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.