Category Archives: For Our City

Partners For Our City

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As a part of this series, here on our devotionals page I am going to add a variety of articles about how we and other churches are working and serving together to be a blessing #ForOurCity.

I could be wrong, but I do not think there has ever before been a project of this sort that has gained such widespread support and participation in our church community. For the 22 years I have been in Hagerstown, I have not seen anything quite like this.

The genesis of this sermon series effort was in a regular monthly luncheon gathering of pastors back in the spring of this year. A conversation ensued upon the topic of what we could do jointly to address the heroin epidemic in our area that creates so many pervasive problems. One of the brothers remarked that about a decade ago a number of churches (including TSF) did a joint sermon series to address the teen pregnancy issue in our region. Ideas began to fly about how to do this and include it within a wider biblical context. A movement was born.

Bill Wyand of Broadfording Brethren Church is the functional leader of this group, though he was on a missions trip and missed this luncheon meeting. I emailed him a heads-up about the discussion, reflecting on challenges of the previous effort, while also suggesting some important contingencies I believed valuable for a successful campaign – including that it be widely supported by the leading churches in the county, opining also that Chris Wiles’ gift for teaching and research be a central part of the planning.

Several meetings were held at TSF in the late spring and early summer that included a number of pastors gathering to give foundation for the varied ideas. Chris Wiles and Patrick Grach (of LifeHouse Church) agreed to do a bulk of the planning, with Patrick committing the resources of his ministry to produce a variety of support tools in technology, marketing, etc.  Dates were set, and here we are doing it together.

You have likely heard that there are 24 churches and organizations partnering in this endeavor. I would suspect that many of you have had Christian friends and co-workers who attend other churches talking about the participation of their congregation as well. A number of churches beyond the immediate and regular fellowship of our evangelical pastors group also heard about this effort and have thrown in as well.

Here are the ministries that are partnering in this wide endeavor …

  • Broadfording Bible Brethren Church – west of Hagerstown, site of Broadfording Christian School
  • Bridge of Life – South Potomac Street, downtown
  • Celebrate Recovery Hagerstown – Friday night ministry on North Potomac
  • Christ’s Reformed Church – Franklin Street just west of downtown – home of REACH
  • Church of the Holy Trinity UCC – Oak Ridge DR, Halfway
  • Christ Community Church – Mapleville RD, Boonsboro
  • Covenant Life Church – Dual Highway, east of Hagerstown
  • Faith Christian Fellowship – east of Williamsport
  • Faith Worship Ministries – Oak Ridge DR, Hagerstown
  • Family Life Ministry AME Church – Leitersburg Pike
  • Hagerstown Christian Church – Linganore AVE, Hagerstown
  • Hagerstown Foursquare Church – meet on N. Pennsylvania AVE
  • Hilltop Christian Fellowship – National Pike just east of Clear Spring
  • Hub City Vineyard – Virginia Avenue, Hagerstown
  • Kingdom Ecclesia Ministries – North Cannon AVE, Hagerstown
  • Lifehouse Church – Wilson BLVD / Leitersburg Pike
  • Maugansville Bible Brethren – Maugansville
  • New Hope Alliance Church – Williamsport
  • New Life World Ministries – Frederick Street, Hagerstown
  • Andrew’s United Methodist Church – Maryland AVE, Hagerstown
  • Mark’s Lutheran Church – Washington AVE, Hagerstown
  • Tri-State Fellowship – Cearfoss Pike
  • Vision Quest Ministries – N. Pennsylvania AVE
  • Valley Grace Brethren – Halfway

That is quite a list, including a wide variety of denominations, cultures and traditions. But we are better together, and together is the only effective way we can be God’s people to serve our city and its communities well.

The lost art of repentance (Psalm 51)

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Repentance is a heavy word, stretched at the seams with years of assumptions about its meaning.

I must admit, hearing the word “repent” I can’t help but think of those old-timey “fire and brimstone” style preachers, bellowing with holy menace from behind a massive oaken podium, faces slick with sweat.

Maybe for you the word “repent” makes you think of one of those bad TV preachers—the kind with slicked-back hair and a near-predatory grin, speaking winsomely about God so as to distract you from their hands reaching for your wallet.

Or maybe you picture the word “repent” scrawled in sloppy letters on a piece of cardboard, held aloft by a wild-eyed vagrant on a street-corner soapbox.  The end is near, he declares.  Better repent.

