Eagles Nest Church
Sunday Morning Worship Service

      • 2 Corinthians 9:7ESV

      • Nehemiah 8:13–18NIV2011

      • Nehemiah 8:13–18NIV2011

      • Ephesians 3:14–21ESV

      • Psalm 148NIV2011

  • Praise His Name (Psalm 148)

      • Nehemiah 8:13–18NIV2011

      • Nehemiah 8:13-14NIV2011

      • Nehemiah 8:15NIV2011

      • Nehemiah 8:16NIV2011

      • Nehemiah 8:17NIV2011

      • Nehemiah 8:18NIV2011

      • Isaiah 40:8NIV2011

  • On the night of August 14, 2003, the power went out
    across the northeastern United States and most of Ontario, Canada.
    Not a neighborhood.
    Not a city block.
    A cascading failure swept across the grid,
    and fifty million people were left without power.
    No air conditioning.
    No television.
    And no streetlights or traffic lights at all.
    But later that night, something happened that nobody planned for.
    People started walking outside and staring up at the brilliant night sky.
    And when they looked up, to their great surprise,
    They saw the Milky way.
    Not in a photograph.
    Not on a screen.
    Over their very own roofs.
    A river of light stretched across the entire sky that most of them had never seen before.
    An amateur astronomer in Kingston, Ontario was out that night with his telescope.
    And he later wrote about a young woman in her twenties who wandered over to him on the sidewalk.
    She had grown up in Toronto and had never once left the city until she moved to Kingston that year.
    And so she pointed up at this massive glowing band across the sky and asked him what it was.
    She had lived every night of her life under that galaxy.
    And the first time it ever she saw it,
    but she didn't even know what she was looking at.
    The sky had not changed.
    No new stars had suddenly appeared.
    That river of light had been burning over that woman's house every single night of her life,
    whether the power was on or off,
    and whether anybody looked up or not.
    It was there.
    What had changed was the lights went out.
    Good lights.
    Useful lights.
    Lights that get your kids home safe at midnight and let you read a street sign in the rain.
    Nobody in this room is against streetlights.
    But those lights were the exact reason she had never seen the sky.
    We didn't just fail to notice the stars.
    We created the thing that hid them.
    And so today, eight out of ten Americans cannot see the Milky Way from their own homes.
    Not because it isn't there.
    Because of what we put between us and it.
    And church, the same thing happens to us as Christians.
    We build good things.
    Useful things.
    Things we're grateful for.
    And those good things slowly, block us from seeing the God Who was always there.
    And this morning we're going to watch God do something about it.
    He's going to tell His people to turn off the lights.
    To see the God who shelters us, we must: 
    Gaze into His Word (vv. 13–15).
    Go and Obey (vv. 16-17a).
    Glorify the Lord (vv. 17-18).
    So far in our study through the book of Nehemiah,
    we've seen how God brought Jerusalem up out of the rubble.
    Nehemiah prayed,
    the king said yes,
    and against mockery and threats and enemies on every side,
    God's people rebuilt the wall in fifty-two days.
    But the the book continues in chapter 8 because the broken wall was never the deepest problem.
    It was broken hearts.
    Because that’s what led to the broken wall in the first place.
    So in chapter 8,
    God begins restoring the people’s hearts.
    And it began with the people.
    Not Nehemiah.
    Not the priests.
    The people.
    And it begins with them crying out to Ezra the priest to read the law of God to them.
    which leads to a full-fledged revival.
    From dawn until midday, roughly six hours,
    the people stood and listened as Ezra read the Law.
    Men, women, and children.
    Nobody checked out.
    Nobody wondered how much longer it was going to go.
    The text says the ears of all the people were attentive to the Book of the Law.
    And when they heard it, they shouted "Amen, Amen," lifted their hands, and bowed in worship to God.
    Then, after the people understood God’s Word,
    they began to weep and mourn over their sin.
    But Nehemiah and the Levites tell the people to stop mourning,
    because the day was a holy day of celebration.
    So they feast with joy,
    because, as verse 10 says:
    The Joy of the Lord was their strength.
    After the Word of the Lord reaches their minds and moves their hearts,
    It doesn’t stop there.
    Because if it had, this wouldn’t have been a revival.
    It would have merely been a reaction.
    And a reaction doesn’t result in anything that lasts.
    Think about it:
    Hearing is not revival.
    Understanding is not revival.
    even conviction and tears are not revival.
    None of that means a thing unless the Word of God reaches our hands and feet.
    When the music stops and feeling settles,
