September 22, 2024, Message by P. Kevin Clancey
Father, Whom have I in heaven but you? Besides you, I desire nothing on earth. My heart and my flesh may fail, but God, you are the strength of my life and my portion forever.
Thank you, Jesus, for our time together. As we break open the Word tonight, Lord, we pray your Spirit would be upon it and upon us. And, Lord, we ask for more than Bible information. We ask for Bible transformation. We ask that your Word would make us more like Jesus. In His name we pray, Amen.
All right, dear ones, we are going through the Bible in a year chronologically, and we are almost done with the Old Testament. All right, we got one more week in the Old Testament, and then starting in October, we’ll be in the New Testament for the last three months of the year.
So tonight we’re going to look at Ezra, Nehemiah, and Zerubbabel. We’re going to kind of do an overview.
I’m not just going to do a specific verse, but I’m going to do an overview of Ezra-Nehemiah, which probably in its original was one book. It’s the story of Israel returning from exile, just as the prophet Jeremiah had prophesied that 70 years after they were exiled, they’d return.
In the story of their return, and in the foundation of their return, there are these three main characters that are spelled out in these two books: Ezra, Nehemiah, and Ezra and Nehemiah.
So I’m just going to read the beginning of Ezra, because it is the commissioning, it’s what starts this. And it was what was prophesied by Jeremiah and also prophesied by the prophet Isaiah.
So Ezra 1:1.
1 In the first year of King Cyrus of Persia, the Lord fulfilled the prophecy he had given through Jeremiah. He stirred the heart of Cyrus to put this proclamation in writing and to send it throughout his kingdom:2“This is what King Cyrus of Persia says: “The Lord, the God of heaven, has given me all the kingdoms of the earth. He has appointed me to build him a Temple at Jerusalem, which is in Judah. 3 Any of you who are his people may go to Jerusalem in Judah to rebuild this Temple of the Lord, the God of Israel, who lives in Jerusalem. And may your God be with you! 4 Wherever this Jewish remnant is found, let their neighbors contribute toward their expenses by giving them silver and gold, supplies for the journey, and livestock, as well as a voluntary offering for the Temple of God in Jerusalem.” (Ezra 1:1-4, NLT)
And God, may the words of my mouth and the meditation of our hearts be acceptable. Lord, in your sight, our Rock, our Strength, and our Redeemer.
So there are three in the books of Ezra and Nehemiah. There are patterns that emerge, but there are three main characters. There are three main leaders that are highlighted.
In Ezra 1-6, you get Zerubbabel. And then in Ezra 7 and forward, you get Ezra. And then in Nehemiah, you get Nehemiah. And so Zerubbabel is the first.
And there’s no Bible book named after Zerubbabel, which is a shame, because that is one of my favorite biblical names. I just love how that sounds. Zerubbabel. I mean, if I, you know, I missed an opportunity. I had a son. We called him Michael. Dang, we could have had Zerubbabel.
If those of you who desire to pray in tongues, and you’ve never prayed in tongues, you’ve asked the Lord for a prayer language. If you’ll just go home and repeat Zerubbabel 20 times really fast, chances are it’ll start. you’ll just get that. Yeah.
Now all the people on Internet will say, oh, that’s terrible. Teaching. That’s terrible. No, it’s a joke. Get a life.
All right, so, all right. Zerubbabel rebuilds the temple. Ezra rebuilds the people. Jeremiah rebuilds the walls. And so Zerubbabel’s job is to take the exiles back to the rubble that was Jerusalem and the rubble that was the temple, and rebuild the temple.
Solomon had built this temple. It lasted for hundreds of years. And now Zerubbabel was going to rebuild the place of worship. Zerubbabel was going to rebuild the place of worship.
And the first thing they do before they rebuild the temple is they rebuild the altar for sacrifice, and to make sacrifice for their sins. And then around the altar, they rebuild the temple.
Ezra is sent back as a priest, as a scribe, as somebody who understands the law, the Word of God. And Ezra’s job is to rebuild the people. Ezra’s job is to give the people the covenant. Give the people the laws of Moses. Give the people the instructions.
God set Israel free from Egypt. He took them out of Egypt.
He led them across the Red Sea. He led them to the promised land. And before he did, on Mount Sinai, he gave Moses a covenant.
And basically, this covenant is God telling Israel, look it, I’ve already delivered you. I’ve already loved you. I’ve already saved you. How do you respond to that? How do you live in covenant relationship with me? How do you live as my people?
