Christ Church at Grove Farm

Gideon Mangus: My name is Gideon Mangus. I am the high school ministry director here at Christ Church at Grove Farm. I am excited to be able to bring the Word of God before you as we open up the Bible and dive into this final message in our series on Nehemiah. If you are just joining with us, we have been in a journey through the book of Nehemiah, where we have been walking through this work of renewal and rebuilding that God is doing in the life of the people.

A quick overview: Nehemiah is a book in the Old Testament that comes after Israel and Judah have been taken over and gone into exile by the Babylonian Empire and then the Persian Empire. They are finally allowed to come back to the land. When they return to Jerusalem, the city that was meant to be set up and shine in all of God's goodness and glory to the nations around it, they find that it is left in ruins. The temple has been desecrated and decimated, and the wall is in rubble and in ruin.

There is this renewal process that happens there. The temple gets rebuilt, and in Nehemiah, they are talking about rebuilding the wall of the city. There is a sad scene that goes on. The people of God are back in the promised land, but they are not there as conquerors or victors; they are there as a conquered people, servants to a foreign king. It is in this context that Nehemiah receives this vision and this call to spur the people on to this rebuilding and renewal process.

Throughout this series, what we have said about the book of Nehemiah is that this book is not just about rebuilding walls; it is about God renewing the lives of His people. Pastor Craig set up this connection the first week: that there is a spiritual renewal going on here, and that there is a spiritual renewal that can take place in your life when you concede to the call and the promptings of the Holy Spirit to work on the broken places of your own heart. The goal in the series has never been just to talk about building walls, but to express the work of God in renewing His people when they lay down the brokenness at His feet and they invite Him to come and to work. We are going to try to wrap that all up today and put a bow on that in this message. Will you pray with me before we do that?

Father, we come before Your throne in the precious name of Jesus Christ, the name that is the highest in all the world and universe, the name that is King over everything. Jesus came down and saved us through His death and resurrection and invites us into a new life. Lord, we ask that this morning You would speak to us from Your Word. Would You meet with us here, God? Would You not only stir us, Lord, but would You change us? Would You set us on fire with a love for You? Would You open our eyes to the hope and the goodness of the Gospel? Would You draw us deeper in and farther into who You are? We want to be overcome and overwhelmed with a love for You. We pray this in the precious name of Jesus Christ our Savior. Amen.

We are closing out this series this morning, and if you got to hear Pastor Craig's message last week or his bonus sermon on YouTube this week—which I did not know we were allowed to do bonus sermons, but apparently that is a thing—what you would have found is that we have gone up through chapter five of Nehemiah. If you flip in your Bible, you will see that there are 13 total chapters, and so a quick math will tell you that we are a few off this morning. I put into ChatGPT, "How fast can I read eight chapters of the Bible?" and it said, "Not fast enough."

So, what I am going to try to do is summarize for us this morning what is going on in the second half of this book, what God is doing in the lives of the people, and then invite us into what God is doing in our lives today. A quick overview of Nehemiah: the opening chapters of this book pick up with Nehemiah living in Persia, serving the king. As he is living there and serving, he receives news of the sorry state of Jerusalem, the city of God, and the people living there.

When he hears this, he is broken over it and he goes to prayer. In his brokenness and prayer, God puts in his spirit this call and this desire to go back and start this process of rebuilding and renewal in the people in Jerusalem. From that original prayer, he then goes before the king and he has this amazing interaction where he takes courage. The king could have killed him. He takes courage and he says, "I want to go back and I want to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem. Would you allow me to do that? And not only would you allow me to do that, but would you sponsor it?" The king grants him this wish. God gives him favor in the eyes of the king, and he grants him the wish.

Chapter three ends with Nehemiah going back to Jerusalem and sparking this rebuilding effort. He rallies the people together, gives them the call that God has given him, and they start to get to work on the wall. We spent a lot of time on this. It is really amazing what they do, and there is a lot of spiritual truth in the renewal process that happens. They start by taking an honest assessment of the brokenness around them. They come together as a community. It is not just one person or one family; it is all of the families together, locking arm and arm, starting the work even in their own backyard and saying, "We want to see God do this in our community."

