huckabee and he is a Bible believing Christian he’s not afraid to share his faith even with the Jewish people and they love Mike Huckabee but the thing is he’s our ambassador and he says Mr. Huckabee what do you think needs to be done in this situation right now and he says well I know what my feelings are but he says I’m not here to dictate what the United States’ policies are that is done by my boss the president I’m here as his representative to try and articulate to you most effectively what his desires are not a policy maker guess what we’re ambassadors we are here to articulate what our heavenly father the one who has sent us desires for us to do to articulate his goals his purposes and what his policies are what is the main policy and goal that he possesses Jesus came that all men could be saved Paul tells us how should they be saved unless the preacher is sent unless somebody goes out proclaiming the word how can anybody get saved they’ll never know but how many Christians today when you ask them how many people in your life not today but in your life have you shared the gospel with they’re silent you ask them can you articulate to me they say well let me get my pastor let me get one of the elders let me get somebody who’s more grounded that is every one of us every one of us should be able to articulate that because it should be real in our lives we know how we got saved through the power of the blood of Jesus Christ we couldn’t save ourselves we couldn’t earn our salvation we couldn’t do enough good works through the blood and so a picture of God needs to be a proper picture he’s the one who is that we stand accountable to he is the one that is the one that we will have to give an answer to I don’t know if you’ve ever had a job and you had a boss over you and he told you to do something and there was a little fear in your heart because you didn’t know whether you had done or not and you knew there was a day of accountability coming back in Hebrews chapter 12 it said wherefore we receiving a kingdom which cannot be moved let us have grace whereby we serve God acceptable with reverence and godly fear speaking to Christians I don’t think there is a whole lot of godly fear in a lot of the church today if there was godly fear saying I am a Christian but let’s bomb Israel I am a Christian but let’s get rid of what God loves I don’t think there is any godly fear I don’t think there is any reverence in verse 29 why for our God is a consuming fire I heard a message given one time because a lot of times Christians think that verse isn’t for us no this verse is written to Christians this verse wasn’t written to unbelievers this is written to Christians it says we are to be reverent have godly fear because our God is a consuming fire how is our God a consuming fire in the life of a believer because we are not going to be judged for our sin that is covered by the blood of Jesus we are going to be in heaven but one day you have to stand and give your accountable account for everything that God has entrusted to you as a believer how did you use it what did you use to bring glory to my name what did you do in this opportunity that I brought you into because somebody had been praying for years that someone would share the gospel with their son or their daughter and I put them right before you for you to share and answer that prayer and you said well I don’t know what to say so I’m not going to say anything you have to stand and give account to God for that the Bible tells us at the judgment seat of Christ which is for the believers it’s not the great white throne judgment that’s for the unbelievers it’s the judgment seat of Christ the beam seat of Christ it’s where the rewards are passed out and Paul gives some pretty powerful statements he said there will be those there that will receive crowns and they’ll take the crowns because of the rewards God has given to them and they’re going to cast them at Jesus feet because they’re going to acknowledge it wasn’t me it was you Lord working through me to reveal who you are there’s going to be others they’re going to gain heaven but in modern vernacular it would be by the skin of their teeth they’ll have no rewards see the things that they have done have been wood hay and stubble and when God’s fire comes to test them to be consumed and there’s nothing left but salvation God wants a peculiar people back to the Rechabites where I began a peculiar people who live their lives in obedience even though the Israelites looked at them as peculiar people they don’t want to live in houses like we do they want to live in tents they don’t want to drink wine like we do they have a whole different attitude towards everything they’re peculiar guess what that’s supposed to be you and me do I live my life that people would say of me he’s got some peculiar ideas but they seem to be tied to the God he worships they seem to be tied to the obedience of the one that he serves they seem to be tied to his father’s will a peculiar people a royal priesthood a mighty nation and you and I get to rule and reign with Jesus one day and what he entrusts us with in the new heavens and the new earth is tied to how faithful we were in this life may you remember that and may you walk in the fear and admonition of the Lord because our God is a consuming fire let’s just close in prayer Lord I pray that you just help us to understand the truths that we’ve learned this morning help us to understand why the nation of Israel at the time of Nehemiah made this covenant with you and why they needed to get their families in order needed to get their worship in order needed to get their perspective of you in order and needed to get their lives in order and father I pray that we as God’s people would see that that principle hasn’t changed for our lives and our day we need to get our families in order our worship in order and our perspective of you in order go with us we pray in Jesus name amen