    and you’re back in your truck,
    your desk,
    or in your home Monday morning,
    That’s where you discover if it was true revival or just a reaction.
    But in Nehemiah chapter 8,
    Monday morning arrives.
    And the people’s response shows it wasn’t just a reaction.
    Look at verse 13.
    Nehemiah 8:13 ESV
    13 On the second day the heads of fathers’ houses of all the people, with the priests and the Levites, came together to Ezra the scribe in order to study the words of the Law.
    Did you catch that?
    Who came back?
    The men came back.
    The heads of the home.
    And they come back in order to study the Words of God.
    And that word “study” means to GAZE at something UNTIL you deeply understand it.
    It’s not just listening passively,
    It’s actively engaging the Word of the living God.
    After hearing the Word of God read to them in the hot sun for 6 hours straight
    (Yes, I’m going to keep saying 6 hours straight as much as I can…)
    These men don’t say:
    “Alright, we got our Bible fix for the week - we are good!”
    No, they come back hungry for more!
    So how about you?
    When was the last time the preaching of God’s Word sent you home with an appetite to dig into it more on Monday morning?
    Not to fact-check the preacher,
    But to feed more on the Word of God!
    How many times have you heard me say that what I preach on Sunday is just a small sampler of everything I learned and studied throughout the week?
    Lots, right?
    And yet,
    how often do we taste the sampler and say: “I’m good. I’m not hungry for anymore.”
    Church, that’s not what samplers are for.
    Samplers are meant to awaken your hunger.
    Not satisfy it.
    And these people had a 6 hour long sampler plater the day before,
    and yet… they came back hungry for more and more and more!
    They didn’t make up excuses about how a person’s attention span is only 20 minutes.
    They didn’t say they were too busy.
    They didn’t say God’s Word was too deep for them.
    They came back the following morning ready to dig and feast upon it!
    Dad’s… does this match you?
    Are you the one driving your family to feast on the Word of God?
    Are you leading them in regular family worship?
    or have you delegated your God-given responsibility to someone else?
    Because this is not something you can outsource.
    You can’t say: “This is what we pay the pastor for - it’s his job, not mine.”
    It’s YOUR job.
    Deuteronomy 6:4–9 ESV
    4 “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. 5 You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. 6 And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. 7 You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. 8 You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. 9 You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.
    Deuteronomy doesn’t tell the pastors to do this.
    It doesn’t tell the deacons or Sunday School teachers to do this.
    It tells the homes to do this.
    “As you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, and when you lie down and rise up.”
    And husbands, you’re the head of the home, which means this is your chief responsibility.
    It’s your responsibility, as one pastor puts it:
    “To teach all of Christ for all of life.”
    “Not some of Christ for part of life.”
    “All of Christ for ALL of life.”
    But if you don’t actually “love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and might,”
    Not only will you not do this,
    but you’ll actively disobey the Word of our Lord.
    Which is exactly what these men discovered they had been doing.
    Look at verses 14-15.
    Nehemiah 8:14–15 ESV
    14 And they found it written in the Law that the Lord had commanded by Moses that the people of Israel should dwell in booths during the feast of the seventh month, 15 and that they should proclaim it and publish it in all their towns and in Jerusalem, “Go out to the hills and bring branches of olive, wild olive, myrtle, palm, and other leafy trees to make booths, as it is written.”
    When they read God’s Word,
    they discovered that they hadn’t been celebrating the Feast of Booths, or Feast of Tabernacles,
    in the way God had instructed.
    The timing here is just perfect.
    When is all of this taking place?
    It’s the 7nth month
    Which means they have about 2 weeks to prepare before this feast begins.
    The feast of Booths is found in Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy.
    So this wasn’t some obscure footnote.
    This feast was one of the three great feasts every Israelite man was required to keep.
    But they hadn’t been keeping it as they should have.
    And once they discovered this,
    they joyfully obeyed because the Word of God had truly begun to revive their heart.
    To see the God who shelters us, we must: 
    Gaze into His Word (vv. 13–15).
    Go and Obey (vv. 16-17a).
    After the men studied the Word of God, they didn’t just say:
    “Oh, that’s interesting… we should maybe try that sometime…”
