As we’ve preached through the book of Nehemiah, we have seen courage from the people of God as they join in on the work and face external opposition. This week, our story starts to take a turn and we see that the people of God are facing the internal threat of sin in the community. We get to see the difficulties and beauties with confronting sin and repentance. 

Several years ago we resolved at Seven Mile Road to “not play scared.” In this sermon, we finish our look at the fourth chapter of Nehemiah and see a beautiful example of what this looks like. Although surrounded by enemies and badgered by some of his countrymen to quit, Nehemiah won’t do it. Instead, he implores the people to trust God and stand strong.

Nehemiah wasn’t five minutes into his work before the haters started in on him, jeering, questioning, threatening, and attacking his good work. Opposition from the world is a sine qua non for anyone who is about the advance of the gospel. In this sermon, we learn how Nehemiah's responses to those who opposed his work of reform can shape ours.

1:31 PM

In this sermon, we see Nehemiah rally the people to the difficult and dangerous task of rebuilding the city … and (almost) everybody jumps in! Way outside their comfort level, they get to work, side-by-side. This is how the gospel advances, and it’s our vision for life at Seven Mile Road.

As we consider the powerful king that Nehemiah faced-off with in order to carry out the big burden that God had placed on his heart, we will see principles for all of us as we speak to and deal with Power. Whether doing everyday obedience or going for something big that God has called us to, we will encounter powerful individuals that will require us to know some truth deep in our bones about the heart of the king (and all power).

In this sermon, we hear Nehemiah say that God had “put it on his heart” to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem. For many of us, we pause at those words because we’ve heard them used recklessly before. While we are right to pause, we also need to embrace the fact that sometimes God does call His sons and daughters to really big obediences. Here we work the text of Nehemiah 2 and see what that looks like.

Nehemiah is memoir recounting the time that God’s people gave themselves to the good, hard, dangerous work of reform. Our hope is that the truths in this text will strengthen us as we work to build a strong church in a post-Christian context.

In this sermon, we go at two things:

1, getting oriented to the book as a whole
2, working through verses 1-4, where we see how it was Nehemiah’s grief over the state of the city that spurred a beautiful work of reform.

In this final sermon in I John, we hear evidence for believing Jesus and clarity on what trusting in Him means for each of us. The evidence John offers might not be what you expect, but he gives a powerful answer to why you can securely put your trust in Jesus.