The Sermon Series on the Book of Nehemiah Continues at Berean SDA Church

Sabbath Sermon: “A Whole Heart”

The Jerusalem Gate through which Jews believe the Messiah will return. I helped draw plans for a Lubavich Temple that featured a walled-in gate, a nod to this Hasidic movement’s Messianism.

PASTOR RUSSELL SPEAKS ON NEHEMIAH’S OPPOSITION

 

A third installment of the sermon series “Rebuilding the Ruins” was presented this Sabbath (1/30/2016) by Lead Pastor Fredrick Russell at Berean Seventh-day Adventist Church, Atlanta. It bears a relation to proposed efforts to restore some portions of Berean’s deteriorating infrastructure, but the edifying lessons we can learn from Nehemiah’s ability to overcome his cynical detractors transcend the theme of mere church maintenance.

 

Pastor Fredrick Russell’s sermon on the Book of Nehemiah focused on opposition to his rebuilding plan. The mockery and abuse of Sanballat was highlighted. The pastor did not relate the later physical attacks by Sanballat on Nehemiah and his compatriots, but words eventually gave way to “sticks and stones” in the story. Nehemiah’s forces were triumphant in the end.

“When God is about to make a move in your life, get ready for opposition!” This opening statement by Pastor Russell served as both introduction and summary to his remarks. Nehemiah 4:6 was the keynote verse, citing the positive response of the majority of Jerusalem to Nehemiah’s call to rebuild: “So built we the wall; and all the wall was joined together unto the half thereof: for the people had a mind to work.”

 

100 South Fulton Avenue (at the corner of Lombard Street) in Baltimore yields this street view, labeled 102 U.S. Hwy 1. Is this Miracle Temple? Maybe. Maybe not.

Pastor Russell related some events of an expansion to a church he was leading in Baltimore, the Miracle Temple Church (now renamed “Miracle City Church,” a less archaic designation). They needed around half-a-million dollars to move off the corner of  Fulton and Lombard (some research reveals that a church remains in that location, but the Baltimore GIS site is less than useless. A photo of a slick, new sanctuary from Google Images was named “Miracle Temple SDA Church AND Korean Central Presbyterian Church. I give up). During the torturous process of debating the proposal, a lady approached the pastor, a smile on her face, and stated that the project would fail, and the church would fail, too. The pastor was polite, but thought to himself “get thee behind me, Satan” (a quote from part of next week’s Sabbath School, folks). This related to a statement on the teaching notes, one remarking on the “automatic” opposition that any move of God generates.

Pastor’s teaching notes contained three points about Nehemiah’s chief opposition, Sanballat, as described in Chapter 4 of the book:

• He was ANGRY. Sanballat was unable to discuss his concerns about the restoration of Jerusalem’s walls in a dispassionate way.
• He RIDICULED the Jews (a technique my late stepfather often employed), trying hard to hurt Nehemiah. He was inciting a little Schadenfreude, a sadistic glee in causing discomfort to others. Schopenhauer considered this to be the most evil thing a person can do.
• Pastor Russell said Sanballat was showing off to his cronies. He was standing in a group of similarly malevolent “street hoodlums” (brethren and the army of Samaria, 4:2 relates).

Verbal animosity displayed in a still from “West Side Story.” Like the scene in Nehemiah described today, trouble has not yet escalated into physical violence.

Sanballat was a propagandist for his negative views, so he tried to make these views as public as he could. He was utilizing “the Power of Suggestion.” Sanballat’s venom was promulgated in a manner that Pastor Russell encapsulated in four “rhetorical questions.”

• Will they (the Jerusalemites) restore the wall? (4:2: “Will they fortify themselves” KJV) The insinuated answer is NO!
• Will they offer sacrifices? Once again, NO is implied (I assume these would constitute part of a dedication of the completed work. The people ate, and drank, and sent portions in 8:12, but this was a “Rosh Hashanah” celebration, not a dedication of the wall analogous to the dedication of the Temple in First Kings 8).
• Will they finish in a day? NO!
• With the rubbish, can they bring stones to life? The pastor dramatized the scene of Sanballat and his fellow scoffers reveling in the sharpness of this remark. The impromptu thespians recruited for the theatrical were mostly Elders, and the action proceeds from the last “rhetorical” question, asked by Pastor Russell at time marker 1:39:10.

The tableaux of Sanballat and his cronies now turned the spotlight on Tobiah the Ammonite, who Pastor Russell described as one who brought a spirit of Cynicism (link is to a description of the current use of this term: everyone’s motives are dishonorable) onto the scene. His facetious comment in Nehemiah 4:3 is “Even that which they build, if a fox go up, he shall even break down their stone wall.”

Another Biblical fox reference, Song of Solomon 2:15: “Take us the foxes, the little foxes, that spoil the vines: for our vines have tender grapes.”

