It's Time To Rebuild – Nicky Gumbel | HTB Live Stream

welcome again to everyone here at htv brompton road welcome to all of you joining us from the other htv sites and to all of you joining us online today so thrilled to have you with us i want to look today at the book of nehemiah if you have a bible i mean you may like to turn to near my chapter 2 it's page 487 in the church bibles uh but the verses will also come up on the screen what happened in the book of nehemiah took place in the year 445 bc and as many well i expect all of you know the exile happened in the 6th century bc the people of god israel were sent into exile in babylon they were there for approximately 70 years and they came back to rebuild the temple which was what we're going to be studying on tuesday the book of haggai uh in groups live as you've heard and then nehemiah who was a layman a civil servant like most of you he was in just in the workplace he was called by god to rebuild the walls the walls of jerusalem remained in ruins and this is what we read in chapter 2 verse 17. then i that's nehemiah said to them you see the trouble we're in jerusalem lies in ruins and its gates have been burned with fire come let us rebuild the wall of jerusalem and we will no longer be in disgrace i also told them about the gracious hand of my god upon me and what the king had said to me they replied let us start rebuilding so they began this good work but whence and bala the horror night to buy the ammonite official and geshem the arab heard about it they mocked and ridiculed us what is this you're doing they asked are you rebelling against the king i answered them by saying the god of heaven will give us success we his servants will start rebuilding i want to talk to you today about it's time to rebuild let's start rebuilding what is the holy spirit saying to us today as a community to you online what we sense is that it's time to rebuild our lives to rebuild our communities the church and the world it feels like we have been in a kind of exile especially during the pandemic uh i wanted i don't know what you associate with the word exile but i wanted to see what what would most people associate with the word exile so i googled the word exile and you know the first thing that came up taylor swift singer songwriter and uh you know i i had heard of taylor swift you'd be surprised to know but what i hadn't realized has how many followers she has do you know even on just on instagram she has a hundred and eighty million followers swifters they're called i don't think i qualified to be a swifter yet but i love the words of her song called exile she wrote it during the pandemic and she writes this now i'm in exile you're not my homeland anymore so what does the bible mean by the word exile it means disruption trauma loss of the life we've been used to it means heightened anxiety increased fear sadness trouble devastation ruins a sense of failure self-doubt defeat i don't know about you but i can relate to that perhaps you can relate to some of those things the pandemic has devastated so many lives there's been the physical crisis physical health crisis it's been a financial crisis some people have lost jobs some people have lost businesses but there's also been a mental health crisis an increase of anxiety depression the loss of the life we knew loss of holidays loss of routines loss of freedom and before i had the opportunity to we had the opportunity to get away for for holiday over over the summer i reached a point which i don't think i've ever reached before in my life i've been very tired before but i've never reached a point where i was actually close to exhaustion and i don't think it was my age i i read an article in the week which says now middle age starts at 60. so actually i'm just emerging from youth and it'll be many years before i'm old so it wasn't that but it was something about this exile that we're i think so many of us have experienced and the question that i want to ask today is what can we learn from the book of nehemiah about how to cope what have i learned here's the first thing i've learned and the first thing that we see in the book of nehemiah the pace of grace the pace of grace nehemiah says the gracious hand of my god was upon me the god of heaven will give us success as the psalmist says unless the lord builds the house those who labor labor in vain and i've read from chapter two the first chapter of nehemiah is all about his prayer life that's where it started it was god's plan he was following not his own uh some of you may have been at the leadership the last leadership conference we were able to hold at the the albert hall where the wonderful african-american pastor mike todd spoke on this subject the pace of grace and at the time we thought wow that's a lovely idea that's great talk but i think now i realize it's essential that we operate at the pace of grace because we need physical emotional and spiritual help as i said i got close to exhaustion and actually i got some professional help and here are some of the things that i i've learned about the pace of grace i was operating at an unsustainable pace in my life i just got you know i think my routines had gone you know i i before the pandemic i had a way of just getting away 2 30. i got on my bike went to the gym played squash whatever it did mix with my friends outside the church totally slowed down got a break and i had a prayer on prayer room on fridays i would be in there and i had all these routines that were kind of balanced in my life but with the pandemic i just started operating and sort of unconsciously at an unsustainable pace because i thought i wasn't working that hard because i wasn't traveling that much but actually everyone knew that i was here so they were all asking me to do things