All right. This is how the Canaanites live. you’re not to live like the Canaanites.
I don’t want you to be like the Edomites and the Moabites and the Hittites and the Amorites and the Amalekites, and I don’t want you to be like those people. I want you to be different.
Well, what does that different look like? It looks like this. It looks like this covenant. And if you obey this covenant, you’ll get all these blessings, and I will be your God, and you will be my people.
And if you disobey this covenant and try to be like all the nations around you, I’m going to bring upon you destruction and exile. They got it. They got destruction and exile.
But now they’re coming back, and Ezra is coming back, and Ezra comes back, and he gives them the covenant again. He rereads the covenant and says, okay, Israel, you get a second chance. Here. You get a second chance.
And by the way, the exile, to an extent, worked. Israel does not become perfect by any means after they returned from the exile.
In fact, what happens is they fell off one side of the horse before the exile. They completely ignored the laws of God and became like the nations surrounding them. They came back, and then they fell off the other side of the horse, and they became very legalistic toward the laws of God, and they invented laws of God.
So, when Jesus comes 400 years later, he’s not dealing with idolaters. He’s dealing with people who don’t know the heart of God. They just know all the rules.
And they’ve invented all sorts of extra rules around God’s rules to help them keep God’s rules. And so they kind of fall off that side. But that’s Ezra’s job, to teach them the covenant.
Nehemiah goes. And Nehemiah goes to Israel because the walls around Jerusalem were destroyed. And back then, a city without walls was very vulnerable. All right? A city without walls was very vulnerable. The way people fought war in the ancient world is they would march upon a city, and if the city had walls, they’d have to stop.
Because you don’t want to attack a city with walls. Why don’t you want to attack a city with walls? Walls give the people inside the city an advantage. They can stand on top of the walls and shoot arrows down at you. They can throw rocks on you, right?
You got to somehow go up to that wall and breach that wall. But when you go up to that wall to try to breach the wall, all sorts of stuff is coming down on top of your head from that wall.
And so the way people would fight wars is they would camp. They would go to the city. The city was surrounded with walls, and they would camp.
All right, we’re not going to let any more food get in there. And when you get hungry, you’ll come out and fight. It’s called siege warfare.
By the way, this helps us understand some of the things that happened in the New Testament when Jesus fed 5000 people with two fish and five loaves. The Bible says immediately they wanted to make him king.
Well, why do they want to make him kingdom? He’s the super weapon for siege warfare, right? Camp all you want. As long as we got five loaves and two fish, you know, don’t eat it all. Save five loaves and two fish for tomorrow. He’ll feed 5000 more people. We’ll eat forever.
Not only that, but if you’re attacking somebody, food, right? An army travels on its stomach, so you’re doing siege warfare and you’re camped outside of someplace trying to starve them out. But you have to be fed.
And so you have to have a supply line that goes to wherever your food source is. And that supply line needs to be guarded by soldiers. And that is dangerous and expensive and burdensome, while your army’s just. I mean, it was, that’s basically warfare back then was months and months and months of boring camping, near starvation, then one big bloody fight. All right, so a city without walls, you’re incredibly vulnerable. your enemies, they just march right in. You have no identity as a city. you’re just kind of exposed. you’re out there.
And so Nehemiah comes to build the walls. And so these are the three main characters.
One, we’re restoring the worship of God. Two, we’re restoring the covenant or law of God. And three, we’re restoring the city of God.
Now, all three of these people have themes in common. All three of them are commissioned by the kingdom. Zerubbabel is commissioned by Cyrus, the king of Persia, prophesied by Jeremiah that 70 years after the exile they would return. Prophesied by Isaiah by name.
Isaiah, 100 years earlier, said a king by the name of Cyrus is going to issue a decree. And so Cyrus, the king of Persia, comes and he issues a decree. And so Zerubbabel is commissioned by Cyrus. Artaxerxes commissions Ezra. Cyrus’ son commissions Ezra and Nehemiah. All three, though, are commissioned by a foreign king, a non-Jewish king, a Persian king, to go back and do this work on behalf of Israel. And they don’t have perfect theology. Cyrus talks about the God who lives in Jerusalem.
He doesn’t know that the God who lives in Jerusalem is also the God who lives in Babylon. He doesn’t know that he is the God of all the earth.
So you know what? God can use rulers and kings who are less than perfect and don’t have perfect theology. The Bible says that the heart of the king is in the hands of God, and he can turn that heart wherever, which way he wants.