It is during this rebuilding process in chapter four that they face opposition. There are some high-level players in the area at this time, Tobiah and Sanballat, who are setting themselves up against the work that God is doing, and they intimidate and mock and threaten the people, trying to get them to stop the rebuilding process. What Nehemiah does is face this opposition. He encourages the people to remember their God. He says, "Remember that this is something that God is working out in us. This is a God-given vision. We have prayed about this, we have discerned this, and so now we need to persevere despite the opposition."

As they are doing that, Nehemiah looks inward and sees that there is internal oppression, that some of the wealthy Israelites are oppressing the poor. They are putting high interest on them and selling them into slavery to the nations around them. Nehemiah puts a stop to that and calls the people to be one body, the people of God. All of this leads to the wall, this work of rebuilding, being completed in 52 days. This was a record rallying of the people of God, and the wall is finished. The work he has done is finished in 52 days.

Then chapters seven to 10, following the completion of the wall, look at Nehemiah having a reformation and a spiritual awakening in the lives of the people. They have gone from this outward rebuilding work to this beautiful inward renewal. I want to list some things that they do. First, in chapter seven, the people gather together and they read their genealogies. Now, that sounds like a very boring chapter when you read that, but what is happening there is the people are reclaiming the covenant identity that God has given them. As they read these genealogies, they are being reminded that they are no longer exiles; they are a covenant people. They are the chosen people of God. They remember their ancestors, the patriarchs—Abraham, Isaac, Moses—and they remember who they are.

As they remember who they are, they also make this promise: "We want to purify the priesthood." They want to take the holiness of God seriously. So, as they go through the genealogies, they find that there are some people who are claiming to be priests but do not have the actual lineage that God has called them to have to back it up. They say, "We have been lax with the holiness of God. We want to take that seriously," and so they remove those people from the priesthood.

Following that, Ezra reads the law publicly. There is this beautiful scenario where the city comes together and Ezra reads the Word of God, and it is lifted up, and the importance of the word for them is re-established before them. It is really cool. At first, they do not understand. They hear the law being read and they start weeping and mourning because they realize they do not follow it. But Nehemiah and Ezra tell them, "God is doing something new here. God is working in this, so rejoice. This is a day of joy."

As the word is being re-established, they then respond in obedience. There is a cool scene where they see that they hear about the Feast of Tabernacles and they realize that is supposed to be going on right now and they want to celebrate it. So, there is this entire scene where they celebrate this feast, and they are rejoicing in the fact that God is providing for them. All of that culminates in chapter nine to this amazing chapter, probably my favorite chapter in the entire book, where the city comes together for six hours.

For half the day, for six hours, they have this public communal repentance. They humble themselves before God. They repent of their sin. They are mourning the sin, and then there is this long prayer that is describing everything that God has done in their lives up to this point. How God has brought them out of Egypt, He established them as a kingdom, He rebuked their rebellion, and then He has called them back as exiles. There is this beautiful scene where they are repenting for six hours. There is this revival going on in the people as they are gathering together to worship and repent. There is a spiritual awakening.

After that, they renew the covenant in chapter 10. They say, "Lord, we want to be Your covenantal people," and they write down some key reforms. They make these promises to God. They say that they will not marry the surrounding nations as they have been doing. They say that the Sabbath will be observed and honored, and that they will support the work of the temple. You see that there was nobody to run the temple because nobody was tithing and offering tithes to the priests and the Levites. So, they had to go work, and there was nobody ministering before God and the people in the temple. They said, "No, we want to provide for people to do that, so we will support the work of the temple."

They said, "We will worship God as He commanded. We will not oppress the poor." All of that ends in chapter 11 and 12 with this amazing, beautiful rededication ceremony that happens in Jerusalem, where the walls are dedicated and the city is repopulated. There is worship. They have these two choirs, like dueling bands choirs, as they are worshipping God together. There is this high note of, "Oh my goodness, Lord, You are transforming and renewing Your people in a way that is amazing and beautiful, and revival is taking place." It looks like, Nehemiah, you have done your job. The people are renewed and restored. And then chapter 13 comes.