Maybe that’s because as Christians we’ve lost the art of repentance—mainly because we’ve lost the true understanding of our own sin.  Today’s world contains no shortage of self-help seminars and gurus and books that are poised to tell you that you are a beautiful snowflake, spectacularly unique in every way.  To say anything negative—such as you’re a sinner—is to “shame” them.  And so we’ve come to a world that finds no use for mercy and no place for repentance.  In their place we’ve enshrined the psychological idols of affirmation and self-acceptance.

So why does shame persist?  Why have we not stamped out all traces of moral condemnation?  Why does a culture of “selfies” only magnify our fragile souls rather than reinforce them?  Perhaps we’re not so self-reliant after all.

Perhaps repentance still has its place.

REPENTANCE—THEN AND NOW

Part of the challenge is that to “repent” doesn’t mean to change one’s behavior.  Ideally, that comes later, as a result of repentance, and woe to us if we confuse the results of the gospel with the gospel itself.

To “repent” means to change one’s mind.  Sin, in one sense, is a mis-directed love.  Rather than loving God, we’ve chosen to love sex (lust), or wealth (greed), or our own leisure (sloth).  To “repent” means to re-order our loves—to make God once more the supreme source of goodness.

Psalm 51—the worship song we began yesterday—tells David’s story of repentance after his affair with Bathsheeba.  Here we’ll see four key aspects of repentance as contained in David’s life with God:

  • A new identity

10 Create in me a clean heart, O God,
and renew a right spirit within me.
11 Cast me not away from your presence,
and take not your Holy Spirit from me.
12 Restore to me the joy of your salvation,
and uphold me with a willing spirit. (Psalm 51:10-12)

Pay close attention to David’s prayer.  Repentance isn’t something we do on our own.  David asks God to “create…a clean heart.”  God is the active agent here.  Granted, the process of repentance might include a change in behavior or personal habits (after all, we can hardly separate habits from hearts), but God is the agent of inward change.  As Christ’s followers we have the inward working of the Spirit to help us make progress in conforming to Christ’s good character.

  • A new purpose

13 Then I will teach transgressors your ways,
and sinners will return to you.
14 Deliver me from bloodguiltiness, O God,
O God of my salvation,
and my tongue will sing aloud of your righteousness. (Psalm 51:13-14)

In his classic commentary, Matthew Henry said that “penitents should be preachers.”[1]  In other words, repentance should prompt us to go to others and share with them what Jesus has done for us, and what the Spirit is continuing to do in us.

  • A new religion

15 O Lord, open my lips,
and my mouth will declare your praise.
16 For you will not delight in sacrifice, or I would give it;
you will not be pleased with a burnt offering.
17 The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit;
a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise. (Psalm 51:15-17)

In a world full of self-interest and empty gestures, David’s words are nearly soothing.  Our sin is so massive that it can never be covered by religious performance.  Such duties do nothing to satisfy God—if anything they are to his eyes “as filthy rags” (Isaiah 64:6).  Only the death of Jesus can pay for the debt of our sins, and only my grateful obedience can serve as response.

  • A new hope

18 Do good to Zion in your good pleasure;
build up the walls of Jerusalem;
19 then will you delight in right sacrifices,
in burnt offerings and whole burnt offerings;
then bulls will be offered on your altar. (Psalm 51:18-19)

Finally, David speaks of God’s grace extended not just to himself, but to the city over which he presides. As always, we cannot expect God to interact with our city the same as he did with Jerusalem.  The promises God gave Israel were for her ears alone.  What we can expect from God is his future plans to “do good” to all the world, restoring it through the second arrival of Jesus.  Until then we look forward to that day with hopeful expectation, and serve our own city as new members of God’s family.

PREACHING THE GOSPEL TO YOURSELF

I know many people who, having been in Church for years, still struggle with this.  Perhaps you’re one of them.  The words are familiar, but they’ve yet to consistently travel the 12 inches from your brain to your heart.  You might find yourself feeling a persistent feeling of guilt, haunting you like a low-grade fever.

“I know God forgives me,” you might say, “but I can’t forgive myself.”

If this is you, then I have both a challenge and an affirmation.  First, I challenge you that in the moment that you say that, what you’re really saying is that you don’t trust Jesus for your salvation, but your own moral record.  If the God of the universe loves and accepts you in Christ, why do you insist on leaning on your own reputation?