and eventually i found myself like just everything was in seconds like you have 30 seconds to clean your teeth you have one and a half minutes to shave eight minutes to get breakfast oh no the doorbell that's another 15 seconds i'm going to go and answer the amazons around it's like this is a crazy way to lead your life plus i have to confess to you i was breaking one of the commandments don't guess which one i'll tell you it's it it's the commandment to take a day off not every week i i broke the fourth commandment but i did from time to time because i was trying to take saturdays off and there were weddings and funerals and alpha weekends and i wasn't getting another day off so i have resolved that i'm going to try to operate at the pace of grace from now on so i have resolved to take a day off hey i'm going to do a six day week so if i can't get sati off i'll take friday off and if i can't get friday off to take monday off shocking monday off but i want to operate at the pace of grace and i want to encourage all of you to operate at the pace of grace to re-establish regular patterns in your lives if you've lost them and you know it's great that you're here today because you have us reestablished sunday as a day of worship but i think we need to to establish this all in our lives because we got used to to watching online and that's not a substitute for community and i want to encourage you all like every sunday if you're maybe you're not in london normally but wherever wherever your local church is go there every sunday make sure that you really get a sabbath that is the fourth commandment that we should worship together that we should come together as community that we should take a complete break from work these are the routines i think we need to establish for me one of the key things has been jesus talked about the unseen parts of our lives like our giving and our prayer life these are the foundations and for me many of you know i do the bible in one year i've done it actually for 30 years so that means i've read through the bible 30 years but saint gregory the great said this scripture grows with those who read it so you always see something new and what i've learned is just how important this is one of the things i so enjoy when i was on holiday and there was no rush there was just to meditate on the words of god you know tim paul describes the bible as being there nustos which is inspired by god but there's another meaning of that that the greek word you can either translate it's as god new source is breath so it's either it's god breathe or it breathes god and both are true the bible is inspired by god but it breathes god so as you're meditating on it you're chewing on it you're breaking it up so that you can digest and so that you can fill your spiritual hunger that we all have and this is an amazing thing when you when you you you you encounter jesus in the bible you listen to jesus in the bible and this is a hunger that we all have in our hearts and and you know nothing else will satisfy that hunger even the good things of life your job your friends your relationships nothing will satisfy that hunger because it's a god-shaped spiritual hunger i remember nikki lee nikki and sula lee worked in japan for a time and there they met a japanese woman and when he was he was talking about this fact that nothing else will satisfy this hunger and and this japanese woman said in japan she said it's as if we have two stomachs we have one stomach for ordinary food fish meat vegetables we have another for rice and she said unless we eat rice we always feel that something is missing and i guess if jesus had been speaking to her he'd have said i'm the rice of life i'm the one person who can satisfy this other stomach which we all have jesus is the rice of life and if we want to operate at the pace of grace we have to eat the rice of life we have to be in this relationship with jesus so that's the first thing i've learned i've learned about the pace of grace the second thing i've learned is the price of rice so yes jesus is the bread of life he's the rice of life he's the one we need and it's a free gift but there's a price to be paid for following jesus and for holding him out to the world and rebuilding in the book of nehemiah we see there was a price to be paid rebuilding requires resilience when nehemiah saw the state of jerusalem the walls broken down the gates burned with fire it says there was a sadness in his heart he said i was very much afraid and you know i think one of the things that that many of us have experienced is just sadness and also fear fear sadness and fear what we see happening around us in us our society that has rejected jesus so often and where lives are disordered nelson mandela said courage is not the absence of fear it's the triumph over it and there's a battle on there were people around who mocked and ridiculed when they started rebuilding they said what are you doing it's never going to work look at the state of the church look at the numbers in decline you honestly don't think that you can rebuild the church today instead i mean what's the point in even going to church there's so much mocking and ridicule out there but and anger as well sambalet was angry when he heard that they were rebuilding what are these feeble jews doing he said and again there's so much anger out there you can see it on the roads there's so much ro even more road rage than they used to be and there's anger everywhere it just seems to be everywhere it's even in danger of coming into the church people being angry with one another that should never happen but this is this is this is the price of holding out jesus is that there will be opposition no blessing goes uncontested as sandy always used to sandy miller always used to say and sometimes