And so these pagan kings, who don’t particularly have any devotion to Yahweh, are used by God to fulfill prophecy and restore the people.
All three are commissioned by kings. All three face opposition. Zerubbabel starts building the temple, and the surrounding people write a letter back once. What’s his name? Actually, Artaxerxes was the grandson of Cyrus. But once Cyrus dies, the surrounding people send a letter back to the next king. Brian, what was his name? You got that. Darius. Might have been Darius. Yeah. Sent it back. And Darius stops the work. He says, oh, no. They say, hey, these Jews, they have a history of rebellion. They’re an ornery, gnarly people. We don’t want them building anything.
And so he stops the building. And then when Artaxerxes comes back, they’ve written another letter. And then he goes back into the archives and he sees what Cyrus has decreed, and he starts it again.
What I’m saying, though, is there was opposition. When Ezra came, there was opposition. He came expecting to have people who were devoted to Yahweh, and he found people who were starting to commit the same sins that they had done before that got him exiled in the first place. They were taking for themselves.
Foreign wives, you might think, well, what’s wrong with that? You know what’s wrong with a foreign wife? Well, foreign wives, that’s code. That means foreign gods, all right? And so they were again marrying outside of the covenant. God of Yahweh. That’s not good, all right? That’s what sent them down on the bad path.
You had King David. He’s a man after God’s own heart. And then you have Solomon. Solomon’s the most wise guy in the world, but he’s not wise enough not to take 700 wives and 300 concubines, all right?
I don’t know why you need 999 more women to tell you to take out the trash, but he’s got a thousand. He’s got a thousand, all right?
And he starts. And these wives start coming to him and saying, solly, sweetie, you know, I know your God. You built this nice temple for your God. But my God in Egypt was this God, and I want to go worship my God. And can you build a temple to my God?
So, well, you know, I don’t think Yahweh wants that. Oh, honey, come on.
And you know, you know how it is. Solomon was the head of the country, and he was the head of his wives. But he had 1000 necks to turn the head. And he started building these temples to these four. And he brought idolatry right into the heart of Jerusalem.
And so God says, don’t marry foreign women. Don’t let your daughters marry foreign men. Except there’s an exception. The exception is if they will make Yahweh their God. Right? And who’s the big exception to this in the Old Testament?
Who ends up being in the line of David and the line of Jesus? Ruth is a Moabitess, but she says to Naomi, your God will be my God. Guess what? you’re included, Ruth. you’re no longer a foreigner. you’re one of us. your God will be my God. And so she’s included.
So there you have it. Nehemiah faces opposition in that they don’t want him to build the walls. The surrounding people don’t want him to build the walls. They like a vulnerable Jerusalem in case they ever want to attack it. And they threaten.
They try to assassinate him. They threaten him. It gets to the point where the people are actually building the walls with a sword in one hand and tools in the other hand. And they have 24-hour guards.
And so all three, Zerubbabel, Ezra, and Nehemiah, face opposition. But here’s the thing. All three finish the task. They don’t quit. And this is Ezra and Nehemiah.
Part of the story of Ezra and Nehemiah is the story of persistence. The story of long obedience in the same direction, the story of faithfulness.
That when you’re commissioned by God for a task, you keep going. You run the race to the finish line. You don’t quit.
There will be opposition. But you know what? The temple got built. There was help along the way. The prophets came. They slowed down in building the temple. They stopped because King Darius made them stop. But then when they got the commission back to do it again, they were real slow on the uptake because they were just living their lives. They had a commission, but they were just living their lives.
And God, through the prophet Haggai, says, I’ll tell you what. Here’s why your crops are failing. Here’s why life isn’t going well for you. you’re building homes for yourself, and my temple isn’t done yet. Remember who called you and what he called you to, and get back on it.
And so they did. Ezra does the same thing. He faces opposition, but he doesn’t quit. He reads the law, and he tells people very severely. He tells people, expel your foreign wives. And we’ll talk about that in a second from a New Testament, new covenant perspective.
But he says, expel your foreign. We’re not going to make the same mistake again. And as I said, they didn’t. Israel, from this point on, thousand years, their big problem is they commit idolatry. They worship the gods of the Canaanites. They worship the Baals, the Asherahs, the Molechs.
From this point forward, Israel never again is committing the sin of idolatry. They got it. They got that, Nehemiah. We will get these walls built.
