Sunday Setup – Nehemiah 7

Hey, Gra Church. Welcome to the Sunday setup. This is our time every week that we digitally gather together to look at this Sunday's upcoming text from God's word to be able to spend some time praying through it in order to prepare our hearts for this weekend. Today we're going to be in Nehemiah chapter 7. And Nehemiah chapter 7 is an interesting chapter. Uh one, it is by far the longest chapter in the book of Nehemiah. Uh but it is also one that is filled with a bunch of names that uh you probably cannot pronounce but are there for a reason. And and today as we pray through this uh we'll we'll do so in a little different way. Um just for sake of time and clarity, we'll skip some of these cuz there is some repetition in here. Uh but we're still just going to pray for how God would prepare our hearts to hear his word on Sunday and to call us into action to practice it through the week. But we'll start uh where we left off. A little bit of a recap overlap from last week. We're going to start in chapter 7 starting in verse 4. And it says this, this is after the wall has been completed. It says, "The city was large and spacious, but there were few people in it and no houses had been built. Then God, this is Nehemiah talking, put then my God put into my mind to assemble the nobles, the officials, and the people to be registered by genealogy. I found the genealogical record of those who came back first, and I found the following written in it. These are the people of the providence who went up among the captive exiles deported by King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon. Each of them returned to Jerusalem and Judea to his own town. They came with Zerubbabel, Jesua, Nehemiah, Azariah, Rami, Nahama, Mori, Bishon, Mispth, Biggav, Nihham, and Bonai. the number of the Israelite men included. And from here, Nehemiah runs off a list of all these people that came back. But verse 39, here's an important distinction as he's reading these different tribes of people. Then he says, "But then the priests included Jedodiah's descendants of the house of Jesu and gives a number for them." You keep going down in verse 43, he mentions the Levites. In verse 45, uh is the gatekeepers. In verse 46 is the temple servants. uh we see these different descendants in 47 and beyond and even in 57 the descendants of Solomon's servants that are recorded when you keep going you see more and more and more descendants and in verse uh 60 it says all the temple servants and the descendants of Solomon's servants and it gives in number 392 and the following are those who came from Tamil and this is an interesting group it says but they were unable to pro prove that their ancestral families and their lineage were Israelites. But as he continues, verse 64, this is important as we kind of head towards the end. It says, "They searched for their entries in the records, but they could not be found. So they were disqualified from the priesthood. The governor ordered them not to eat the most holy things until there was a priest who could consult the Uram and Thumb. But the whole combined assembly numbered 42,360." Zip down to verse 70. all these people that had come back in this exile years before which we'll get into more detail on Sunday. It says some of the family heads in verse 70 contributed to the project. The governor gave 1,000 gold coins, 50 bulls, and 5330 priestly garments to the treasury. Some of the family heads gave 20,000 gold coins and 2200 silver menace to the treasury for the project. The rest of the people gave 20,000 gold coins, 2,000 silver menace, and 67 priestly garments. the priests, the Levites, the gatekeepers, the temple singers, some of the people, temple servants, and all Israel settled in their towns. You know, in chapter 7, it's really a chapter of transition. It's transitioning from this project that they have been focused on, this project that they've been pouring their time into to focusing on the people that this project was designed to do something for. And the people that are listed here are actually people from the past. But I think there's a few things that we need to see here and that I think that we can God calls us to action with as we think about this. And I first want to start and it was this this verse we left off on at the beginning of last week. It says, "Then God put into my mind is we have a God who speaks to us. We have a God who talks to us through his word, through our prayers, and through his church. And as we start this and we we approach maybe a difficult chapter many times, I want us to ask God for enlightenment and ask God for movement in here. And just here's our prayer prompt straight through scripture. Write what we see is God put in my mind to God put in my mind. Maybe it's to search your scriptures deeper for what you have for my life. God, put into my mind how I can care for my family better. God, put into mind how what opportunities I might have at work to better glorify you. God, put into my mind. Pray that to our father. Heat. Heat. God, we know that you are a God of vision for the future, a God of giving projects into of our lives. A God of giving us opportunities to explore. A God of pushing forward and showing us that we should not be comfortable with where we are. Just like they were not comfortable in exile, but we should be striving to be a part of your kingdom and pushing back darkness. God, put into our mind how you would use us. But here's what's important as that was put into Nehemiah's mind. In verse 70, we see a important verse is some of the family heads contributed to the project. And here's the crazy thing is not even everyone contributed. And isn't that true of our world is so many inside the church right now, so many Christians are not contributing to what God is doing, are not contributing to sharing their faith, are not contribute to faithfully giving to their church, are not contributing to being on mission for what God has. But we do not want to fall into that trap. Instead, may we be the families listed here that contribute to the projects that God are doing, contribute to starting new things that God is doing, contribute to pushing back the lostness in the darkness in our world. And and here is our second prompt as we ask God to put a vision into our hearts of putting into our mind of where we should go is God let me contribute to your work by God let me contribute to your work by maybe that's faithfully giving um inside your church family. God let me contribute to your work by inviting people to church. God let me contribute to your work by sharing the gospel. God, let me contribute to your work by maybe it's signing up for a mission trip this summer. Whatever that is, God, let me contribute to your work by pray those prayers for our God. Heat. Heat. God, let us contribute to your work by being generous with our time, being generous with our energy, being generous with our resources, and Lord, being generous with our family. God, let us contribute to what you're doing. Not settle for uh what is comfortable for us. Not settle whatever is easy with us. Not just settle for what the world has for us, but God, let us have the vision put into our mind that you give us. And Lord, let us contribute to it, God, freely, generously, greatly, and passionately. God, we thank you for this time. and we just ask that you prepare our hearts for as we come and join together this Sunday. And Lord, uh we just praise you along the way. We lift all this up in Jesus name. Amen. And thank you guys for joining us today. We are excited to gather this Sunday as we get to dive into God's word. And we hope you have a great rest of your week. See you Sunday. Heat. Heat.