you will face opposition not because you're doing something wrong but because you're doing something right and if you're holding out jesus to the world you will face opposition jesus warned us of that and we've had a storm the pandemic's like a storm and some people have been blown away in the storm and jesus said this he said look two houses two people look exactly the same on the outside but one he said is like a house that has no foundations and when the storm comes the house gets blown away others are like a house that has foundations and when the storm comes it stands and you may say i know people who've lost their faith during the pandemic that's what jesus said would happen but there are others who have stood the fact that you're here today the fact that you're at anzo square or caulfield gardens or wherever you are shows that you are still standing you're one of the houses that have stood the test some people have been blown away but others are coming into the kingdom at this time and loads of people have come to faith during the pandemic it was exciting to be here on wednesday at alpha restarting after nearly two years we started again in person in the church isn't that exciting [Applause] so i came over to see all the people it was so exciting to see there was a queue around the church again and then we did it like we did so at 7 30 we went over because there are also groups starting online ours was online it was amazing we had the most fascinating group of people if you if you've never done alpha before if you know people who've never done enough before it is such fun doing it it's amazing and as you've heard it's not too late to start but there's this hunger in every human heart and are there all these people out there who who've never tasted the rice of life and we need to encourage them to come because if you don't fill the god shape gap with god you'll fill it with an idol you put something else instead of god and even good things can become idols politics or music or whatever it is or or relationships or some people fill that fill it with all kinds of things sometimes they fill it with drugs and the thing about idols is this at first they offer you everything and they ask of you nothing but in the end they cost you everything and they give you nothing and jesus is the opposite his gifts are free and he gives us everything because he although we have to pay the price of being known as a follower of jesus and we may get opposition the cost that we pay is a nothing compared to the cost he paid when he died on a cross and took our sin and offered us forgiveness and we have the the most amazing message for the world we have a spiritual story love story with a happy ending it's what the world so desperately needs we have a message of hope in a world that is in despair and we have the opportunity to offer people the rice of life but there's a price the pace of grace we learn from nehemiah the price of rice and then the peace of geese what do i mean by that we could only do this together i my pattern of is i like to do the bible in one year as i say and then i like to go for a walk around the park to pray i get very distracted but i love god's creation i find god's creation so inspiring and one of the things is watching the birds fly and i've been trying to capture the geese flying and put it out on instagram but my uh instagram is not a great success and my photography is not a great and i've never managed to capture these are some my attempts to get to get get this but this is the photo that i was trying to get that and isn't that that is geese flying in formation and that is a picture of community it's what we are meant to be this is what i read about it when geese fly in formation they create their own unique form of teamwork that's what we need each bird flaps its wings it creates uplift for the bird immediately following by flying in a v by flying together they fly 71 faster and i love this the geese honk from behind to encourage those up front to keep up their speed and when it this has been so true in the in the pandemic when a goose falls out of formation it suddenly feels the drag have you felt the drag and resistance of trying to go it alone and quickly gets back into formation to take advantage of the lifting power of the bird in front when the lead goose gets tired it rotates back in the v and another grease flies point our lead goose never gets tired jesus is the lead jesus is the one that we're following when a goose gets sick or is wounded and falls out of formation two other geese fall out with their companion i love this and follow it down to lend help and protection they stay with the fallen goose until it's able to fly or until it dies and only then do they launch up on their own and with another formation to catch up with the group and scientists have fitted a heart monitor to the birds and what they've found is that the birds at the back have the lowest heart rate they're at peace because they're in the formation and they're being helped by all the others and they're following what is the equivalent of jesus that's the piece of geese and this is what we see in the book of nehemiah how did they do it they did it together they worked if you read chapter three you'll see they work shoulder to shoulder supporting each other everyone played their part together in the community that's why community is so important we need one another and there's something about just being together even on zoom actually when groups live started trisha neal who's here today and um nikki lee said in our staff meeting that when trisha neal organizes a small group which he invited nikki lee and me into that he can guarantee that the small group we are in is the best organized small group in 2000 years and it's been amazing it i would