    No, the text says the people went out and did it.
    Nehemiah 8:16–17 ESV
    16 So the people went out and brought them and made booths for themselves, each on his roof, and in their courts and in the courts of the house of God, and in the square at the Water Gate and in the square at the Gate of Ephraim. 17 And all the assembly of those who had returned from the captivity made booths and lived in the booths…
    They found it.
    They understood.
    And they obeyed and did it.
    Pretty simple right?
    They didn’t say, “Oh that was for then, but this is now…”
    They didn’t spiritualize it and say: “God cares only about our hearts, not our hands.”
    They didn’t say: “I’ll have to pray about it.”
    They trusted and obeyed.
    Because trust without obedience isn’t really trust at all.
    They gathered the branches,
    They built the booths.
    And they moved in.
    This is what James means when he says, “Be doers of the Word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves.”
    And that’s what they people were: doers.
    Now, if you’re like me… the only camping you do is glamping.
    You know what this right?
    It’s camping at a place that has electricity, bathrooms, and showers.
    Basically access to everything that makes life not completely miserable in my book.
    And if God made you to enjoy real camping - that’s great.
    Bless your heart.
    But God didn’t implement the feast of booths because He’s into camping.
    He implemented it because He wanted to turn off everything that blocked the people from seeing and remembering:
    Who He is and what He has done.
    And Leviticus 23 shows us how.
    Leviticus 23:42–43 ESV
    42 You shall dwell in booths for seven days. All native Israelites shall dwell in booths, 43 that your generations may know that I made the people of Israel dwell in booths when I brought them out of the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God.”
    In the book of Genesis it tell us the story of how God saved His people through Jacob’s son Joseph,
    who had been sold into slavery by his brothers,
    but then he became Pharaoh’s right-hand man.
    But then, generations after Joseph had died,
    Exodus 1 tells us that a new Pharaoh arose in Egypt who did not know Joseph,
    and he made all of the Israelites slaves in Egypt.
    So God raised up Moses to deliver them through 10 mighty plagues,
    and then led them through the wilderness to the promised land.
    And during that 40-year time period,
    what did the people live in?
    Tabernacles…
    Or booths.
    Tents basically.
    That’s why God commanded the people to observe the feast of booths.
    It was so that the following generations would know that they had been slaves.
    That they had lived under cruelty and bondage,
    BUT THEN God miraculously brought them out of slavery into the promised land.
    That’s what the festival of booths was to remind them of.
    It was God’s way of turning the lights off so they saw everything that God had done for them.
    Why was this necessary?
    Isn’t it obvious?
    It’s because its so incredibly easy to forget what God has done for us.
    That’s why Moses warned the people in Deuteronomy 8 that when:
    they entered the promised land,
    built good homes,
    and ate until they were fat and full and their possessions multiplied,
    to be careful to NOT let the blessings to block out their view of the Blesser.
    And church, we are no different.
    Like Israel who had been brought of slavery,
    we too have been brought out of slavery from sin, death, and hell.
    And yet, in the midst of our modern comforts and luxuries,
    we so easily lose sight of the Lord and all that He has done.
    That’s why God has put religious observance on our calendar and said:
    “Do this!”
    It’s because we so easily lose sight of Him.
    For we all are prone to wander, prone to leave the God we love!
    That’s why God gave them the feast of booths.
    It was His way of turning the lights of every year.
    Can you picture this?
    The people had just finished spending 52 days rebuilding the strongest thing they had in 150 years.
    And the very first act of obedience after their hearts had been revived
    was to walk out from under their solid roofs and go sleep under branches.
    And this act of obedience showed them the truth.
    Which was that the walls weren’t their strength.
    Their houses weren’t their strength.
    “THE JOY OF THE LORD WAS THEIR STRENGTH!”
    He was their mighty fortress!
    He was their strong tower!
    And that flimsy booth revealed the truth the solid house and strong walls were hiding.
    Which was every solid thing they had built was
    one drought,
    one army,
    one bad moment away from collapsing.
    Because none of that could truly protect them.
    Only the Lord could.
    And that truth was their joy and their strength!
    For these Israelites,
    The celebration of the Exodus certainly held new meaning.
