March 18, 2007

Nehemiah
Clearing the Rooms in the Temple (Your Heart)

Steve Lane

A. Review/Introduction

Themes - Leadership, Sovereignty of God, Word, Prayer, vision, risk, opposition, revival

Zerubbabel 538 BC, Ezra in 458 BC and Nehemiah in 445 BC

Does the condition of the wall concern you?

1 Corinthians 3: 9 - 15
Building up the body of Christ
Opposition - Response

Nehemiah 7: 1 - 3
Stay alert!

Prone to wander, prone to stray, prone to leave the God I love. Revival

B. Tobiah's Condo

Chapter 13 could be the last words of the Old Testament

Nehemiah 13: 1 - 3
Nehemiah's absence and his return 9 - 12 years later

Nehemiah 13: 4 - 7
The outward attack had not worked
Eliashib, the priest, had rented a room in the Temple to the enemy of God, Tobiah.

Nehemiah 13: 8 - 11
Nehemiah took action.
Your heart now belongs to God -- you are the Temple. What room are you keeping from Him?

Nehemiah 13: 14
Here is Nehemiah's strength... the word and prayer
A hint here of what it takes to keep the rooms from being occupied by the wrong tenants

C. More Areas that have Slipped into Disobedience

Tobiah having a room in the Temple led to all of these problems
The people and the leaders did not stay alert
Obedience is the test of the heart

Nehemiah 13: 16, 17, 19 - 22
Nehemiah's prayer (13: 22)
He had in mind the things of God, not the things of man

Nehemiah 13: 28 - 30
Again, Israel's other notorious enemy has a connection on the inside

D. How to Keep the Bum out of the Room

Are you holding back one room from God?
Who's the bum?

Malachi 1: 2
Warned by Malachi first

Romans 8: 5
"We're not getting what we hoped for." (selfish desires)

Malachi 1: 6 - 7
They are refusing to acknowledge

Romans 6: 22
A change of disposition to keep the rooms rightly occupied

Doulos (Greek) - one whose will is swallowed up in the will of another; one who serves another to the disregard of his own interest

Psalm 37: 4
God's purposes at the core

1 John 5: 21
Keep away from anything that might take God's place in your hearts. (NLT)