Bible Text: Nehemiah 1:1-4 | Pastor: Eric Danielson | Series: Restoration – Nehemiah | Lots of things need restoration – cars, art, furniture, even people who are broken. But what about people who are already Christians? Are they still in need of restoration? Are you?

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The Need for Restoration
Nehemiah 1:1-4

This morning I want to start a new sermon series about something many of us might not think we need any more in the Christian life. It’s a series about restoration. For many of us, if we think about restoration, we probably think of it as something that happened when we became a Christian. We were walking in sin and unbelief when we heard about Jesus and what he did for us. We realized we needed him for forgiveness and to turn our life around, so we turned to him and put our faith in him and were saved. We were given a new heart and got on the right track moving forward. So if we think about restoration we probably think: “That’s what happened to me when I became a Christian. My life was restored!” And we don’t think we really need it anymore.

But what is restoration? I have a brother who recently did something that no one in my family thought would ever be done. My grandpa bought a used tractor back in the early 60’s – it was a late 50’s Minneapolis Moline 445 Universal for those of you who know tractors. The tractor broke down in 1965 and he had it in his garage where he pulled it apart to fix it. Apparently he fixed the original problem, but before he got it back together the squirrels got in it and packed the engine compartments full of junk, and it turned into a much bigger problem. So he got frustrated and left it there. Year after year passed and the tractor just sat there in the garage while he worked around it. Eventually it got buried by so much stuff you couldn’t even see it was there.

We joked around about it every once in a while when someone cleaned the garage and talked about putting it back together, but everyone knew that was never going to happen – way too much work. Well my grandpa passed away in 2009 and the tractor still sat in pieces until last fall when my brother Joel who’s an incredibly gifted mechanic decided he was going to give it a go. (Pictures of tractor in parts) So after 55 years of sitting in pieces, he pulled it out of my grandpa’s garage, brought it to his, and began working on it. It took many, many hours of cleaning and repairing as he took everything apart and put it back together again, but after about 3 months, he finally got it running. (Picture of finished tractor) The impossible came to be – and a few days later he actually drove the tractor out of the garage.

According to the online English Learner’s Dictionary, restoration is: “the act or process of returning something to its original condition by repairing it, cleaning it, etc.” Old, broken down tractors need restoration to become like they were meant to be. Classic cars need restoration. Beautiful furniture and artwork needs restoration. Even people who are lost in sin and not following Jesus need restoration. But what about those who are already Christians? After you become a Christian and you get on the right track, are you still in need of restoration?

To guide us in this series on restoration, I’m going to be preaching from the first 6 chapters of the book of Nehemiah. Now if you’re familiar with Nehemiah, you might be wondering how it has anything to do with our need for restoration, because it’s a history book about repairing the walls around Jerusalem. But more than just a Jewish history book, it’s a book about restoration – the restoration of a city, and the restoration of God’s people. And the way he brought restoration to his people back then is the same way he brings restoration to his people today. So as we study these chapters of Nehemiah we will see all kinds of parallels to our lives today – things that will help us to understand what restoration is all about.

So today we’re looking to answer the simple question: “Are we as Christians still in need of restoration?” To help us find this answer, I want to look at the history leading up to the events in Nehemiah.

God had brought the Israelites out of slavery in Egypt to the land of Canaan and they became known as the kingdom of Israel. But because of king Solomon’s sin of idolatry the kingdom was split apart. The southern part became known as Judah and included the capital city of Jerusalem. Judah had a succession of kings in David’s lineage – mostly bad, but some good. The last good king was named Josiah. During his reign there was peace and prosperity and the people of Israel were following the Lord according to the laws of the covenant. They had removed the high places of idol worship and taken the idols out of the temple. The priests were offering sacrifices to God and conducting worship the way things should be. It was a glorious time for the city and for the people.

But in 609 B.C. Josiah died, and under the next king things quickly fell apart. The people turned away from the Lord to worship idols again. There was violence, injustice and immorality, and because of their continual return to sin, God allowed them to be overthrown by the Babylonian Empire. After their final attempt at resistance in 586 B.C., the Babylonian army came and destroyed everything in the city including the temple, the buildings, and the defensive wall, and hauled most of the survivors hundreds of miles away to live in captivity. The city lay in ruins. It was an enormous tragedy for the Jewish people who had once been free and very proud of their beautiful city.