    Think about it.
    Their fathers had been carried off into captivity in Babylon because of their rebellion against God.
    But God, who is rich in mercy brought them back…
    Just like He had under Moses so many years ago.
    And so when they laid there in their booths,
    they laid their with joy
    remembering the God who brought Israel out of Egypt had brought them out of exile.
    Sadly, in our culture, we often think of obedience as a curse, not a blessing.
    We think it’s legalistic to talk about the importance of obeying God and His commands.
    We see it as a heavy burden.
    But my friends,
    don’t you see obeying God’s law isn’t a yoke of slavery,
    it is the celebration of having been freed from it.
    Even though we don’t have the feast of booths on our calendar as New Testament Christians,
    We have something even better.
    We have the gathering of God’s people each and every Lord’s day
    to joyfully proclaim and celebrate our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ,
    Who leads us in the greater Exodus out of slavery from sin, death, and hell!
    Is that how you view the Lord’s day?
    As a celebration to be enjoyed,
    or as a duty to be heartlessly obeyed when it’s convenient?
    So how about you?
    Have you responded to God’s commands like God’s people did here?
    With full and glad obedience?
    If not, why not?
    What’s keeping you from joyfully obeying the Lord?
    James 4:17 ESV
    17 So whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin.
    Holiness and joy go hand in hand.
    So if the Word of God has made something clear,
    do not stop at conviction.
    Do not merely admire it,
    underline it,
    and then walk away from it.
    Respond with joyful obedience.
    For the JOY of the Lord is our strength!
    To see the God who shelters us, we must: 
    Gaze into His Word (vv. 13–15).
    Go and Obey (vv. 16-17a).
    Glorify the Lord (vv. 17-18).
    For most of us,
    if we found out that we had to leave our house and go and live in a hut for week,
    We’d grit out teeth and brace for it.
    And we’d be counting down the days until we could return to our comfy mattresses and air conditioned homes.
    But that’s not what happened.
    Look at verse 17.
    Nehemiah 8:17 ESV
    17 And all the assembly of those who had returned from the captivity made booths and lived in the booths, for from the days of Jeshua the son of Nun to that day the people of Israel had not done so. And there was very great rejoicing.
    Do you see that?
    Not just reluctant compliance.
    Not just rejoicing.
    “Very great rejoicing.”
    For a thousand years since Jeshua (who is Joshua),
    no one had celebrated this feast like this.
    Yes, it had been celebrated, but not with the tents
    and not with full joy and full obedience.
    So why now?
    It’s because they understood what their strength was.
    It wasn’t their jobs.
    It wasn’t their homes.
    It wasn’t their health or their wealth.
    It was the Lord.
    And while their booth was flimsy,
    The Lord was not.
    Proverbs 18:10 ESV
    10 The name of the Lord is a strong tower; the righteous man runs into it and is safe.
    When we take our security off of the things of this world and put it back on God,
    We don’t lose our joy,
    we finally have it.
    That’s why obedience and joy aren’t enemies.
    We think they are because we’ve bought the lie of a Christ-less version of obedience.
    Obedience apart from Christ is a death march,
    but obedience that flows from a heart that knows it’s been rescued is joyful praise.
    The things of this world can give us pleasure.
    But they can’t give us joy.
    And we see that joy lived out in verse 18.
    Nehemiah 8:18 ESV
    18 And day by day, from the first day to the last day, he read from the Book of the Law of God. They kept the feast seven days, and on the eighth day there was a solemn assembly, according to the rule.
    Every single day Ezra opened the Book and read.
    The Law required a public reading at this feast every seventh year,
    but here Ezra read every single day.
    The command was the floor, not the ceiling.
    And for seven days they lived in booths,
    and then the eighth day they gathered for the solemn assembly.
    And through this all:
    They kept listening,
    kept obeying,
    and kept rejoicing.
    This is what revival looks like,
    not a reaction that fades by Monday morning.
    A life rearranged by the Word of God and is glad about it!
    That’s why,
    for those of us who have been revived by the Spirit of God,
    Sunday morning isn’t a duty, it’s a delight!
    It’s the highlight of our week.
    because we delight to delight in our God who is mighty to save!
    When Israel was in the wilderness,
    with no house,
    no wall,
    no army
    and no field to farm,
    What did they need?
    Two very basic things:
    Food and water.
    And that’s exactly what God provided for them.
    And when you’re wandering in a desert for 40 years,