And to the dismay of his enemies, with all the assassination attempts, with all the threats upon the city and upon the wall, the walls and the gates are rebuilt. He finishes the task, and Jerusalem’s identity is secure.
All right, here are some takeaways for us, some analogies, if you will. The Old Testament was written for us. It wasn’t written to us. This is a story about the exiles coming back to Jerusalem and about how Jerusalem was reestablished. The temple was rebuilt, the people received the covenant, and the walls were made.
And so Jerusalem was protected and had its identity. But it has analogies to our Christian life. It has points of contact with our Christian life. All right? And here are the points of contact.
We are commissioned by the kingdom. We have been commissioned by the king. If you are a follower of Jesus Christ, you have been commissioned. you’ve been commissioned. We call it the Great Commission. Right? Go into all the world, make disciples all. That’s the general. That’s the big job description. All of us are involved in that. All of us are involved.
Listen, we have far too long made the mistake of thinking people like me have a call, and people like you. your call is to sit on your bottom and listen to people like me. That’s not New Testament Christianity, all right?
And I’ve told you guys this. I’ll tell it to you again. I get it. I am called to preach the gospel. I am paid to preach the gospel. And I’ve told you this many times. I’m paid to be good. You guys are good for nothing. All right? So that’s how it works.
But there’s no difference between the call to do this and the call that you have on your life. And it may be, it may be an elaborate call. It may be dramatic. You may be called to go to the nations.
You know, I’m going to Africa in another week, and I’m going to be with Rob and Lori Mangus, who have been at our church and spoken to our church, but they’re full-time missionaries to Africa. They were called out of Texas, out of Oklahoma, to Africa.
Not a big difference, really, when you think about it. But, you know, they were called from one hot place to another hot place.
But you don’t have to be called to Ghana or Nigeria. you’re called to Poulsbo or Bainbridge or Quilcine, Port Orchard or Bremerton. Where has God planted you? you’ve been commissioned by the king to be his representative there.
Where is your job? You represent Jesus there. Where is your neighborhood? You represent Jesus there. Where is your school? You represent Jesus there. Where do you shop? Where do you go out to eat?
You are a contagious carrier of the kingdom of Christ. And that is your call. That is your purpose. you’ve been commissioned by the King.
Listen, you have children. You have a call, all right? You got together, you and your wife, you and your husband, you got together and you made babies. Those babies came out, and they were sinners. You beget original sinners, all right? And don’t tell me your kids aren’t sinners. In fact, most of you will tell me your kids are worse sinners than I believe.
You’re like, oh, you don’t know them when you don’t know what I know. My first daughter, I got my first, was a strong-willed child. Oh, she was a strong-willed child. She came out smoking a cigar, saying, I’m in charge. Oh, my gosh. My wife and I, we had deer in a headlight.
But listen, you made original sinners. Now it’s your job to protect the rest of us from them. It takes courage to be a parent, takes courage to curb that. But your job, you have a commission.
You have a call, your first call, your first line as a parent. You brought those kids into the world. You teach them Christ.
Now, ultimately, they’re going to have to believe on their own. You can’t make them believe, but you sure can pray for them, model to them, and lead them so that they can cross the river at the narrowest possible place.
I was on an airplane once. I was actually on a mission trip to Haiti, and I was coming home from Haiti. We were flying into Minneapolis.
And the instrument panel, that’s what you call it now, right? It’s not the dashboard. The instrument panel was saying that the landing gear wasn’t coming down, which is not good.
All right. I think landing gear of things on airplanes, I think, like, the wings are important, the engines are important. Pilots, yeah, they got computers, but, you know, they can teach monkeys to fly those things. Right? So. But the landing gear, I’m thinking that’s an important piece.
All right. I know. I found out later, you can land them without land, right? You can belly land them.
But I’d rather not. There’s a higher risk. So, you know, they’re telling us the landing gear is not coming down, and they’re taking this seriously. I mean, the flight attendants, they are no longer serving coffee and coke. They are getting everything ready, and they teach us the position. You know the position. Put your head between your legs. Like that’s going to happen. They said, well, if you can’t do that, just cross your arms and put your head on the seat in front of you. It’s okay. I’ll do that. You know.
You know what I call it, really? I call it the put your head between your legs and kiss your you know what goodbye position. You know, you’re gonna crash. So that’s it. They’re teaching us all that. And the plane got eerily quiet. It wasn’t panicky, but it got eerily quiet.