Pastor Russell said that, at the beginning of any major campaign like the one Berean was about to embark upon, there would be people who would question the motives of the leaders (my feeling is that these people are using the leaders as scapegoats for their own lack of generosity. Greed is the not-so-secret wellspring of much dissent). “Fear and cynicism, if it’s embraced, will kill anything,” the pastor asserted. “If you are with me, say Amen!” We were advised to not allow ourselves to be distracted by what Spiro Agnew once described as “nattering nabobs of negativity” (my quote, not the pastor’s). They will monopolize your life, as you would be constantly defending your viewpoint against them. In World War II, General Douglass MacArthur quickly regained control of the Pacific Theater by simply ignoring Japanese-occupied islands that were of no strategic value (this may have contributed to legends of isolated Japanese soldiers who, years after the war was over, were convinced that it was still being waged. There is a sermon hidden somewhere in this crazy analogy).

Pastor Russell returned now to his introductory remarks, featuring the doom-predicting lady in his old Baltimore church. A second naysayer, infected by the first, called the pastor. Ever courteous to his critics, the pastor thanked him, but found the courage to tell him that “nevertheless, we are going forward.” The half-million dollar campaign wound up raising an entire million. The naysayer ate some crow, admitting that he had embraced a “spirit of discouragement.” Nehemiah could have been deflected from his goal by his detractors. His plans could have been derailed by an insistence on 100% support from his associates, for some people will forever remain unconvinced.

Still fruitlessly searching for images of Pastor Russell’s Baltimore church, I found a picture of former Berean Pastor Rebecca Davis, a guest speaker last September, on the Miracle Temple SDA Church FaceBook site.

The pastor now cited Nehemiah 4:4-6, with a characteristic plea to God by Nehemiah in verses 4 and 5. This led to a restatement by Pastor Russell of a point noted in earlier sermons in this series: Nehemiah’s first response to anything was to pray. The pastor’s translation read “turn their insults [the naysayers] back on their own heads. This is a “Nehemiah-like” request, and very “Old Testament,” reminding me of the children’s chant:

I’m rubber and you’re glue,
Whatever you say,
Bounces off me
And sticks to you!”

Christ would appear 400 years later, to inform us that we should love our enemies. The pastor’s translation continued, “give them over to plunder.” The most elegant (but very profane) disparagement of one’s enemies I have read recently was in a doctor’s waiting room copy of “Rolling Stone” that featured an interview with Bob Dylan. When he ditched acoustic guitars for electric ones, his old followers likened him to Judas. “The person who killed Christ!” Dylan exclaimed, exasperated. He then stated where these people could go, and how long they should stay there. Some of Nehemiah’s words come across as sharing the uncharitable, but comprehensible spirit Dylan displayed.

Pastor Russell, building upon the prayer of Nehemiah, spent some moments in general commentary upon prayer. He repeated for thousands what he had initially spoken to a few hundred Wednesday night, the story of a phenomenal “real-time” conversation he recently had with God in the course of a prayer. The post previous to this one, “The ‘War Room’ is Open for Business,” summarizes this remarkable testimony, as does the video of today’s sermon, beginning at time marker 1:51:10.

“Burning Bush” by Sebastien Bourdon, another example of Moses, like Pastor Russell, speaking directly with God. A Compliment to the image on Wednesday’s post featuring “Moses” by Michelangelo.

Returning to the subject of Nehemiah and his critics, the pastor drew a lesson from the Hebrew leader that was generally applicable: don’t go “tit for tat” with your own critics. We should, instead, go to our knees and tell God about our “Sanballat, our Tobiah, about our Geshem, and all of their friends.” We can then move forward, as in the case of Nehemiah and his compatriots as described in Nehemiah 4:6: “So built we the wall; and all the wall was joined together unto the half thereof: for the people had a mind to work.”

My kneejerk provision of a King James quote must be supplemented by  one from the NIV, or the title of the sermon, and it’s “theme song,” make no sense. The NIV states, “So we rebuilt the wall till all of it reached half its height, for the people worked with all their heart.” The key word is “heart,” and the concluding song features this word. When Pastor Russell had a church in the DC area, a young singer named Nolan Williams performed there. He had just written a song called “With My Whole Heart.” Pastor Russell said that when a church serves God with a whole heart, there is nothing they can’t do. The pastor advised us to listen closely to the lyrics. Here is a LINK to a PDF of the lyrics (best I can do, short of transcribing them myself. The word “with” was dropped in the Berean arrangement’s final repetitions of the line “my whole heart,” maybe to give the singers a chance to breath).

Former Berean Pastor and current member Vanard J. Medinghall, a pretty OK guy.

 

Pastor Russell concluded the service with a prayer to this effect: that whatever we undertake to do, that we would do it with a “whole heart.” He asserted that Jesus went to the cross with a “whole heart.” The pastor thanked Him, on everyone’s behalf, for dying for our sins.