Devotional Thoughts for God’s Family Week – 1
Nehemiah 9:16–17 (ESV): But they and our fathers acted presumptuously and stiffened their neck and did not obey your commandments. 17 They refused to obey and were not mindful of the wonders that you performed among them, but they stiffened their neck and appointed a leader to return to their slavery in Egypt.
Oh listen leaders… all leaders, in whatever role you find yourself leading. We must make sure that we are going in the right direction.
There are those who are looking for a platform of any kind to get out in front of people.
There are those who have no clue as to where they are going.
There are those who listen to the crowd and do what the crowd says.
What God requires is tough, and whoever tells you it isn’t, is wrong. It isn’t complex, but it is tough. In the old covenant that we are reading about in Nehemiah, we see a people who are under the weight of the law. Their relationship to God is purely based upon what they do with what they know is right and wrong according to the constructs of the law given years before. They are reading, understanding and reinstituting their way of life based upon the written records of the law.
What is beautiful is the heart they have to do what is right. And it is clear to see that God is pleased with them and is blessing this whole endeavor. The soil of Jerusalem and portions of land where people dwelled near by, became the focus of what was done right and wrong.
The Israelites were in their land, doing what God wanted them to do. It would not work in any other land because this was the land that God set apart for his people. He called them home from captivity, he called them back into their land – we call it the Holy Land.
For you and me, in our day, in the new covenant, there is a land as well. It is not soil though, it is your heart. God has declared that rather than a physical temple tied to a geographical place to reside in to be close to his people, he has made you his temple.
1 Corinthians 3:16 (ESV): Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you?
The land that the Lord is most concerned about is the holy land he calls home in you, leader.
What if you found out that in your good intentions you were actually headed the wrong way. Would you stop and go the other direction? Could you? Imagine being the guy who was appointed to take the people of Israel back to Egypt.
“I’ll do it! I can take us back! That is where we need to go, backwards!”
God was leading the people out of captivity to a land that he had given to his people, he had promised them a land flowing with milk and honey. They knew how to survive in captivity it was familiar to them.
In our day leader, backwards is to maneuver away from the things of the heart. The holy land of today is the heart. When we are tempted to veer away from the heart it is no different than the people of Israel appointing a leader and heading back into captivity.
God wants the landscape of your heart. Let’s start today by offering that to him.
The best thing to do today is give God your real estate.
Lord, today, I give you everything. Every part of me, every hope or dream and every failure and shortcoming. You have the best and worst of me, please redeem all of it and conform me to your Word. Change me into what you have predestined me to be from times long ago. Bless your name Lord, thank you for your active love. I see you today, you are working in my life developing my heart – I yield Lord, I yield.
Devotional Thoughts for God’s Family – 2
Nehemiah 12:27 (ESV): And at the dedication of the wall of Jerusalem they sought the Levites in all their places, to bring them to Jerusalem to celebrate the dedication with gladness, with thanksgivings and with singing, with cymbals, harps, and lyres.
You know, I think the Lord does more celebrating than we think.
If you live in a gated community, Israel had recently become a gated community and God prompted the people to celebrate that. That is not written as a requirement in the law. It was a prompting from the Lord and I believe as the Lord celebrates, he desires that we not miss what he celebrates and also, that we would celebrate too.
Certainly, there is spiritual significance to Jerusalem and the temple being finished. Once again the people are able to worship their God. There is also significance to the fact that these people are God’s chosen. We are not going to diminish that.
But what I want to elevate in our thoughts this morning is that when you achieve and accomplish the building of your life on numerous levels, God celebrates. When you accomplish his plans in the lives of others, whether that is helping with their groceries, painting a wall, or providing for education, God celebrates. It might be building a building that will house or protect, or even provide for richer, deeper life, God celebrates.
What are some areas in your life that have grown that you normally wouldn’t celebrate?
Sometimes we feel that because this world is made of dirt that God hates it. Didn’t he make it? Or maybe because it is cursed, God hates it, when you pray to sanctify it, isn’t it redeemed? When you pray and ask the Lord to bless it, isn’t it turned into something to celebrate like the walls of Jerusalem?