And these two ladies sitting next to me, I just looked at them and said, hey, I’m a pastor. Would you ladies like to pray? And they’re like.
And, you know, I held out my hand, and you could tell they didn’t know that, you know, now we hold out our hands and hold hands to pray. They’re like, no, don’t you do this. They didn’t know, but they prayed. We prayed.
But I remember thinking at the time, I remember thinking. I thought three things. I thought, I don’t think I’m going to die. I think this is going to be okay. I had a certain peace about that. I don’t think this is it. And I said, but, Lord, if I die, here was my request.
I would rather be squashed than burnt, all right? I’d rather be an ink spot on the Minneapolis runway than trying to get my seatbelt off with a fireball coming down the aisle. You know, you put in your request, right?
But the third thing is, I thought, you know, what? If I do die? My kids were all teenagers at the time, and they had all come to faith in Christ. They’d all come to their own personal faith in Christ. And I thought, you know what? There is a sense where I can die in peace.
That part of my job was done. That’s the commission. You have other commissions? All right. The way to find, you know. Lord, how do I know my call? I’ll tell you how you know your call. Be obedient to Jesus where you’re at right now, and if he wants you somewhere else, he’ll move you.
Lord, am I supposed to go to St. Louis or am I supposed to stay in Paulsbow? I don’t know. But while you’re praying about St. Louis, preach Christ, heal the sick, raise the dead in Paulsbow.
All right, do it in Paul’s bow. So that’s your commission. You are sent by God to the place you’re planted, and if he wants you to do something else, he’ll let you know.
You’re down in LA, you’re at a couple major universities, you’re all, you know, hoity toity, big educators making the big bucks, living in LA, and God says, nope, you’re going to be farmers in Kingston. You know, you’re going to be pig farmers in Kingston. you’re going to get those.
You’ll be churning your own butter and living out on the country. All right? So God directs you. God calls you. But do be obedient where you’re at, and the Lord will direct.
Second, there will be opposition. If you set your heart to seriously follow Christ, there will be opposition. It will not be easy. There will be opposition in personal holiness. you’ll be tempted to sin, you’ll be tempted to backslide. You won’t live this out perfectly.
All right, you’ll struggle with your growth in Christ and your maturity in Christ, and you’ll beat yourself up, or you’ll let the devil beat you up because you fell again or whatever.
There will be opposition. Expect it. There will be opposition from the culture. All right? Cultures are not friendly to the gospel. Have you ever wondered? It’s like, why don’t they like us? We’re preaching a gospel of love. We’re preaching a gospel of forgiveness. We’re preaching a gospel. We’ll use one of your favorite words. We’re preaching a gospel of inclusion.
Everybody’s invited, everybody gets to come in. Why don’t you like us? Because we don’t want to bend the knee to your goddess, and you’re proclaiming your God. If I don’t want to bend my knee to him, it is then an attack. I feel it as an attack.
And there’s resistance in the culture. There’s been resistance in the culture for 2000 years. People have lost their lives because of this gospel. They’re still losing their lives because of this gospel.
Jesus said, the world hated me. It’ll hate you. Don’t be surprised that you’re not popular.
Don’t be surprised that there are wicked stereotypes out there about who you are. Oh, you hate gays? No, not in the least. You hate gays. Why? Because you’re codependently calling broke, fixed and wrong, right, and allowing people to be enslaved in something that God has not called them to.
We’re proclaiming freedom. No, you’re haters. People will tell you about themselves, by the way. Right. People will tell you about themselves. you’re not inclusive and tolerant, says the least inclusive and tolerant people on the planet. you’re a hater, says the angriest, most hateful people on the planet.
Don’t be surprised. It comes with the territory. And don’t be buffaloed. All right. Love back. Love back. Don’t be baited. All right? Don’t be baited. Just want to let you know if you ever get into debate, don’t be baited. No real reference I’m talking to there, but nonetheless, you’ll do better in the debate if you don’t let yourself get baited. All right, so I digress. There will be opposition. All right, third takeaway. Zerubbabel built the temple. What does the temple represent? Worship. Build your life on God’s presence through worship. Be a worshiping person.
Now, you come here and we worship. We sing songs. And those songs are about him and about his work on the cross, and about his resurrection, and about his salvation, and about his exaltation, about his presence.
We humble ourselves when we do that. We don’t come and sing songs about us. We sing songs about him. That’s a part of worship. But worship is a lifestyle of humility. It’s a lifestyle of acknowledging you’re God. I’m not. you’re the creator, I’m the creation. you’re the Savior, I’m the saved. you’re the forgiver, I’m the forgiven.
