Helping Others Rebuild Their Brokenness

The premise for my current sermon series through Nehemiah is that we can rebuild our broken world if we walk with God as Nehemiah did. However, we can go even further in rebuilding our broken worlds by helping others rebuilt theirs. While we will deal with that in the sermon series, I want to emphasis that even further in this space. Helping people rebuild their broken worlds is after all a part of the church’s mission.

Al Sherrill, pastor of a church in Manhattan, New York, gives an example, in the current issue of Leadership of a lady in his church who did just that. Her name is Ellen. She works in the fashion industry and was placed on a team in her company with a woman whose presence she had begun to dread. Then her coworker was handed a two week notice of termination. She was a single mother of a teenage girl and was already $5,000 behind on rent and was receiving repeated eviction threats posted on her door.

The woman had long since given up any faith that she had. So Ellen sent an email with the subject “Urgent” to fellow believers. She concluded the email by writing, "Would you prayerfully consider joining me in raising $5,000 for this woman over the next 48 hours? I think that showing radical generosity in the name of Jesus will be a powerful display of God's heart towards her in this time. May God's mercy be released over her life through this."

In response to Ellen's plea for a few people to join in resolving her coworker's plight, within two days she arrived to work carrying a sealed envelope. Laying it on her coworker's desk, Ellen informed the woman that there were a few folks at church who believed in her comeback. Later that day Ellen sent an email to those who supported the cause. It read:

"So thankful to share the story of today with you. I wrote a letter to her this morning, and put the full amount in the envelope. I wrote of grace being a free gift, that she is indebted to no one, and that all who gave did so out of the belief that they've received that same but infinitely greater gift of grace from God. When she came in and read the letter, she called me to her office and embraced me weeping. She said she'd never received unconditional help before, and that it was the most profound thing she's experienced. 'Thank God, thank God,' she kept saying. She is now able to stay in her apartment. She has a promising job interview next week.

"Later in the day, another coworker came to me with tears in her eyes and hugged me. The woman had told her what transpired, and said, 'Not only have you changed her life, but you've revived my faith as well.' Just last night she had told her husband that she felt her faith in Jesus was dead. She said that in all her life she had never seen such a thing, and it reminded her of truth."

All stories may not be that dramatic, but, as Sherrill tells it, this was the first time Ellen had seen her job as a place to live out her faith. It was the first time she stepped to help someone else rebuild their brokenness.

The rebuilding of our own brokenness is a result of God pouring his grace into our lives through Jesus Christ. Our mission is to help others rebuild their lives by offering them God’s grace.

Everything Is Broken, But It Can Be Fixed

All you have to do is read or listen to the news to know that our world is broken. From the flood of immigrants on our southern border to the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas to a NFL draftee receiving an award for courage because he announced publicly that he is gay — and those are just three things in the news on the day I write this — we live in a broken world.

All you have to do is listen to people’s personal stories, and you realize our lives are broken. From divorce to child and sexual abuse to alcohol and drug abuse to dealing with issues related to aging, either your own or your parents, to facing death — just to name a few — we live in our own broken worlds.

All of this brokenness is not new, though. The entire history of the world, ever since the sin of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, has been one of brokenness. When we enter the world of Nehemiah, as we will do this week in a new sermon series, we enter a world that had been broken for centuries:

• First the nation of Israel was divided into two nations after the reign of Solomon.
• Then the Assyrians invaded the Northern Kingdom, which thereafter ceased to exist.
• Next, 130 years later, the Babylonians invaded the Southern Kingdom and took the people into captivity. The Babylonians destroyed the temple and broke down the protective walls of Jerusalem.
• Fifty years later, the first wave of Israelites returned to their homeland to find it in ruins. After some delays, they rebuilt the temple, but much of the city was still left broken and in ruins.
• After another fifty-seven years, another group of Jews returned home only to find that people had lost their spiritual edge and intermarried with pagan peoples.
• Fourteen years later, 140 years following the exile of the southern kingdom, Nehemiah heard about the condition and Jerusalem and went there to rebuild its broken walls.

That is where we will pick up the story— with Nehemiah. He shows us that the brokenness can be fixed by rebuilding the broken walls of Jerusalem, the city of his heritage. In doing so, he brings protection from the brokenness that had controlled his people’s lives for so long.

Nehemiah’s story has often been preached and written as a story of leadership, giving us lessons in leadership that can still be relied on today. It is certainly that, but his story also shows us how God can fix the brokenness in our lives. That is the viewpoint from which we will examine Nehemiah. Our brokenness can be fixed, but only as we follow God’s prompting for our lives as Nehemiah did for his. Those are lessons we need, lessons I hope you will learn with me over the coming weeks.

Rebuilding Your Broken World

Beginning on July 20, I will begin to introduce our congregation to a Biblical character who may not be as familiar to you as others. Yet he played a very significant role in one of the lesser known periods of Biblical history.

The character is Nehemiah. The period of history is that of the exile. This was the time when the nation of Israel, the nation of God’s people, had been taken captive. After Solomon’s reign as king of Israel, the nation was divided and began to decline as the kings of both kingdoms led the people away from God. We probably avoid this period of Israel’s history for two reasons:

· First, we do not have as much biblical information about this period. We only get some brief glimpses into this time through the prophets who wrote during the exile and through the three history books from the period: Ezra, Nehemiah, and Esther.

· Second, the nation and the people of Israel are broken during this period. The messages of the prophets during the exile are filled with messages and images of judgment. We would rather read of the great exploits of those who trusted God, not depressing stories of people God is punishing.

So Nehemiah came onto the scene about 140 years after the southern kingdom of Judah had been taken captive by Babylon. In the intervening years, the Persians had defeated Babylon and were now the world’s leading power. Israel was a broken nation. Its capital, Jerusalem, was broken. The temple had been destroyed and efforts to rebuild it had gone nowhere. Nehemiah discovered that there was no security in the city for the few Israelites who lived there. The lives of the Israelites were broken. They must have asked, how can we ever rebuild this? How can God rebuild our nation, our city, our people?

Have you ever felt that way about your life? Have you ever felt like your life, your family, everything and everyone you care about is broken? Have you ever wondered how you, how God can rebuild your broken world?

If you haven’t asked those questions, you should because we are all broken, everyone of us. Some may be broken into more pieces than others — and perhaps you do not seek to have your life rebuilt because you see others who are more broken than you — but sin has its grip on all of us. We all have broken pieces, and none of us can be used by God the way he wants to use us until we let him fix us.

Nehemiah had probably never been to Jerusalem, the city of his people, but when he discovered how broken it was, he determined to go there and fix it. His story is one of seeking the Lord’s guidance and then going about the business of repairing a broken city. While he faced hardship, difficulty, and opposition along the way, he helped to repair a broken city and a broken people.

Our brokenness is different than what Nehemiah set out to repair. We do not have walls and buildings and physical infrastructure that needs repair. We have hearts that need repair and some of us have our whole world that needs repair. Yet we can learn from Nehemiah how to repair our brokenness. Read the book of Nehemiah. Take a look at this life. Let his story help you rebuild your brokenness.