Over the last years I have been attempting to transform my back yard into an oasis. Now, I call it an oasis, if you are a botanist, you might call it a jungle or a disaster, but for me, it is a labor of love. Whenever and where-ever there is a single flower that pops up, I celebrate. After I have uprooted something and placed it somewhere else so it grows even better – because of the amount of sunlight or water it needs or had too much of, I celebrate.
God is there, in those moments of celebration. You might think it petty or unimportant, but I don’t think that God does. I used to – I used to be pressed to push toward big things that I perceive that God would be proud of.
I believe God is proud of two things. One is the accomplishment, just like the people of Israel, these people accomplished something and God wanted them to celebrate. The second is that God was glad they stopped to celebrate and actually slow down long enough to look.
We ascribe to God that he is the one that allows us to see accomplishment in any form, for sure. Perhaps he wants us to slow down a bit and celebrate those accomplishments. Especially if we have had the privilege of accomplishing with others, like the people in Nehemiah’s time.
In a world of MORE, we often have already in our minds, completed the accomplishment before it is even done, and we are off to the next thing before we even stop to see what God has done.
What is the latest thing that God has done in your life that is brick and mortar, or petal and leaf, LOL? What has he made from rock or wood in your life? That is strange to think about, I know. But isn’t it also strange to think that because it is not “spiritual” that it is evil and unimportant, that God doesn’t like it or pay attention to it?
God has a master plan and all of his plans are going to come to pass just as he said they would.
Proverbs 19:21 (ESV): Many are the plans in the mind of a man, but it is the purpose of the Lord that will stand.
We know the Bible teaches us about God’s plan, but does this mean that when you are following along in the life that God has made for you, that God doesn’t care or celebrate your accomplishing the simple things he has set before you? I believe he does celebrate.
Recently, Sierra has been working in the front yard and making it so beautiful. I walk out in the yard and there are new shrubs and borders, beautiful mulch and I think how hard she works and the joy of accomplishment she has every time she walks out there.
I am so proud of her, and I believe the Lord is too, on many levels. One of them being, simply getting her hands dirty and moving some dirt around to make her world more beautiful.
Would you consider slowing a bit today and looking around at what God is leading you to accomplish? Maybe you are not done yet, that’s ok, look at where you are, be encouraged and celebrate what God is doing.
Thank the Lord for his work in your life as he leads you to grow and build even the littlest and seemingly insignificant things – which might not be so insignificant to him. Especially if you allow him to join you in it.
Lord, we want to see through your eyes and look upon the things that we do. Lord, what do you celebrate in our lives? What type of things make you smile? Lord, help us rewrite what we think you like and don’t like and how involved or uninvolved we think you are in our lives.
For the stout hearted – can you see Jesus celebrating in Mark 12? You might think he is using this poor lady to judge the rich – I don’t. I think he is using the rich to celebrate her gift. How and what you choose to celebrate can change your view of the world, even of God.
Mark 12:41–44 (ESV): And he sat down opposite the treasury and watched the people putting money into the offering box. Many rich people put in large sums. 42 And a poor widow came and put in two small copper coins, which make a penny. 43 And he called his disciples to him and said to them, “Truly, I say to you, this poor widow has put in more than all those who are contributing to the offering box. 44 For they all contributed out of their abundance, but she out of her poverty has put in everything she had, all she had to live on.”
Devotional Thoughts for God’s Family – 3
Nehemiah 12:43 (ESV): And they offered great sacrifices that day and rejoiced, for God had made them rejoice with great joy; the women and children also rejoiced. And the joy of Jerusalem was heard far away.
Well, pastor we don’t do that anymore. Right you are. We do not hold to the Law of Moses for atonement for our sin. We trust the work of Jesus as our sacrifice for our sins.
Jesus indeed!
On the cross, Jesus fulfilled all the requirements of the law that weighed heavy on everyone who wants to be saved.
John 3:16–17 (ESV): For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. 17 For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.
You see, the law is heavy and condemns, that is why John 3:17 is so important for all to understand. The law was sent to man to give man freedom, but man cannot hold up the law, it is too heavy.
Think of the law like a 100,000lb nugget of gold found by a miner. Wouldn’t that be amazing!?
It is the most valuable thing you have ever seen, and you need that nugget and want it desperately, maybe you have been looking for it all your life. All you have are your hands to work with. It is oh so valuable, but you cannot wrap your hands around it, or lift it from the ground, so it is useless because you can’t chip off pieces of it or carry it away.