They were there for several decades when God brought about a monumental turn of events. In 539 B.C. the Babylonian Empire was overthrown by Cyrus the Great of Persia and the Jewish people came under Persian control. But there was something much different about Cyrus than the Babylonian rulers that led to an amazing turnaround for the Jews. At the beginning of the book of Ezra, we read this…

Read Ezra 1:1-4.
In the first year of Cyrus king of Persia, that the word of the Lord by the mouth of Jeremiah might be fulfilled, the Lord stirred up the spirit of Cyrus king of Persia, so that he made a proclamation throughout all his kingdom and also put it in writing: 2 “Thus says Cyrus king of Persia: The Lord, the God of heaven, has given me all the kingdoms of the earth, and he has charged me to build him a house at Jerusalem, which is in Judah. 3 Whoever is among you of all his people, may his God be with him, and let him go up to Jerusalem, which is in Judah, and rebuild the house of the Lord, the God of Israel—he is the God who is in Jerusalem. 4 And let each survivor, in whatever place he sojourns, be assisted by the men of his place with silver and gold, with goods and with beasts, besides freewill offerings for the house of God that is in Jerusalem.”

In an unbelievable turn of events, the Jewish people – all who wanted to – were set free from captivity and commanded to return to Jerusalem to rebuild the temple. The first 6 chapters of the book of Ezra record the that significant undertaking. Over 42,000 people, led by a man named Zerubbabel returned to Jerusalem and rebuilt the temple. Like every major building project there were setbacks and delays. But finally, after 20 years, the temple of Jerusalem was rebuilt. The heart of the city had been restored!

About 60 years passed after that, that we don’t know much about, and then in 458 B.C. a Jewish scribe named Ezra who had been living in Persia was granted permission to go to Jerusalem to teach the people the laws of the Lord. The second half of the book of Ezra records what happened. When he got there he found that the people were living in direct violation of the Lord’s commands – they had married into the families of the nations around them – nations who worshipped false gods – and they were headed down the very same path that led them into captivity before. So Ezra led the people in radical repentance. The men separated themselves from their foreign wives and sent them back to their own people. It was a huge and difficult step to take, but necessary to move forward as a nation devoted to the one true God.

So at that point, the people had returned to Jerusalem, the temple had been rebuilt, and Ezra was there to straighten things up and point them in the right direction. The heart of the city had been restored. The exile was over. They were back in Jerusalem. With all these amazing things that had already happened, I want you to think about this question: Were they still in need of restoration?

That brings us to the book of Nehemiah. The things we are going to read next happened 10 years later. So things seemed to be going pretty well – much better than when they were in captivity. But here’s what we read…

Read Nehemiah 1:1-4
The words of Nehemiah the son of Hacaliah.
Now it happened in the month of Chislev, in the twentieth year, as I was in Susa the citadel, 2 that Hanani, one of my brothers, came with certain men from Judah. And I asked them concerning the Jews who escaped, who had survived the exile, and concerning Jerusalem. 3 And they said to me, “The remnant there in the province who had survived the exile is in great trouble and shame. The wall of Jerusalem is broken down, and its gates are destroyed by fire.”
4 As soon as I heard these words I sat down and wept and mourned for days, and I continued fasting and praying before the God of heaven.

Now wait a minute… Wonderful things had happened in Judah – miraculous things that no one would have thought possible. And yet, what you read here in the beginning of the book of Nehemiah doesn’t sound very wonderful at all. Nehemiah was a Jewish man living in the Persian city of Susa. It was the twentieth year of the reign of King Artaxerxes, which meant it was 446 B.C. He would have known that the temple had been rebuilt and that tens of thousands of his kinsmen were living in Jerusalem. But when his brother showed up with some men from Judah and he asked them how things were going back home, the report they gave was utterly devastating to him. I’ve never wept and mourned for days, but he did. Why was he so devastated after so many amazing things had happened in the city of Jerusalem?