Secondly, I want to affirm that this is not an immediately easy truth to understand.  In the sixteenth century, Martin Luther—the father of what became known as the Protestant Reformation—struggled with his own identity before God.  His advice to the readers of his own day was to learn to “preach the gospel to yourself.”  In his Preface to the Galatians, he wrote that when Christ’s followers feel themselves guilty or inadequate before the demands of the law, we should say something like this:

“O law! You would climb up into the kingdom of my conscience, and there reign and condemn me for sin, and would take from me the joy of my heart which I have by faith in Christ, and drive me to desperation, that I might be without hope. You have overstepped your bounds. Know your place! You are a guide for my behavior, but you are not Savior and Lord of my heart. For I am baptized, and through the gospel am called to receive righteousness and eternal life… So trouble me not! For I will not allow you, so intolerable a tyrant and tormentor, to reign in my heart and conscience—for they are the seat and temple of Christ the Son of God, who is the king of righteousness and peace, and my most sweet savior and mediator. He shall keep my conscience joyful and quiet in the sound and pure doctrine of the gospel, through the knowledge of this passive and heavenly righteousness.”

Repentance should stir within us a radical assurance of our righteousness—or, more specifically, of Christ’s righteousness that we are graciously permitted to call our own.

So repent, dear Christian—not because the end is near, but because God’s mercies are new with every morning.

[1] Matthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible. One volume ed. Edited by Leslie F. Church. (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing Co., 1961), 631.

I am what’s wrong with our city (Psalm 51)

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What started as an art project turned into so much more.

In 2005 Frank Warren got the idea to invite anonymous strangers to write their secrets down on postcards, and send them to his address here in Maryland.

Warren never anticipated the tidal wave of responses he’d receive.

In the decade or so since Warren began PostSecret, he has been inundated with untold numbers of postcards.  They are collected and curated in books, on websites, and even in museum displays.

Confession, as they say, is good for the soul.

For many, the word “sin” must seem an archaic throwback to a religious era fraught with sexual repression and cultural regression. But if this is true, why does shame still linger?

“UNCLEAN”

Moral psychologists such as Paul Rozin have noted that feelings of shame are largely associated with disgust.  When we do something wrong, we often feel the same way as when we touch an insect, or smell something unpleasant.

The classic example of this is the “Hitler sweater” experiment.  The experimenters asked people if they’d be willing to wear a sweater if they knew it had been previously worn by Adolf Hitler.  Naturally, they declined.  But what if the sweater were thoroughly washed?  Still no.  What if the sweater were completely unraveled, re-dyed, then re-knitted into a brand new, completely unique sweater?  The answer, repeatedly and emphatically, was no.  It was if the respondents saw the garment as possessing some sort of moral contamination.  Touch it, and you’ll dirty your hands.

The writers of the Bible understood this implicitly.  Sin was associated with being “unclean.”  If you have a background in Church, you know that King David is remembered for not only slaying Goliath, but also for his affair with his neighbor’s wife, Bathsheeba.

After being confronted with his sin, David repents, and ends up penning one of the Bible’s most famous worship songs:

Have mercy on me, O God,
according to your steadfast love;
according to your abundant mercy
blot out my transgressions.
2 Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity,
and cleanse me from my sin!

3 For I know my transgressions,
and my sin is ever before me.
4 Against you, you only, have I sinned
and done what is evil in your sight,
so that you may be justified in your words
and blameless in your judgment.
5 Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity,
and in sin did my mother conceive me.
6 Behold, you delight in truth in the inward being,
and you teach me wisdom in the secret heart.

7 Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean;
wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.
8 Let me hear joy and gladness;
let the bones that you have broken rejoice.
9 Hide your face from my sins,
and blot out all my iniquities.

(Psalm 51:1-9)

There’s a lot of rich theology here, to be sure, but what I’d like us to notice something quite particular.  Do you notice the repeated contrast between clean and unclean? His prayer is that God would “blot out…wash…and cleanse” his sin.  His desire is to become “clean…whiter than snow.”

I AM WHAT’S WRONG WITH THE WORLD

What do David’s words have to do with loving our city?

Everything.

See, it’s tempting to look at the problems of our city and either dismiss them or find someone to blame.  We point fingers more than we extend our hands.  And why not?  Surely I’m not the one ruining our city, no sir.

David Brooks, a columnist for The New York Times pointed out the way our moral outrage emerges in response to scandal.  He writes:

“We live in a society oriented around our inner wonderfulness. So when something atrocious happens, people look for some artificial, outside force that must have caused it…

Commentators ruthlessly vilify all involved from the island of their own innocence. Everyone gets to proudly ask: ‘How could they have let this happen?’