Chapter 13 begins with this: "Now before this, Eliashib the priest, who was appointed over the chambers of the house of our God, and who was related to Tobiah, prepared for Tobiah a large chamber where they had previously put the grain offering, the frankincense, the vessels, and the tithes of grain, wine, and oil, which were given by commandment to the Levites, singers, and gatekeepers and the contribution for the priests. While this was taking place, I was not in Jerusalem, for in the 32nd year of Artaxerxes, king of Babylon, I went to the king. And after some time, I asked leave of the king, and I came to Jerusalem. And I then discovered the evil that Eliashib had done for Tobiah, preparing for him a chamber in the courts of the house of God. And I was very angry, and I threw all the household furniture of Tobiah out of the chamber. Then I gave orders and they cleansed the chambers, and I brought back there the vessels of the house of God with the grain offering and the frankincense."

Chapter 13 starts with Nehemiah going back to the king for a time. After this beautiful revival, after this beautiful renewal, he goes back to the king for a certain amount of time. Scholars say it is a 50-day journey one way, so for a couple of months at least, he is back with the king. When he comes back off that spiritual high that he left the people on, he comes back to find Tobiah living in the temple courts. Now, Tobiah is the guy who throughout this entire story has set himself up against the work of renewal that God is doing. Not only is this not an Israelite, but an Ammonite, so he was not allowed in the temple.

This is the guy who has been actively against what God is doing, and Nehemiah comes back to find that the holiness, the zeal for God's holiness that the people once had, has been compromised again. We could read all 30 verses of Nehemiah here, but what you will find repeated three different times throughout this final chapter is each of the key areas of reform and renewal that they just celebrated in the first 12 chapters, the people had fallen back into relapse in every single one of those areas. Each of the key areas reformed, the people had relapsed. You see it first here in Tobiah in the temple room, but if you go to verse 10, you see that the priests they promised to care for have been abandoned.

Nehemiah writes in verse 10, "I also learned that the portions assigned to the Levites had not been given to them, and that all the Levites and musicians responsible for the service had gone back to their own fields." So, not only is Tobiah living in the temple room, but the people who had promised, "Man, we want people to minister before God and to us," they did not follow through in that. They had abandoned the support of the priests and the Levites.

You go on in verse 15 and you see that the Sabbath had been ignored. He writes, "In those days I saw people in Judah treading wine presses on the Sabbath and bringing in grain and loading it on donkeys, together with wine, grapes, figs, and all other kinds of loads. And they were bringing all of this into Jerusalem on the Sabbath." So, you see the people have not only failed to provide for the priests or maintain the purity of the temple, but now they are not even following the dedicated rhythms of worship set up for them. They are going back to ignoring the law, to desecrating the Sabbath, to doing their own thing.

Finally, in verse 23, you will see the fourth area of relapse: their covenant identity. That covenant identity that they renewed as God's set-apart people has been given up. In verse 23, Nehemiah writes, "Moreover, in those days I saw men of Judah who had married women from Ashdod, Ammon, and Moab. Half of their children spoke the language of Ashdod, or the language of one of the other peoples, and did not know how to speak the language of Judah. I rebuked them and I called down curses on them. I beat some of the men and pulled out their hair."

That sounds like a middle school pastor. Sometimes you have given up your covenantal identity. They have given up the call to be separate and holy. So, in this final chapter, you come off this spiritual high of these two choirs and this amazing worship and renewal to see that the entire city had relapsed and gone right back into the garbage and the muck that they had been called out of. Nehemiah ends it in kind of this defeated tone. His final prayer is, "Remember me with favor, God. Remember me because of the good I tried to do." He has kind of thrown up his hands and said, "Lord, I tried. Remember me for the good."

In the final scene, you see that the walls are built, the words were restored, the covenants were resigned, but the people remained fragile. The renewal did not last. Nehemiah ends with this question, which is this: What will it take to experience a renewal that lasts? What does it take for renewal to remain? Will anything ever be different? I wonder as we put that before us, have any of us ever been in a situation in our life where you look in the mirror and you are wondering the same exact thing?

