BROKEN DOWN & BURNED WITH FIRE!
Many years ago, I was asked to speak at a sister
church up the road from the one I was pastoring, who found themselves in the
throes of a very painful and devastating scandal involving their founding
pastor of nearly twenty years. With front page headlines and regional news
coverage already descending heavily upon this small fellowship, it was obvious to me that the enemy had broken down
the walls and burned the gates of this church, and as a result, the believers were
in great distress and reproach.
I felt that the Lord wanted to bring them a message of hope and comfort, so I exhorted them
not to look at the wind and the waves, but to put their eyes squarely on Jesus;
His love, mercy, and forgiveness. I encouraged them to cry out to Him in
prayer, to praise Him for His greatness, and reminded them that the destruction
that lies in the wake of this scandal was clearly the work of Satan himself;
the enemy of our souls, who comes as a thief to, “…steal, kill, and destroy” (John
10:10), not the work of Jesus who came to give us abundant life.
I believed the Lord had accomplished that work in
and through me that Sunday; at least until the following day, when I became
aware of the work of a local journalist who labeled my sermon as a, “Message of
Hate!” I still haven’t figure out how he came up with that, but I do know that
Nehemiah, when faced with a similar circumstance after the Babylonian captivity,
preached the same message of hope; and it inspired God’s people Israel to trust
in the Lord for their deliverance.
Prior to the captivity, they had fallen deeply in
sin and committed abominable atrocities. God warned them and then judged their unrepentant
sin by allowing them to be destroyed as a nation. Many years after their captivity, they
returned to find their cities lying in ruin, and as a result, the people were living,
“…in great distress and reproach. The
wall of Jerusalem was broken down, and its gates were burned with fire.
(Nehemiah 1:3)” Nehemiah’s initial reaction was not to frantically rebuild the
wall however, but to first cry out to God, praise Him for his omnipotence, and to
confess the sins of the people. God heard his cry, moved upon the hearts of the
people, and made it possible for the walls to be rebuilt again in order to protect
them from their enemies which were causing the great distress and reproach
that they were experiencing.
Nehemiah encouraged the people saying, “Do not be
afraid of them! Remember the Lord, great and awesome, and fight for your
brethren, your sons, your daughters, your wives, and your houses. (Neh 4:14)”
The very same things could be said for our nation today. Our sin and rebellion against
God and His standard of righteousness has reached biblical proportions in this country,
and it is only by the grace of God that He has not already sold us into captivity
as well. Who knows, perhaps He has and we just don’t know it yet. However, our typical knee-jerk reaction up to this point, has just been to frantically build walls to isolate us from our enemies, and to rebuild our depleted military, which of course is needed, but our first order of business should be to, as Nehemiah did, cry out to God, praise Him, and to confess our sins. God is gracious, and there
may still be time to repent and return to Him, but just as in Nehemiah’s time, we must also stop being afraid of the enemies of the Cross that encircle us, remember the great
and awesome God that we serve, and start fighting the spiritual battle that rages
all around us!
The story of Nehemiah paints a tremendous picture
of the epic spiritual forces that conspire to steal our joy, kill our very
lives, and destroy our mortal souls, but as with this story, we can also trust
in the promises of God’s Word to turn what our enemy meant for evil, into
something good, and He will rebuild, restore, strengthen us, if we repent and diligently
abide by His Word. Obviously, the enemy has broken down the walls and burned
the gates of our communities, our churches, and our homes; our nation lies in
ruin because of our sin. As a result, we live in great distress and reproach, the
Bride of Christ has become increasingly worldly, and consequently her shepherds
and her sheep are stumbling into the same unimaginable sin and depravity of her
worldly neighbors, with the added shame of having the “Hypocrite” title branded
into our foreheads, and rightly so.
As I ministered to the members of that sad little church,
and learned more of the severity of the sins involved with their fallen pastor and leadership,
it occurred to me that the Church as a whole, is in serious need of a wake-up call.
That we should learn from these reprehensible failures, and all those who call
themselves, “Imitators of Christ”, should repent and return to a consecrated life
of holiness, “For the time has come for
judgment to begin at the house of God; and if it begins with us first, what
will be the end of those who do not obey the gospel of God? (1 Peter 4:17)”
By Pastor Glen Mustian
Works Cited: New King James Version Bible