You’re the lover, I’m the beloved. It’s just an admission, like Job. At the end of Job, it’s like, I get it. you’re God. I’m not. God is smarter than you. You don’t have a better plan than God. You don’t have a better way than God.
And so worship is a bowed down life. This is a part of it. This is corporate worship. We get together with other bowed down people, and we bow down together. And it’s life-giving, and it’s healthy, and it’s good.
But worship is about Monday and Tuesday and Wednesday, etcetera, and seek God’s presence.
Listen, the God we serve is really alive. He’s real. When you pray, don’t do it like it’s mechanics. Like, oh, I gotta get this one in that. If I shake this rabbit’s foot enough, maybe some spirit in heaven will hear what I say and give me the goodies. Talk to a real, living, raised person. He’s alive. He actually likes it when you talk to him. you’re not bothering him, you’re not troubling him. He looks forward to it.
And somehow he’s so great that he can handle 8 billion at once. And it doesn’t. He can deal with you like you’re the only one you ever been. One in a million. you’re one in 8 billion. That’s better than the top 10%.
Sophia, you’re the top. When you turn to God in prayer, you’re it. All the attention of the creator of the universe is right there on you. And your dad can be praying at the exact same time, and that same reality is just as true for him.
And so live a life of worship.
They built the temple. First, let the first priority of your life be to humble yourself before God, to worship Him and seek His presence, and then listen to His word and separate yourselves from anything that separates you from God. That’s what it means to be holy. All right? It doesn’t mean I’m just all prudish and self-righteous, but it does mean that I separate myself from things that separate me from God. If there’s an idol in your life, get rid of the idol. Listen. And it’s not.
We don’t have hard and fast rules about that. Like, Christians shouldn’t watch sports on TV. No, also, Christians should watch sports on TV. But if it’s an idol, separate yourself from it. Right?
Christians shouldn’t be rich. You can be rich, but if money’s an idol, give it all away. Separate yourself. That’s what Ezra says. Take these foreign wives who are separating you from God and separate yourselves from them.
Now, a word on divorce here, okay? Because it’s like, is the Bible speaking out of both sides of its mouth?
Because a contemporary of Ezra is the prophet Malachi. And the prophet Malachi is famous for saying this: God hates divorce. Now here Ezra is saying, get divorced. What’s the point? The point is to separate yourself from idolatry. But in fact, God does hate divorce. God hates covenant breaking. And marriage is a covenant.
The New Testament is pretty clear on this. Jesus is pretty strict on the idea of divorce, right? He says, well, the Pharisees allowed divorce because of the hardness of your heart. But God’s intention is found in Genesis 2.
For this reason, a man will leave his mother and father, be united to his wife. And the two, not Solomon, not the two and a thousand. The two will become one flesh, one man, one woman. Monogamous, heterosexual, obviously, man and a woman till death do them part. That’s the Christian ethic. That’s it.
Less than that or other than that is brokenness and sin. Now, you’ve been divorced. Great news. you’re forgiven. You fornicated before you got married. Great news. you’re forgiven. You committed adultery while you were married. Great news. you’re forgiven.
I don’t know anybody who lives up to Jesus’ standard, all right? If you’ve lusted in your heart, you’ve committed adultery. I don’t know anybody who’s gotten free of that one, all right? I know men more than women. I know of no man who has not lusted in his heart, all right?
I struggled with it for years, you know, about a thousand times a day in high school. But, you know, every pair of tight jeans that went by, I was, okay. Follow that. You know, guess what? I’m forgiven. you’re forgiven.
My wife is as pure as the driven snow. But she told me one time, we had a bunch of people in church, and, you know, the church was just packed with people. I just looked at her and said, honey, in your wildest dreams, did you imagine this? She looked at me and said, honey, in my wildest dreams, you’re Denzel. So I was like, so even she’s not perfect. You know, it’s like, oh, okay, but separate yourself.
Now, I will just say this. In the New Testament, as best as I can tell, there are two grounds for divorce, and those are adultery and abandonment. Here’s not a grounds for divorce. Sorry to say, for folks in our culture, unhappiness. I’m not happy. I don’t like him. I don’t like her. It’s not grounds for divorce.
It’s not grounds for divorce if you become a believer and the other person is still an unbeliever. In fact, it’s the opposite. Why is it that Ezra says, get rid of the unbelievers?