No one can.
Revelation 5:2-5 And I saw a mighty angel proclaiming with a loud voice, “Who is worthy to open the scroll and break its seals?” And no one in heaven or on earth or under the earth was able to open the scroll or to look into it, and I began to weep loudly because no one was found worthy to open the scroll or to look into it. And one of the elders said to me, “Weep no more; behold, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has conquered, so that he can open the scroll and its seven seals.”
Something so big and so valuable, and no one able to budge it!
Jesus pulled the nugget out of the ground with his bare hands and formed it up into pieces and disperses it to anyone who is in need and asks him for it. The law is that nugget! It is fulfilled through Jesus. He pulled it up and made it “haveable” through his own doing. We are those who are law followers through Jesus. We possess the nugget because he possesses the nugget and we are family with him to the Father.
We don’t go back to the nugget in the ground anymore, that’s where it was. Jesus cut it up, we have a steady stream of gold that he gives us every day, more than we can spend.
Some think the law is bad – it isn’t. We think it is bad because we can’t do anything with it. And Jesus, didn’t do away with it as much as he processed it.
He accomplished it, dealt with it, lifted it and made it his own, all by himself.
The law isn’t bad christian. It is golden.
The requirements of the law are gone, there is no more nugget in the ground, but the law which comes from the heart of God is good.
Without the law we wouldn’t know the righteousness of God.
Without the law we wouldn’t know what sin is.
Without the law we wouldn’t even know that we need a Jesus as our Savior.
The law is golden. We simply don’t follow it anymore. We follow the heart of Jesus and we follow the Word of God, trusting that Jesus saves us by God’s grace. We have faith in what Jesus has done for us.
The law will be in heaven, in a display case, in a museum showing all that want to see the great length that God went to redeem mankind. The center piece of heaven will be Jesus – his great love that hoisted the law, dispersing it to all as fulfilled and completed on the cross.
Praise God! Praise God! Praise God!
Ephesians 2:4-7 But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.
Devotional Thoughts for God’s Family – 4
Nehemiah 12:43 (ESV): And they offered great sacrifices that day and rejoiced, for God had made them rejoice with great joy; the women and children also rejoiced. And the joy of Jerusalem was heard far away.
Now listen, the longing in those who have received from Jesus in our day, must be like the people of Israel who are eager to follow the law. But we don’t follow the law. Sounds strange doesn’t it? We keep the eagerness that they had though.
We submit to the will of God and do everything that God asks, because God has not stopped asking. That will never ever stop, He asks, and we do… forever.
That is a consistent factor before Jesus came to earth and after – God is always asking us to submit to him. In the old covenant he asked that the people follow the law, they went to the gold nugget and tried to lift it and couldn’t, but they had to because that was their only hope.
The fact that they couldn’t lift the nugget was to help all mankind see that they (we) are in the same problem, all of us are. Saving ourselves is impossible, whether good works or good intentions – we fall way too short for God’s standard of eternal heavenly citizenship. We in our day are not off the hook. Those in the Old Covenant stared at their problem with no solution except that God was going to send the solution, Jesus.
That was their hope, they were waiting for the Messiah.
There hope was realized when John the Baptist shouted, “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” (John 1:29) Every Old Testament saint held the same anticipation, “When is the Messiah coming, he is going to do something, he is going to fix this heavy weight.” They were helpless to redeem themselves, couldn’t be done.
In our day, we are helpless too. Except that we believe we need the nugget that Jesus provides and believe that Jesus dug it out and gives it to us, we are destitute too.
I recently read this, “The only proof that God has chosen us is that we have chosen him.” This was written by an old Scottish preacher over 100 years ago.
Whether Old Testament or New, whether Old Covenant or New, what lies behind how we engage God, is a heart that wants to engage God. So beautifully seen in Nehemiah’s story are people who choose God.
And they offered great sacrifices that day and rejoiced, for God had made them rejoice with great joy; the women and children also rejoiced. And the joy of Jerusalem was heard far away.
Great joy existed during those days for the people because they pursued God, they followed after God with all of their hearts. Great joy came to them from God, he saw their pursuit.
And friend, God is looking for your pursuit as well.