The proper question is: How can we ourselves overcome our natural tendency to evade and self-deceive?  But it’s a question this society has a hard time asking because the most seductive evasion is the one that leads us to deny the underside of our own nature.”[1]

Christ’s followers can hardly point toward their “inner wonderfulness,” as Brooks puts it.  We recognize that we, like David, come into the world horrifically broken, and this brokenness does profound damage to our homes, to our relationships, and yes, to our cities.

Some years ago the Catholic writer G.K. Chesterton made headlines with his response to a magazine inquiry which asked: “What’s wrong with the world?”  Chesterton responded with only two words: “I am.”

I am what’s wrong with the world.

I am what’s wrong with our city.

As Christians, our prayers for the city can’t start and stop for praying for problems out there.  We must instead see our problems as flowing from within.  “Out of the abundance of the heart,” Jesus warns, “the mouth speaks” (Luke 6:45).

God help us all.

MADE NEW

The radical good news of the gospel is that God offers his help.  More specifically, he offers himself.

On the cross, Jesus took our uncleanness upon himself.  At the empty tomb, he pronounced God’s victory over death itself.

Forgiveness.

Transformation.

The things that God offers us personally he offers our city corporately.  But it starts by each one of us dropping to our knees in humble recognition of our fallen state, then lifting our eyes to the cross for personal forgiveness and transformation.

He blots our sins; he cleanses our sins.

And only he has the power to make our city new again.

 

[1] David Brooks, “Let’s All Feel Superior,” The New York Times, November 14, 2011.

Praying for our city (Nehemiah 1:1-11)

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“There are some realities that you can only see through eyes that have been cleansed by tears.”  Nehemiah embodies this statement from Pope Francis.  Nehemiah was a man driven by compassion for his city—the city of Jerusalem.

In the opening chapter we learn that Nehemiah was the author.  We read that the book contains “The words of Nehemiah the son of Hacaliah.”  Ezra and Nehemiah were originally one book.  Ezra told the story of the rebuilding of Israel’s temple; Nehemiah tells the story of the rebuilding of the city walls.  They serve as historical memoirs but—if they were alive today—these two books would serve as the first “TED Talks.”  These men were innovators and leaders of their day, and through them we see God’s plan for restoration.

NEHEMIAH 1:1-4

When we first meet Nehemiah, he is living in relative luxury in Persia.  If we jump down to verse 11, we read: “Now I was cupbearer to the king.”  This was more than just a butler.  His primary responsibility was to taste the king’s food and drink in the event that someone tried to poison him.  But this placed him in such close proximity to the king that he became the king’s unofficial political advisor.  He was probably handsome, cultured, sophisticated.  And above all, he occupied a place of power, privilege, and influence rarely seen by any of his fellow Jews.

So it shouldn’t escape our notice that from the very start, we see this man as deeply burdened for his people.  Starting in verse 1 we read:

Now it happened in the month of Chislev [that would be late November or early December, by our calendars], 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.” (Nehemiah 1:1b-3)

Here we have our first lesson from Nehemiah: change begins only when discontent triumphs over indifference.  Under the decree of Cyrus, some Jews returned; some stayed.  Nehemiah was among those who stayed.  Hanani—who may have been Nehemiah’s biological relation, or simply a Jewish “brother”—was among those who returned.  Prophets such as Jeremiah had commanded God’s people to “flee Babylon,” but many—including Nehemiah—found chose comfort over conviction.  Now, confronted by this news, Nehemiah could only weep over the fate of his people.  In verse 4 he confesses: “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.”

For most of us, it’s far too easy to hear news about our city and respond with either laughter or hostility.  “Only in Hagerstown,” we might say.  More than 20 years ago cultural analyst Neil Postman compared the nightly news to a bad game of “peek-a-boo,” where negative stories flash before our eyes and then quickly disappear.  This “peek-a-boo” world is only magnified in an age where news literally flashes before us through our Facebook and Twitter feeds.  It’s like the scene in the film Hotel Rwanda, where the Rwandan hotel owner thanks the American journalist for courageously covering the recent atrocities.  But the journalist apologetically tells him, “I think if people see this footage they’ll say, ‘oh…that’s horrible,’ and the go on eating their dinners.”

No more.  No more saying “Only in Hagerstown.”  No more shaking our heads rather than bowing them in prayer.  No more clenching our fists in anger than opening them in love.  God never loved his people at a distance.  The gospel is a message of a God who sent his Son into our world, and likewise sends his followers into the world as his representatives, his ambassadors.  The gospel therefore stirs within us a form of “holy discontent,” a discontent that triumphs over our tendency toward silence and our propensity toward indifference.