And in the New Testament, it says, keep them around. Because in the new covenant, you have the Holy Spirit living in you, and greater is he who is in you than he who is in the world.
That means there’s a greater chance for you influencing that unbeliever to become a follower of Christ than for that unbeliever to take you away from Christ. However, it also says, don’t be yoked to an unbeliever. Because when you’re finding a partner, if you’re a believer in Jesus, don’t marry somebody who’s not knucklehead.
I don’t care how good looking they are or what potential they have. you’re not gonna bind your life together with somebody who has a completely different worldview and completely different values.
But the New Testament says, if your spouse doesn’t believe, stick with them. And here’s mostly, most of the time, I get this from women who are married to unbelieving men. Sometimes it’s a man married to unbelieving women. Mostly it’s a woman married to an unbelieving man. And I just tell them, they say, what do I do about my husband?
And, you know, the Bible says, don’t nag him into the kingdom. You can’t nag him into the kingdom, all right? So don’t do it. He says, just by your godliness and by your good character, and by just the pure sweetness of your countenance, dear ladies, just your gentleness and mildness and kindness, you know what? You all exude 100% of the time. Just do that. Just do that.
But here’s what else you do. This is the Kevinism. When they go to sleep before you, just reach over and put your hand on their head and pray this prayer.
Heavenly Father, in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, Holy Spirit. Sick him, get him. Get him. Get him. Sick him. Get him. Get him. And then just leave it to God.
All right, guys, you can do the same with your wife. If she doesn’t believe, you can just reach over, put your hand on her head, all right? Don’t put a pillow over her face, hand on her head.
Just say, Holy Spirit, in the Name of Jesus, get him. Sick him. Get her. Get her, Lord. But do whatever you can.
If you’re married, do whatever you can to stay married. The crisis, the biggest crisis in our culture. Almost every problem we have in our culture can be traced back to kids growing up without fathers. Really, I mean, it’s huge. That’s not an overstatement.
School success, school dropout rates, drugs, pregnancies, out of wedlock pregnancies, prison. The biggest indicator is not ethnicity. It’s not wealth. The single biggest indicator is fatherlessness.
So don’t read Ezra and go, great. My wife’s not a believer. I can kick her out. Read Paul. He says, no, your wife’s not a believer. Pray her in. God still hates divorce.
Then rebuild your walls. Rebuild your walls. Okay. Build your identity around Jesus Christ. Walls really create an identity. Right? Walls. You know, we’re having a big, great debate in our country. What makes a country? Do borders make a country? Are borders significant in what defines a country? Are boundaries significant? Are borders significant in what defines you?
A few weeks ago, I preached out of Psalm 1, and I talked about wickedness. And what wickedness is, is really people who have no boundaries, no borders.
Wicked people are not just people who, you know, they’re not serial killers or rapists or people who do these terrible things. Those are wicked acts. But wicked people. The definition of wicked is somebody without a foundation, somebody without a root, somebody without an anchor. They are just shaped by everything around them. They have no identity.
They draw their identity from other people, from the culture, from the world views around them, from the media, but they have no center.
Dear ones, we are different. We’re different. That’s what holy means. We’re holy. We have a grounding. We have a foundation. We have an anchor. We have a base. We have a substance. His name is Jesus. That makes us different.
We had a couple sailors, submariners, in church this morning in Bremerton, and one of them was wearing a t shirt about Guam. And I said, Guam?
And one of the guys says, oh, yeah, Guam is wild, man. There’s no laws in Guam. It’s just crazy. And we said, that’s probably not a great place to let sailors off the ship. And I said, no, it’s not.
And I looked at them. I looked at our two submariners, and I said, you don’t do what other people on that boat do when you’re in Guam. And they go, that’s right, we don’t.
And I’ll tell you why you don’t. you’re different. We’re not shaped by the lawlessness of Guam and the lie that there’s somehow freedom there, when in fact, all there is is slavery. We’re not shaped by that.
We’re shaped by a word. We’re shaped by a living word. We’re shaped by an indwelling spirit. We’re shaped by a story of a God who came to earth and died on a cross and rose again and now gives us his spirit and transforms us and invites us to a new covenant meal and feeds us on a regular basis.
We have walls. We have boundaries. We have an identity. And, dear ones, your identity is in Christ. And I’ll tell you, here’s how you grow your identity. It comes with intentionality.