I think he was devastated because he had a vision in his mind of the glory of how the city and the people of Jerusalem were meant to be. He had probably heard and read reports of how glorious Jerusalem had been before the Babylonian invasion. The city would have been a wonder to behold – stationed high up on a mountain with huge buildings and huge walls surrounding it. With all kinds of trade and commerce, full of people, full of life, full of joy and celebration. It was something that every Jewish person would have been very proud of.

But the report he just heard was anything but that. Yes, the heart of the city had been restored – the temple had been rebuilt and thousands of people had returned, but the walls of the city lay in ruins. The glorious gates were destroyed. The people were in great trouble and shame among the other nations. The restoration of the city had begun, but it wasn’t anywhere close to being complete, and it grieved Nehemiah’s heart deeply.

Restoration isn’t complete until something is returned to its original condition – until it’s brought back to the way it was meant to be. God had begun the great work of restoration among the people of Israel, but it was a long way from being complete.

Are we as Christians still in need of restoration? The message I see for us in this first part of Nehemiah is that yes, we are. The process of restoration in our lives began when God did the miracle of regeneration and gave life to our cold, dead hearts. That’s what happened when you first became a Christian. God did something deep inside you to change the trajectory of your life. He gave you a new heart and you were born again. He put you on the right track. But that was only the beginning of the process of restoration that God wants to do in your life.

It’s easy to compare ourselves to the way we were before we became Christians or to look at the unbelievers around us and think our restoration is basically complete. “I’m not as bad as I was and I’m not as bad as the people around me.” But we’re comparing ourselves to the wrong thing. If Nehemiah would have done that he would have compared the condition of his people to the way things were when they were still in exile, and he might have thought their restoration was complete. But he didn’t. He compared them to the way things had been and were meant to be. And that’s exactly what we need to do in our lives.

Restoration isn’t complete when you’re better off than you used to be. It’s complete when you become what you were meant to be. Even with all the amazing work my brother did on my grandpa’s tractor, he knows that restoration isn’t complete. He’s still looking for missing parts and problems that need to be fixed. He still knows it needs a whole new paint job. Restoration won’t be finished until the tractor is back to its original condition – until it looks and runs the way it was meant to be.

And when looking at where we’re at in our Christian lives today, we don’t compare ourselves to the way we used to be; we compare ourselves to the way we were meant to be. And that means we compare ourselves to the one person that walked this earth that was everything a human being was meant to be. Jesus Christ didn’t need restoration because he was already in perfect condition. And it’s when we become like him in every area of our lives that the process of restoration will be complete.

Try to imagine what that would be like for you… What will it be like to experience complete healing from sins done against you? To no longer feel hatred or bitterness for the people that hurt you? To have friendships unstained by comparison or jealousy? To no longer struggle with guilt or shame? To no longer experience doubt, or anxiety, or fear? What will it be like to have perfect communion with your heavenly Father where you experience his deep love for you and hear his voice clearly and know his will? To know that he is pleased with you without having to earn it and rejoices over you with singing? What will it be like to have complete confidence in who you are and what you are doing? To have joy no matter what the circumstances? What will it be like to no longer struggle with addiction or be swayed by the temptation to sin? To think clearly, not motivated by pride or greed, or any other temptation? To always want what’s good and to have no desire for evil? What will it be like to be joyfully engaged in using your gifts and talents to help people, and build them up, and build God’s kingdom?

Imagine what it would be like to be everything you were meant to be… That’s what it means to be fully restored. And chances are that hasn’t completely happened yet in your life. We are still in need of restoration. And even though that restoration will never be fully complete until we get to heaven, it is definitely something God wants us to experience more and more in our lives today. He wants you to become what you were meant to be. 2 Corinthians 3:18 says, “And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another.” And Philippians 1:6 tells us, “And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.” God wants you to experience restoration in this life and become the person he created you to be.

And the first step in moving forward in this process is realizing we still need it. I hope you can see that today. We still have areas in our lives that need to be restored no matter where you’re at in the journey. And the further you go in the process, the more rewarding it will be. So I invite you to come along as we study this book of Nehemiah every week and become more and more the people God wants us to be.