NEHEMIAH 1:5-10

For Nehemiah, the discontent stirred in his heart led him to his knees.  Most of chapter one is an extended prayer that the God of the universe would intervene, and that he might be used for the good of the city.  When we get to chapter 2, we’ll learn that four months go by.  Most of chapter one is just an extended prayer.  In his commentary on Nehemiah, Raymond Brown helps us see examine this prayer and see that Nehemiah’s prayer life contained several specific features.

  • First, Nehemiah began with praise for God.  In verse 5, we read: “O Lord God of heaven, the great and awesome God who keeps covenant and steadfast love with those who love him and keep his commandments…”  Praise matters because through worship, our hearts are directed away from earthly comforts toward the source of all goodness.  Only then can we truly have our hearts beat in time with the God of the universe.
  •  Second, Nehemiah sought God’s attention.  He says, “6 let your ear be attentive and your eyes open, to hear the prayer of your servant that I now pray before you day and night for the people of Israel your servants…”  We can be thankful that through the finished work of Christ, we can freely approach the throne of grace and bring our needs before the God of the universe.
  •  Third, Nehemiah confessed sin.  He says that he is “confessing the sins of the people of Israel, which we have sinned against you. Even I and my father’s house have sinned. 7 We have acted very corruptly against you and have not kept the commandments, the statutes, and the rules that you commanded your servant Moses.”  Nehemiah didn’t cast blame; he took ownership.  Now, we can’t always say that all human suffering is the result of human wrongdoing.  But we can at least acknowledge that before we move forward we must acknowledge our past failures.
  •  Fourth, Nehemiah appealed to God’s character.  Look in verse 8: “Remember the word that you commanded your servant Moses, saying, ‘If you are unfaithful, I will scatter you among the peoples, 9 but if you return to me and keep my commandments and do them, though your outcasts are in the uttermost parts of heaven, from there I will gather them and bring them to the place that I have chosen, to make my name dwell there.’ 10 They are your servants and your people, whom you have redeemed by your great power and by your strong hand.”  Nehemiah, of course, is referencing the promises laid out through Moses.  The Lord’s promise to Abraham was unconditional: Israel would receive God’s blessing because of his character.  But to fully enjoy God’s blessing Israel was called to conform to God’s character through obedience to the Mosaic Law.  Today, we live by a different covenant, a different set of promises.  We look back not to Moses but to Jesus, whose death promises us forgiveness and transformation.  So like Nehemiah, we look back to God’s activity in the past for confidence in our present and hope for our future.
  • Finally, Nehemiah makes a specific request.  Look at verse 11: “O Lord, let your ear be attentive to the prayer of your servant, and to the prayer of your servants who delight to fear your name, and give success to your servant today, and grant him mercy in the sight of this man.”  I find that bold.  We don’t see him saying, “if it be your will” or any of the clauses that you and I might attach to our prayers, instead choosing to share his request with boldness and honesty.

We need that.  We need that for our nation, we need that for our church, we need that for our city.  But it starts with us, and that’s the second point to be learned from Nehemiah: prayer transforms us from critics to crusaders.  If you follow Jesus, you are said to be united with Christ.  Jesus inhabits our city through you, through me, through the body of Christ, his people, the Church.  Through prayer we re-orient ourselves to this greater, awesome reality, and move away from the tendency to criticize our city’s flaws but to allow the love of Christ to well up inside us and overflow into our homes, into our neighborhoods, and into our streets.  We need that, the world needs that, because now, more than ever, our world isn’t asking whether Christianity is true, but whether Christianity is good.  The actions of the “body of Christ” may well be the only gospel your neighbors ever hear.

Our application, therefore, is that we pray for our city—diligently and compassionately.  God is for our city, and together we proclaim his goodness so that we may lift high the name of Christ, and God would use these actions to draw all men to himself.

 

#forourcity: Overview

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This Sunday marks the beginning of the city-wide For Our City sermon series.  Throughout the series, area churches will be sharing resources as we speak with one voice in bringing the gospel to Hagerstown.  To that end, we trust that you’ll blessed by this introduction to our series and to the book of Nehemiah, assembled by the staff of Lifehouse Church:

Everywhere we turn, we hear and see the tearing apart of friendships, homes, neighborhoods, cities, and nations. Turn on the news, the radio, or your computer. Pull out your phone or open any social media site. We are a house divided against itself, and it seems that we’re falling fast.

