Restore Rebuild Revive - Week Four : 16 Feb 2011

America has a fascination with peaking into other’s lives-we are entertained by other people’s challenges and tragedies. The danger is calling it real. 

What’s real is Neh 4 & 5. It is so real, alive, it not entertaining to their enemies, it is threatening. The people of Israel are coming alive by God’s hand- a people, once distant, dry, and damaged due to their rebellion and sin, being restored, rebuilt and revived in response to their repentance. In Neh 4 & 5, the rebuilding of their lives, their community, they are building something that is intended to come alive, something truly authentic.

Their enemies are not fascinated, they are angered because they are uncertain of what to expect or what to do about it (not predicable who will get the roses/voted off the Island). They cannot complain to the king of Persia, Neh has the king’s permission and authority for this living project. They are helpless spectators of events they hate -can’t vote for idol

Neh 4:2.."What are these feeble Jews doing? Will they restore it for themselves? Will they sacrifice? Will they finish up in a day? Will they revive the stones out of the heaps of rubbish, and burned ones at that?"

In hateful frustration they name-call. They state what is currently real, but ironically prophecy to what is coming alive. Feeble- “miserable” fading or withering plant- Calling them “good for nothing.” Used in Scripture of people who have no hope. Will they sacrifice, finish in a day? Offer praise to their “gods” in a day? They were attacking their faith. Someone saying sarcastically- –“Go home a pray about it.”

And the people do. And as they do, they remember that they are engaged in something so real, it is alive. They themselves become the revived stones-they, as a nation come alive.

Phillips Brooks,  “And whenever, in any place, a soul by free-willed obedience, catches the fire of God's likeness, it is set into the growing walls, a living stone.” I call that real.