    you have no way to get either one.
    And yet God provided.
    He rained bread from heaven every single morning.
    And when they were dying of thirst, He made water flow from the rock.
    That’s what the booths reminded them of.
    And while it’s truly amazing what God did for them.
    Paul tells us something even more amazing in 1 Corinthians 10,
    where he writes:
    1 Corinthians 10:1–4 ESV
    1 For I do not want you to be unaware, brothers, that our fathers were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea, 2 and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, 3 and all ate the same spiritual food, 4 and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank from the spiritual Rock that followed them, and the Rock was Christ.
    Do you see what this is saying church?
    Because I’m not sure we do.
    Christ was the provider of the spiritual food for Israel in the wilderness.
    He gave the bread,
    and He gave the water!
    And then, centuries later,
    after the celebration of the feast of booths in Nehemiah,
    The city of Jerusalem is full of booths once again.
    And on the last day,
    Jesus stands up in the middle of the crowd and says:
    John 7:37–38 ESV
    37 … “If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. 38 Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, ‘Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.’ ”
    Do you see what Jesus is saying here?
    He’s taking the Old Testament imagery and saying:
    “I AM the One Who provided for you in the wilderness those many years ago!”
    “So come to me and receive the living water that your heart cries out for!”
    In John 6, after Jesus feeds the 5,000 with just 5 loaves and 2 fish,
    The people ask Jesus about the Exodus.
    John 6:30–31 ESV
    30 So they said to him, “Then what sign do you do, that we may see and believe you? What work do you perform? 31 Our fathers ate the manna in the wilderness; as it is written, ‘He gave them bread from heaven to eat.’ ”
    Look at what Jesus tells them:
    John 6:32–33 ESV
    32 … “Truly, truly, I say to you, it was not Moses who gave you the bread from heaven, but my Father gives you the true bread from heaven. 33 For the bread of God is He who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.”
    For:
    John 6:35–40 ESV
    35 …“I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst . . . 38 For I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will but the will of him who sent me. 39 And this is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me, but raise it up on the last day. 40 For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.”
    Don’t you see church,
    this is what the feast of tabernacles was pointing us to all along!
    Not merely God’s provision for us,
    But God DWELLING amongst us
    so that He might be our true refuge and strength!
    That’s why John says chapter 1:
    The Word became flesh and TABERNACLED among us.
    That’s literally what the word “dwelt” there means!
    And Christ tabernacled among us
    so the joy of the Lord might be our strength.
    In the wilderness,
    The rock, which was Christ was struck so water could flow to the Israelites,
    But on the cross, the Rock was struck again so that living water might flow to us all.
    That’s why His body was broken
    and His blood was shed as Heaven went dark upon Him as He hung on the cross.
    It was so He could be our bread of life,
    and we could drink living water from Him and be saved and satisfied forever.
    Not in booths…
    but in the city of God.
    The prophet Zechariah tells us that when Christ returns to reign from Jerusalem,
    the nations will go up and worship the King and keep this very feast.
    The feast of booths.
    For it will serve as a reminder of the ultimate Exodus accomplished by our Savior, Jesus Christ.
    The booth turned the lights off for a week.
    But the day is coming when we won't need them at all.
    Revelation 21 says:
    Revelation 21:3 ESV
    3 And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God.
    The temporary booth gives way to the eternal dwelling.
    No more wilderness.
    No more wandering.
    No more fragile shelters living under the weight of sin.
    Just God and man dwelling together in glory and joy for all eternity.
    Remember this as you come to the table.

      • Nehemiah 8:13NIV2011

      • Deuteronomy 6:4–9NIV2011

      • Nehemiah 8:14–15NIV2011

      • Nehemiah 8:16–17NIV2011

      • Leviticus 23:42–43NIV2011

      • James 4:17NIV2011

      • Nehemiah 8:17NIV2011

      • Proverbs 18:10NIV2011

      • Nehemiah 8:18NIV2011

      • 1 Corinthians 10:1–4NIV2011

      • John 7:37–38NIV2011

      • John 6:30–31NIV2011

      • John 6:32–33NIV2011

      • John 6:35–40NIV2011

      • Revelation 21:3NIV2011

  • Turn Your Eyes
  • The Solid Rock

      • Psalm 27:4–5NIV2011

Eagles Nest Church
pastorzach@eaglesnestmn.org
(218) 562-5252
http://www.eaglesnestmn.org
7 members • 1 follower