5-14-2022 West Palm Beach 7th Day BAPTIST Minister Daniel “Ignoring Or Not Noticing The Obvious” Neh

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Miz KJV Only

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5-14-2022 West Palm Beach 7th Day BAPTIST Minister Daniel “Ignoring Or Not Noticing The Obvious” Nehemiah 2;16-17
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Our text today speaks of the desolate state of the gates/wall of Jerusalem. It was broken down even though work had been done to the temple. What we want to learn is that your temple being healthy and secure depends on how much you protect it. We must learn how to build up our relationship and faith in God. We must apply what happened back then to our lives today and learn from it. The wall is just being addressed 142 years after Jerusalem was destroyed in August 1586 BC as stated in II Kings 25;8-9. Fifty seven years after the temple was completed in March 515 BC, as stated in Ezra 6;15, Nehemiah encountered hostility from non–Jewish people about the wall. The end of this story is that the wall was built in just 52 days. In doing research, the wall was destroyed many times after this. And just to build a part of the wall in the 15th century took three to four years. But here we have Nehemiah accomplishing this wall restoration in 52 days. This is the Mighty God that we serve.

Now walls can be seen as a source of imprisonment or division. It is about your perspective. In our sermon today we are going to be looking at establishing walls because they will serve the purpose of protection. Looking at the walls in the Bible, they are structures that protect, give security and are in places of shelter. The more valuable the things are in the cities, the greater need for the city walls. Today we are the temple of God. The more we have a spiritual relationship with God and have the Holy Spirit in us, this makes our value skyrocket. In order to protect this, we need to put in the proper security measures to ensure that the temple is protected.

Practically speaking, no wall means no city. No wall means no city. No city means no temple. It is deceptive to believe that the temple is in great shape when the protective structures are not in place. You are in a dangerous position if it is not being protected. In Haggai chapter one, He was called by God in 1521 BC. The people ignored his warnings from God until about September of the same year. God was rebuking them about their misplaced priorities. I can say that even as believers sometimes we have misplaced priorities. Young people are specialists in having misplaced priorities. The people of Israel began to make excuses as to why the thing was not done. The same is with us. We find excuses and ways to ignore the obvious stuff that needs to be done. This is very dangerous with something that should be seen as obvious and easily recognizable but for some reason you are spiritually blind or you are deliberately ignoring it. The excuses, reasons they gave were that the land was desolate. They would have to work hard and in Haggai they said they didn’t have the money. They said they had crop failures and droughts. In Ezra they recalled the easier times they had in Babylon. How different are we from them when we find reasons and excuses not to do something? With Nehemiah the broken wall was there and everybody saw it and realized the obvious thing. The wall was broken down and nobody was doing anything about it. They were saying, ”Well the temple is built and it has been restored”. As we are realizing today that the temple is as strong as what protects it.

Nehemiah was sent by God to motivate the people to rise up and join him in repairing the wall. By analyzing these two scriptures in Nehemiah, it will impress upon us the need to recognize that the best way of guarding, building our temple is to rectify and build up our walls of protection. And what is our wall of protection? Our relationship with God. Do you know that ignoring God, who is our wall of protection and ignoring the wall that is to protect valuable things is sort of like ignoring an oil change in your car? It’s also like ignoring a gas filter or ignoring a bad spark plug. You can drive the car for a while but then after ignoring it for some time, it may cause you to have to buy a new engine or a new vehicle. The changing of a spark plug or getting an oil change is so much less than having to deal with an entire transmission or a new car itself. That is the way it is with us spiritually.

There are some times when we are going thru life that we get complacent, not recognizing the fundamentals of our faith that we need to work on. Or the blessings that we get are overlooked and instead we are asking for more. There may be things in our life that are wrong with God and they are left uncovered, not dealt with or we say that is how I am. This is a popular phrase we use, “that is how I am”. “This is who I am”. This is not enough when God is challenging us to take on His identity. Sometimes we use reasons to justify why our actions, our behaviors or our beliefs when they are out of alignment with God. This is a very dangerous position to be in. As we look thru the scriptures, we need a self-evaluation. Don’t ignore what God is saying to you or be pretending that you don’t hear it. Keep in mind that if you don’t address these simple things now, they can balloon into greater things and cost you more.

** You need to personalize and live out your Faith in God.
** You need to steer clear of anti-Christian groups and cultures.
** You need to stay sexually pure: Don’t try to stretch the boundaries of what the Bible says about being sexually pure.

These three things are obvious and not hidden but they are being ignored by you. When we fall into little traps, we say at least we didn’t do as bad as we could have done. There are strict guidelines in the Bible about how we should behave. Instead we ignore them and justify ourselves. Then let’ talk about personal identity which is a big issue nowadays. Who am I? And I was not supposed to be this person or this gender or all of that foolishness. These are some of the things that we are battling.

Being in a relationship and not sure if the person is a Christian. Being too busy all the time. These are little signs, little spark plugs going bad that we need to take care of now. The most dangerous thing among young people is the negative social media influence. Lack of discipline and Bible illiteracy are big ones not to be ignored. We must invest in reading and studying the Word of God. This way you can defend yourself and defend the righteousness of God. Always remember the scripture Psalm 103;2,”Bless the Lord Oh my soul and forget not His benefits, who forgives all your iniquities and who heals all your diseases”. Hallelujah! This is what I want us center on. God is trying to give us a spiritual snapshot of what is happening in our lives right now. When you hold up the snapshot in front of the mirror, which is God, what does it look like? What does it look like? This is what God is trying to say when He is trying to reach you. He has called me, a brother from Canada, to try to reach you to tell you again that you need to treat these little things that are going bad. This is how the people were ignoring the broken wall in Nehemiah’s day.

Remember your temple is under threat if the wall is not built. Your temple is only as strong as what you put in place to protect it; the wall. The wall is the relationship you have with God. God is saying to us that we should have a strong relationship with Him and then we will have a strong wall of protection. Three points that come out of our text:

1. Consider Your Ways: Think carefully about your values and your morals. Think carefully about your relationships and your circle of friends. II Corinthians 13;5 = Examine yourself.

2. Go Up to the Mountain: Haggai 1;17. This is a way to communicate with and get instructions from God. Nehemiah 2;17. Rise up. Psalm 121;1-2. “Lift up your eyes to the hills from whence cometh my help. My help comes from the Lord”. Going to the mountain indicates returning to God.

3. Bring Wood and Build: Haggai 1;17, Nehemiah 2;20. God has all the resources we need waiting for us once we go back to Him to repair our protection. Our wall of protection that is around us, around the temple and the city, is our relationship with the Lord God Almighty.
God, Jesus, the Holy Spirit and Angels are there to protect us once we come back into our relationship with God. We have to go back to God and do it the right way.

AMEN