In a cultural climate of divisiveness it’s easy to allow fear to overtake us and isolate us one from the other. We start to see people divided into races or political groups or social classes or economic castes. We start to look out for our self-interest and survival rather than for each other.

Worse, too often churches use their convictions as an excuse to be hateful and treat others os lesser individuals. When this happens churches are reduced to a small-minded constituency and lose their spiritual authority in a culture that desperately needs a voice of hope. This, in turn, drives wedges between them and those already disenfranchised. As a result, hearing that the church is against them, too many in our nation and culture have wrongly concluded that God is against them.

But God, revealed through Jesus, showed up in poverty, in an occupied country, lacking political freedom – in a time of world turmoil, political oppression, and extreme abuses. Rather than coming to condemn anyone to death or eternal judgment. He took the sins of the world on Himself and died in our place. He stepped in between us and all that we deserved to offer His love, His forgiveness, a hope, and a future. As a result, we can confidently say God is for us, not against us. God is for OUR city! He is for our neighborhoods, for our schools, and for our families. And most importantly, God is for YOU!

Therefore, God has called every church and every Christian to be for OUR city—for the most marginalized, the weak, the poor, the hurting, the broken, the ill, the innocent, the most vulnerable, and the most overlooked. This is a call to actively unite in joining God in the transformation of our communities and cities. This is a challenge to follow Jesus as He leads us by His Spirit in becoming agents of change FOR OUR CITY.

WHY STUDY THE BOOK OF NEHEMIAH?

The Book of Nehemiah from the Old Testament of the Bible appeals to anyone who is living in less than ideal circumstances but wishing for more. If things haven’t turned out like you expected or you’re looking out at the wreckage of life, burned out, weary, discouraged, and disappointed, then this is relevant to you Nehemiah is the historical narrative of a mon who is overwhelmed and heart-broken by the destruction of his homeland: and he’s determined to do something to change the tide of this ruin.

Here’s the setting: After the rise of the Nation of Israel under the reign of King David, his sons turned from God to immorality and idolatry. God had promised that He would bless them if they worshipped Him faithfully but curse them if they rebelled. The rebellion and pagan worship piled up, and they finally suffered the consequences of their sins.

In 587 BC, the entire nation of Israel had been divided and conquered, and the people were taken captive to foreign lands. The city of Jerusalem, their capital and center of worship, was destroyed and laid in ruin. Everything was lost and the Jewish people were once again homeless and trying to worship God as slaves and strangers in exile and among foreign religions. Nebuchadnezzar was Babylon’s king at the time, and under his leadership the nation flourished. But with his death in 562 BC, the decline of this world power began.

In 539 BC, the Persians attacked and conquered Babylon and became the new world power. King Cyrus II famously decreed that the Jews could return and rebuild their temple and the city of Jerusalem.

Finally, in 538 BC. Zerubbabel gathered a group of Israelites and returned to Jerusalem and rebuilt the temple of God. However, they continued to live in moral and spiritual decay for several decades, until Ezra brought more Jews back to Jerusalem in 458 BC. Only then did they begin to restore the law of God, honor His Word, and worship Him alone. Unfortunately, under the rule of Persia, Jerusalem was still burned out—her fortifications in rubble, houses devastated, and people destitute.

Darius followed Cyrus as the king of Persia, and under him the Temple was rebuilt in 515 BC. This took place under the leadership of the prophets Haggai and Zechariah. In 444 BC, the new King of Persia, Artaxerxes I (who may have been the son of Esther), had a cupbearer named Nehemiah, a very wise and passionate Hebrew nobleman. Nehemiah was heartbroken when he heard news that Jerusalem was still in such a mess. As a “dual-citizen,” in the service of the King but religiously loyal to the Jews, he longed to see his homeland restored. So, after deep anguish in prayer, he went to the King and asked if he could return to Jerusalem and rebuild the city.

The Book of Nehemiah recounts this great historical moment, but this story is much more than just an ordinary history lesson. The narrative is very practical and relevant nearly 2,500 years later. As strong leaders, Ezra and Nehemiah led a reform in the spiritual, social, and economic life of their city with a deep concern for the reputation of the name of the Lord in the midst of pagan opposition.

Are we similarly driven by the devastation and ruin around us in our neighborhoods, cities, and nation to unite and work tirelessly in the name of God toward true restoration? Are we zealous for the reputation of God among our neighbors and a nation that has long considered faith and devotion to God irrelevant and even irrational? If your answers were ‘Yes’, then let’s come together and truly be FOR OUR CITY!