That’s the problem with wickedness. Wickedness has no intentionality. Wickedness is the cosmic. Whatever. Whatever the news says, whatever Hollywood says, whatever the schools say, whatever the culture says, whatever my buddies are doing, remember that you tell your parents, well, all my friends did it, right? And what do they teach you in mom school? Right? I know there’s a secret mom school out there where they give you all these lines.
Well, if your friends jumped off a bridge, right? Would you jump off a bridge? And you know, a stupid boy would probably say, well, yeah, I don’t know.
I don’t know when you guys have time to go to mom’s school, but I know because you all say the same things. Not all of them are true, by the way. I got hit flush in the eye by a rubber band. In a rubber band fight, and my eye did not fall out, all right? My mom lied to me. You can lose an eye.
I got hit right in the eye, and I was sure. I just looked out of my hand. I thought my eyeball would be laying right there, because I’ve been told for five or six years, you know, shooting rubber bands, you could lose an eye. It hurt, but it’s still there.
So mom’s school is not infallible. This is, though. Mom’s school’s good. I always tell. I always tell people, I told my kids, do what your mom says, and the world will be a better place.
I tell you, if you knew my wife, if everybody just did what Jill said, the world would be a better place. But if everybody did what Jesus said, the world would be perfect.
All right, everybody. My wife, she loves justice, by the way. Oh, my gosh. We got robbed at the Bremerton church. All our music equipment got robbed a couple weeks ago. And my wife works at 911, and she is on this. She’s like, let’s get the serial codes. Let’s catch these guys. And she wants to catch them.
Say, honey, don’t you want these guys to know Jesus? Oh, I do. I want them to repent, and I want these thieves to repent, and I want them to know Jesus, and I want them to go to heaven. Yes, I pray for their souls, but can I tase them first? Can I just like. All right, now, are you going to repent? You need another one? Yeah. So, all right.
Build your identity. Not in jail, but in Christ. Build your identity in Christ. Those are the commonalities. Those are the things I take away from Ezra and Nehemiah.
First of all, there’s the historical story of God restoring Jerusalem, fulfilling his promise, keeping his promise. Foreign kings cannot stop God from keeping his promise. you’re going back in 70 years. Guess what? They went back in 70 years. you’re going to rebuild the city. Guess what? They rebuilt the city. We’re going to be reestablished as a people, and my Messiah is still going to have a landing strip 400 years later, when he comes to the earth.
There’s still going to be a people of God, a broken people of God, a fallible people of God. But there’s going to be a place for David’s descendant to come. There’s going to be an Israel for David’s descendant to come. God keeps his word.
But the other thing is, God is the same yesterday, today, and forever. God keeps his word by using the commission of a kingdom, by taking his people through opposition, by giving them the perseverance to endure, by establishing a center of worship, by giving them the book of his word, his instructions, his voice, by separating them from the things that take them away from him, and by giving them a new identity.
And that’s who we are. That’s who we are. Hagios. Holy. Holy. you’re holy. you’re not only St. Kathleen of Bainbridge, you’re the holy one of Bainbridge. you’re holy because Christ has made you holy. He’s made you different.
And so we do this thing we have in our community, in our kingdom. We have two things that we do that we believe Christ commissioned us to do.
One of them is when somebody enters this family, when somebody says, yeah, I want to be a follower of Jesus. I want to be a part of this kingdom. We baptize them because in baptism, they go down in the waters and they die and they rise again. Their sins are cleansed off them. They’re refreshed and renewed in the Holy Spirit. And that starts the journey.
But you know what? On the journey, you need food. You need food for the journey. And so we baptize people once, but week after week, we come here and we say, feed on Christ. All right, feed on Christ through reading the Bible, yes. Through saying your prayers? Yes. Through going to corporate worship, yes. But also obeying him. And he said, when you gather together, have a meal together. Let me invite you to my table. And when I invite you to my table.
Remember my covenant, that your sins are forgiven, and I live in you, and you are forever mine.
And so I believe when you take this meal, when you take it by faith, it what? It feeds and reinforces that covenant. It’s a symbol, but it’s more than a symbol. This is holy food. This is. This is. I don’t know. It’s a bad example, because I’ve never been to a health food store, but this is the healthiest food. This is better than kale. All right? This is better than. And I hear that’s good for you.
I don’t risk trying it to find out, but this is better. This will do more for you than whatever fad diet is out there. This is the food of God, for the people of God. So I invite you to come and eat.
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