How often we think, “This is a new day, a new covenant.” We mistakenly throw out with the law the righteous cry and demand for pursuit by God. When we must keep the pursuit and hunger to please the Lord.
Great joy is available for those who hold their pursuit as important in their life.
Romans 2:29 (ESV): But a Jew is one inwardly, and circumcision is a matter of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the letter.
Oh Lord, destroy everything that stands between you and me. Whatever I place as higher than my devotion to you, help me see it and deal with it. I choose to pursue you all the days of my life. Lord, forgive me when I make other things more important than you. Thank You Holy Spirit for revealing truth to me today.
Devotional Thoughts for God’s Family – 5
Nehemiah 13:4-5 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 contributions for the priests.
Do you remember Tobiah? Sure you do. He was one of the three men who were at the heart of the opposition against the rebuilding of the walls of Jerusalem. Remember Sanballat and Geshem the Arab, these three tried all the tricks in the reindeer game manual to stop Nehemiah and the people of Israel from rebuilding their lives.
You remember, frontal assault, guerrilla warfare, invitation to the valley of Ono for a royal beating, letters of intimidation, all of these were and are the ways that the enemy attempts to get you to stop the work that God has for you to do.
Here is the situation, Nehemiah has gone back to the king and queen, back to his job. They had blessed him with the time off to fulfill a dream. What a blessing.
Now when Nehemiah goes back to Jerusalem, (I wonder what prompted him to go at that time…short answer is, God. Maybe we can talk about that some time) he finds that his arch enemy, THE GUY, Israel’s most wanted fugitive, is at it again! What is with this guy!?
The one who had fiercely opposed him, the one everyone hated because of the raiding and looting. The one who had capitalized on the brokenness of the people for years. The one who took the wives and children of the people into slavery because they couldn’t pay the high prices he commanded on their land and houses. He gouged them in every way possible…Only, now it is worse.
HE WAS LIVING IN THE TEMPLE!
HE WAS LIVING IN THE TEMPLE!!
Sorry for shouting.
How did he so quickly get to the heart, the center of the Israelite culture? I could see the walls with graffiti, or maybe bandits mugging the caravan travelers, that makes sense, but the temple!?
Oh, let there be good leadership in your life. Oh, be a no-strings-attached leader for Jesus, please, for the sake of all involved.
When God demands that you rise to be on any platform for him, be careful of your alignment. And when I say platform, don’t get the wrong idea. By platform, I mean a way to serve others. A platform may be being a dad or a mom. A platform may be being asked to become a supervisor at work. A platform may be leading your family of origin to unity.
Eliashib was given a platform as the priest. He had strong family ties with Tobiah the enemy of God’s people. He was family with Tobiah. You have to wonder what Tobiah had on Eliashib? Maybe nothing, maybe Tobiah threatened Eliashib. No one knows for sure.
This is obvious and I know you feel it too. The whole temple shut down because of what Eliashib allowed to happen on his watch. He gave the enemy a room where blessings were stored. Those blessings were replaced with evil and so worship was gone, it left the building.
After all that the people had gone through to rebuild and establish a new way of life, it was shut down. How powerful the corruption must have been because the people let it all happen. The people greatly outnumbered those who conspired, yet the people remained silent.
Ok, get it out of your system, “How could he do that and why didn’t anybody stop him?” Ok, shake it off, we need to bring this home to rest.
Now friend, look at your platforms. Look at what God has given you to serve others. And also, what is your closest relation to the enemy? What is your uncle Tobiah? Ours would most likely not be a person, it is likely something secret or an attitude toward someone or something.
Eliashib (that’s you), where is your Tobiah?
Eliashib (yep, still talking to you), how close is he?
Eliashib, has Tobiah set up residence in the house of God (you) and now worship is replaced with wickedness?
How about we make that right.
Lord, we come to you today and ask for your forgiveness, I gave the enemy a room to live in and carry on his horrible intentions. Lord, I am the temple of the Holy Spirit and I confess that I have become the hang out of the enemy. Oh Lord, clean me and make me whole. I break my family connection with the enemy. I break my ties with him and renounce any involvement with him that I have chosen. Thank you for the power of Jesus! I receive forgiveness and blessing from Jesus. Lord, raise a hallelujah in me, once again make worship roar in me. Thank you God! Thank you so much!
Blessings
Pastor D