Lord, what does it take for the transformation that You are saying You are doing in me to actually work and last? God, what does it take for the renewal that I hear about and the freedom that I hear about to actually take root in my heart? As I was reading this week, I was thinking, Lord, what is it that You have for us, God, as we finish Nehemiah? How do we wrap up this series on rebuilding and renewal? I was wrestling with that. I thought, okay, what we could do is look at each area of relapse and talk about, well, how do we not do what they did?

You could look at Eliashib inviting Tobiah back into the temple. It said Tobiah was his relative, and you could say, okay, what did they do? They went back to the people around them who caused them to fall into sin. And so, how do we have a renewal that remains? How do we have a renewal that lasts? Well, don't be around bad people. We could say that. You look at the second area and say, well, they abandoned the priests. Well, what does that show? Well, it says that they only followed the renewal up until the point that it really hurt or cost them.

Maybe as they were providing for the priests, a bad crop came and they were wondering, well, I don't know if I actually need to give that. Or maybe they are realizing, if I keep this for myself, I will have more money to spend on myself. And so, the renewal that lasts is only followed up until the point that it hurt. Or even with the Sabbath, you can talk about how they obeyed the Sabbath up until the point that it became an inconvenience. As soon as business deals were being conducted on the Sabbath and other priorities fought for that time, then they gave it up. So, renewal that lasts looks like keeping God as a top priority.

Or even in the intermarrying. What can we learn from that? Well, throughout all of the Old Testament, one of the biggest temptations and obstacles for Israel is the women of the surrounding nations. So, they fall to this temptation and this trigger that has been repeated in the cycle. So, renewal that lasts is how you manage the triggers and temptations around you. I was thinking through all of these things that we could preach through and be like, "Man, that's really applicable." But as I was wrestling with that, I was realizing that those are all the symptoms, not the underlying problem. They could have handled all four of these temptations and still relapsed in some other way.

There has to be something deeper going on here than just a stronger to-do list. There has to be something more going on here than just a self-help list of dos and don'ts. As I was wrestling with this this week, God brought back to my mind multiple times and moments and memories where I have been in the exact same place as these people, where I have gone from renewal to relapse. Where I have sat in the fact that, Lord, I make this big, bold promise, God, I am going to follow You now. God, this time it will be different. This time I will really pursue You. This time I will turn away from that sin and I will turn to You. You make this big, bold promise to God, and then you find yourself a day, a week, a month later back in the same muck that you promised you would never be back in.

Has anybody ever felt or experienced that before? In youth ministry, it is really easy. We call this a "camp high." You see this all the time. A kid goes away to a camp, they have this amazing experience with God, they are like, "I want to chase God, I want to turn from sin." They confess and they repent and they get prayed over and they say, "I want to turn from sin, I want to turn back to God." And then they come home and they are back in the same routines, and the same thing happens. The fire fades. They are back in the same stuff that they promised they were getting out of.

What happens in those moments for most of us is that we look in the mirror and we wonder the same thing Nehemiah was probably wondering: God, is there anything that could make this different? Am I doomed to be stuck in this same thing over and over and try harder and harder? Is there something that can make the renewal work that You are doing in me actually last and remain? If that is you this morning, I have good news for you: as we go through this, there is something more deep offered to you. There is something deeper that is offered to you than exhausting cycles of trying harder.

You see, most people when they experience that, we have one of two responses. The first response is to negotiate with the brokenness. It's not that big of a deal, I'll move on and I'll move through. I'm fine. That's not transformation; that's tolerance. The second response is where I believe a lot of us live, and probably where I live most of my life, which is to say, "Okay, Lord, I feel like I'm falling back out of the renewal, I'm falling back out of what You called me to. So, what I need to do is I need to muscle up and work my hardest and try better to be good. As if more discipline and more effort, God, if I just listen to more Christian music throughout my day and I got K-Love bumping, Lord, then that'll actually lead to a lasting transformation."

