Our new sermon series in the book of Nehemiah called Radical Faithfulness will begin on July 2nd.
We live in a culture that doesn't value faithfulness as it ought to. In our marriages, families, social relationships, workplaces, and—sadly—even in our relationship with God, an emphasis on faithfulness seems to be lacking.
Some in our society believe that our desires and happiness should outweigh the call to be faithful. We say things like, "you do you." Or "you gotta do whatever makes you happy."
The book of Nehemiah was written in a similar cultural moment when faithfulness was going out the window. Faithlessness was the name of the game.
And to this kind of culture, for these faithless ones, God sends people like Ezra, Nehemiah, and others to call people back to faithfulness. Nehemiah himself commits to faithfulness and holds his people accountable to a radical faithfulness to God and to one another.
But before you think this is a story about heroes that had superpowers of perfect faithfulness, we have to acknowledge that this book is full of people's failures. It's an honest portrayal of God's people—sometimes brutally honest; there's no sugar-coating going on here.
In fact, the book ends on what we might call a "downer." It doesn't end in a triumphant return to faithfulness after Ezra and Nehemiah's reforms. The people fail to be faithful and even Nehemiah perhaps isn't completely successful at it.
This leaves the readers longing and yearning for a better ending to the story. It intentionally leaves us hanging so that we desire a better leader—a more faithful one. When you get to the end of the story, you can't help but realize that this story was all about GOD'S faithfulness.
Like many other Old Testament books, the author deliberately ends the story without a resolution. The conflict is still at large, and the original readers desperately wanted a more faithful people to arise and bring resolution to the story. They believed this faithful one would be the Messiah—the Christ.
This story causes us to hunger for a more faithful one: Jesus Christ. It points us there. And thankfully for us, we can go to him and find that he is ready to embrace us. This is the story of Nehemiah. I'm looking forward to diving in and being stirred up to a greater desire for Jesus Christ: the perfecter of faithfulness; whose faithfulness is applied to us so that we can become "faithful ones."
Watch the video below to see our trailer for this new series. Please pray that God will speak to us through his word, and if you know people that may benefit from joining us for this series, invite them to church or send them our YouTube link to the services.
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