not miss that small group for anything we absolutely love it and although we only started meeting for groups live we've continued meeting throughout because it's so good to laugh together to cry together to have fun together to support one another to be shoulder to shoulder to fly in formation on wednesday i popped in again on zoom to a group david and dear rehearst have been running a group in this church for 40 years it was their 40th anniversary that's how much they love those people and we need this community and people are desperate for community that's why people join at worst gangs at best clubs or organizations but the church is far more than just an organization that you join it's a family where you belong where you're part of a community where you in where you you are with others it's the greatest community on earth and we want to see more churches across this country we want to see a church in every community filled with people worshiping jesus that's why we have our theological college which we started together with the bishop of london and do you know we have now 280 ordinance there this year there are 107 new people training for all nations what are they going to do they go they're going to go and run chess we do not want to see a single church in this country closed we want to see every church filled with people worshiping jesus don't we in every village town and we're doing it together and you know we've planted 20 even in the pandemic we've in our little network we've planted 21 new churches in cities up and down the country and we're working together with others in the church of england together with the catholics orthodox pentecostal jesus house salvation army in unity shoulder to shoulder and what are these church what are these plants doing i i met one of them last week some team came down from from blackpool andy dykes with his team and they were saying look this this city there's so many cities in this nation that are in ruins and these church plants are like construction teams that are going into those cities to rebuild and the church is the practical expression of love that's why we do love your neighbor together with churches across the country started by tom and sarah jackson have fed 14 million people during the pandemic 14 million meals love christmas this year at christmas we're planning a million bags of kindness helping as you've done through your amazing generosity in the offering afghan refugees sarah jackson sent me this account and all of her missions have been obtained for me to tell you this story mohammed torfig fled kabul with his wife and two sons after two weeks in quarantine in the uk they were relocated to a hotel in our parish for resettlement on saturday the 11th of september our love your neighbor team welcomed them off the coach helped carry the luggage to their rooms provided urgent supplies many refugees simply had it we went and visited there and people just arrived with a a sack just a bin liner of a few things one of the volunteers met muhammad and his 16 year old son eeham e ham was a member of the afghan under 16 national football team and he also played for one of the top five clubs in kabul e-ham had tragically witnessed this one of his friends from his football club was so desperate to get out of afghanistan that when the plane took off he tried to hold on to the plane and you may have read about it in the papers he he fell and was killed moved by his story and noticing this teenager only had a pair of sandals one of our volunteers managed to organize for two tickets to the chelsea aston villa football match this this 16 year old boy his dream had been to go to stamford bridge and watch chelsea and they brought him a pair of new trainers uh we have a photo of the father and son at stanford bridge father yeah that amazing the father was deeply moved by this act of kindness tearfully saying last month my son lost everything and you have fulfilled a dream for him to visit chelsea and see a match what kindness this family along with hundreds of others this is what sarah jackson writes are facing the prospect of having to rebuild their lives and the kindness of a stranger from church gave them a small ray of hope in the midst of their suffering each of us can help others rebuild their lives our communities our nation through small acts of love and kindness do you know the exile was one of the most creative periods in israel's history much of the old testament was written in that period and the temple was rebuilt and then what the people said was impossible the rebuilding of the walls took place in 52 days you may be going through a tough time the church and the nation certainly are and even if the church was ever reduced to a small persecuted minority jesus said the gates of hell will not prevail against the church and jesus came to declare the end of exile and sarah jackson again she had this prophetic word which i think is a wonderful word that there is a phoenix arising out of the ashes phoenix symbolizes resurrection life after death emerging from the ashes stronger smarter more powerful imagine what could happen just think what could happen if we as a community all operate at the pace of grace knowing that the gracious hand of god of jesus is on us if we go out into this world and hold out the rice of life whatever the cost if we have that peace the of the geese through jesus in our hearts imagine what we could see happen imagine what we could do to play our part in the evangelization of this nation the revitalization of the church and the transformation of society so let's start rebuilding in jesus name amen [Music] you

Channel: HTB Church

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Length: 32min 28sec (1948 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 28 2021