But what happens with that effort cycle is it leads back to exhausted brokenness. You cannot will yourself to be good. What is the hope then? What is the hope of the Gospel? There is a renewal that is offered to you today in Christ Jesus that is deeper and greater than pick yourself up by the bootstraps and try your hardest to be good. That is because the renewal of God—and this is the crux of the entire book of Nehemiah—the renewal of God is not a self-help method; it is a Spirit-empowered process of transformation. The renewal of God is not a self-help method; it is a Spirit-empowered process of transformation.

Nehemiah ends with this question: What does it take to experience renewal that lasts? What does it take for renewal that remains? If that question is on your heart this morning, the answer is found in the Word of God. Will you turn to Romans chapter 12 with me right now? We are going to finish up the book of Nehemiah by going to Romans, exactly like God intended us to. Romans chapter 12, favorite verses, famous verses in the Bible. Romans 12 says this: "Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God. This is your true and proper worship."

Here is where we are going to live: "Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is—His good, pleasing, and perfect will." "Do not conform to the pattern of this world; be transformed by the renewing of your mind." If you have a pen or a highlighter, underline the verb "be transformed." That verb right there is key to unlocking renewal that remains. What is Paul doing in this sentence? Paul is giving the same call that has been given throughout the entire Bible: Do not conform. It has been given to Moses, Abraham, Isaac. Jesus says this on the Sermon on the Mount: Do not look like the world; be holy.

The underlying question is, "God, how in the world do I do that? I want that. How do I do that?" Paul answers it: "Be transformed by the renewing of your mind." Here is the key in the phrase "be transformed": That verb there is passive. That is a passive verb, which means that is something that is done in you and to you before that is ever something done by you. What is the power behind renewal that lasts? It is the power of the Spirit of God living inside you, renewing your mind, strengthening your will, which leads to a life of transformation.

I heard a sermon this week that was on this, and I will endorse it. If you ever have a chance to listen to it, it's really good. Listen to it. It's by a pastor named Miles Fidell. He pastors a church in Auburn, Alabama, called All Christ Church, and he is preaching on addiction and renewal. He reads this verse, Romans 12, and he said for most of us, when we hear that phrase, "Do not conform to the pattern of this world, be transformed by the renewing of your mind," what we hear is this: that okay, I need to try really hard and work up the motivation and conjure up feelings of wanting to serve God. And if I just do that, I can will myself into transformation.

He says if you looked at the modern church, what this verse would be if we got to write it is this: "Be transformed by the effort of our will." He has this line that's beautiful. He says, "Instead of being transformed by the renewal of our mind, most people are trying to be transformed by the effort of our will." And he walks through the brain chemistry behind addictions and how the effort of our will is actually a step in the cycle of brokenness that a lot of addictions find themselves in. When we convince ourselves to try harder, it doesn't work. That is why the Gospel is so good, because what God is asking you to do is not try harder. He is saying it is not something that you need to try to do right now; it is something that I have done in you through the power of My Spirit.

John Piper says this: "The Christian alternative to immoral behaviors is not a new list of moral behaviors. It is the triumphant power and transformation of the Holy Spirit through faith in Christ Jesus our Lord, our Savior, and our Treasure. This transformation is a profound, blood-bought, Spirit-wrought change from the inside out." That is good news. The transforming power of the Holy Spirit alive inside of you is renewing you from the inside out.

I have two points today as we close up a series on renewal and rebuilding. The first one is this: Renewal that lasts is a Spirit-empowered process, not a human effort cycle. Renewal that remains is a Spirit-empowered process, not a human effort cycle. What is the point here? Here is the point: the Bible does not lie when it says greater is the one living inside of you than he who is living in the world. That is the truth that you hold onto and you walk in as we face these struggles and the temptations and the trials of this world: that the Holy Spirit alive in me is stronger than the sin and temptation around me.

Renewal that lasts first begins with this: Do you trust that the Holy Spirit living inside of you is actually stronger than the things that you are dealing with day in and day out? Do you believe that the power of God that is resurrecting you to life is stronger than the power of the world around you? Why are we mentioning the Holy Spirit? In Titus 3, it says this. This is one of my favorite verses. The only other time in the entire New Testament that that word "renewal"—when He says "be transformed by the renewing of your mind"—that comes in Titus 3 and verse 5.

Paul writes, "He saved us, not because of the righteous things we had done, but because of His mercy. He saved us through the washing of rebirth and the renewal of the Holy Spirit, whom He poured out on us generously through Jesus Christ our Savior." Poured out on us generously! God isn't stingy. The power of the Spirit has been generously poured out into your life, working out the renewal and the transformation. This isn't a sermon that is anti-effort, but it's a sermon that says get the priority straight. So often our first thing is, "Okay, I'm going to muscle up the transformation in my own life," instead of recognizing that the work of the Holy Spirit is already doing that.

So, the participation doesn't come from earning change or transformation. My participation comes from knowing the power of God is already alive in me, and He who began a good work in me will carry it through to completion. And so, I don't walk around scared, fearful, "Oh my goodness, I'm going to mess up again." I walk around knowing that the victory God promises is being worked out in my life. That is why you hear the Bible says, "I haven't given you a spirit of fear, but of power, love, and self-control." If you are in Jesus, that is true for you today, whether you feel like it or not.

Power, love, and self-control. Jesus, You have wrought that into me. Lord, would You let me hold onto that and believe that in the face of the lies of the enemy that say, "Man, you're still nothing's going to change, nothing's going to move." When Titus talks about that, when Paul and Titus talk about that renewal that comes by the Spirit, that's not us climbing out; that's the resurrection of the life coming in. Renewal that lasts is a Spirit-empowered process, not a human effort cycle. Every other aspect of renewal that we have talked about in this entire series is hanging on the truth of that. The difference between us and Nehemiah is that you live on the other side of Jesus. It is why Joel is like, "Man, I want to put My Spirit in them! Oh, the day that I will put My Spirit in them!" It is good news.

Second point as we close out this series: Renewal that lasts, while it is a Spirit-empowered process, it is sustained in community. When we look at Romans 12, we often take that to be a personal command and an individual call. "Be transformed by the renewing of your mind." But the entire chapter of Romans 12 is written in the context of the church. A few verses later, he goes and says, "You are one body." "Be transformed by the renewing of your mind. You are one body together."

Dan Davis, in between services, was like, "That word 'you' there is actually the plural word." And I said, "Shut up, nerd." But thank you. That word "you" is the plural you. And so, it is actually a communal call that transformation isn't something that happens individually alone in a room; it happens within the body of believers. Pastor Craig said this multiple times: renewal is personal, but it's hardly ever private or individual. Yes, the Spirit renews the mind, but He does so within the context of the body. Partly, a reason why we might not be moving into the freedom that Christ has won for us is because we might be refusing to step into the God-ordained areas of transformation that He has provided for us.

What I mean by that is, are you in a group of people who know you deeply and walk with you daily? Do you have people around you who are supporting you, who are supporting the transforming work of the Holy Spirit inside of you? Who can preach the Gospel into your life? Who you can be authentic and accountable with? God has provided the church—not the building, the people—life-changing relationships for that exact reason: life change. Renewal that lasts is a Spirit-empowered process, not a human effort cycle. If you are tired of trying to do it on your own strength and muscle up the courage to get it done, here is the invitation today: trust that He who began a good work in you will carry it through to completion.

Walk in the joy and the goodness that God is working out the Gospel in your life day by day. Have a few trusted brothers and sisters that you can be authentically broken with, to walk in the transformation of the Spirit. Will you pray with me? Father God, as we prepare to sing this song, Lord, I ask that this song is a response of faith and trust in You. As we sing "Yet Not I But Through Christ in Me," those words would be engraved on our heart. Lord, if there is anybody in here who has been battling and facing brokenness alone and is desiring to have community surround them, I pray that they would have the courage to come forward and grab somebody. Come to the prayer team, grab me, grab Dan, grab somebody around them and say, "I don't want to walk in this alone any longer."

Lord, if there are people in here who have been trying and struggling and striving on their own and they have come to the end of themselves, wondering, "Is God really even listening to me? Is there any change that can really happen?" Would You by Your Spirit minister to them right now? We pray this all in the matchless name of Jesus Christ. Amen.