Nehemiah 7 (Part 1) Bible Study (Hanani & Hananiah Governors) | Pastor Daniel Batarseh (9/18/26)

Church, how are we tonight? It's a joy to see you. It's a joy to be here on a Friday evening, and I would love to share with you as a call to worship a verse that has been beating in my heart these last few days and I hope that it would spring something in your own spirit as you hear these familiar words from the Lord's mouth from John chapter 15. And you don't have to turn there in your Bibles but I would encourage you to lean in and listen to the absolute authority of our Messiah and his wisdom and his encouragement from his word. Listen to this in John 15 verse one, I am the true vine and my father is the vinedresser.

Every branch in me that does not bear fruit, he takes away and every branch that does bear fruit, he prunes that it may bear more fruit. Already you are clean because of the word that I have spoken to you. Abide in me and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine neither can you unless you abide in me. I am the vine.

You are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit. For apart from me, you can do nothing. If anyone does not abide in me, he is thrown away like a branch and withers and the branches are gathered, thrown into the fire and burned. If you abide in me and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish and it will be done for you.

And here's the verse, verse eight, by this my father is glorified that you bear much fruit and so prove to be my disciples. I was just thinking about that these last few days and even praying about it. Lord, you desire for me to bear not just fruit, much fruit. And sometimes I think we settle for a little fruit. Sometimes we rely on fruit that's been birthed in the past, that's blessed others in the past.

But I see something here of great encouragement that you bear much fruit. And my simple prayer this week has been, Lord, I wanna bear more fruit. And sometimes you hear something like that and it's daunting. Right? It's amazing how many people can view things like a verse like this and become overwhelmed by the demand or by the challenge, and yet this very verse is tucked in the context of the Lord saying over and over again, you can't do anything apart from me.

It's my energy, it's my grace, it's my power flowing through you in order for you to even arrive to this point. And so when I look at a verse like verse eight, I don't think, oh, how am I gonna exert? How am I gonna strategize? How am I gonna force this fruit? I think, Lord, because of you I can bear more fruit.

Because of you in me, me abiding in you, I can produce even greater and greater Christ likeness in my life. And one of the ways that is accomplished is what we read in verse seven. If you abide in me and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish and it will be done for you. Do you wanna bear more fruit? Get the word in you.

Do you want your prayers answered? Get the word in you. And this is why what we're doing here every Friday is an investment not just for our intellect, not just for our theology, not just for our knowledge, but for our fruit bearing more of it to the glory of Christ's name. So we're we're we're excited, are we not? I'm thrilled to be here and I hope you are as well because there is greater fruitfulness that awaits us.

Those who invest in the word of God and allow it to be invested in their hearts. Can we pray together? Let's seek the Lord tonight. Lord, we can view this sanctuary, this Bible study in many ways. We can view it as a classroom.

We can view it as the temple where we've come to offer fragrant offerings unto you, and all of those things are appropriate and right. But Lord, at this moment, we've come. We've come as branches knowing that apart from you, the vine, we will not receive the life necessary to bear the fruit that you desire to glorify your name. So, Lord, we surrender, we come helpless, we come anticipating, and we come eager knowing that you will deposit something in us that will produce something through us. We believe this and we yearn for it and we long for it.

So, Lord, may we sense that grace surging through us as we seek you. Make the choice to be in your presence with your people this evening. We love you, Lord. We long for you. We worship you.

We pray that you would just captivate us through the truths that we sing and even your presence that would overwhelm us. Please meet us in this place tonight, and we ask these things in Jesus' name, amen and amen. Amen. Church, let's stand together. We're here to worship the living God.

There's no other place we would rather be than in his presence. Amen? Amen. Let's sing to him.

Don't drop a single anchor. We're almost done. Through every toil and danger, we're almost done. This life is just a vapor. We're almost home.

That sun is setting yonder. We're almost home.

Yes, lord. We know that with you, a day is a thousand years, and a thousand years is a day. God, you are patient in exercising your promises, Lord, and fulfilling them. But we pray, Lord, that you would return, God. We cry, Maranatha, Lord.

God, we long to see you face to face, Lord, we long to Lord, we thank you that we are free from the penalty of sin. But Lord, we want to be free from the presence of sin, and it's power, Lord. God, we pray that you would keep us to the end, Lord. Sustain us, Lord, even in this service, God. Prepare our hearts for the preaching of your word.

May we receive it and obey it and please you in all that we do, Lord. Help us. In Jesus name, amen.

For you're seated, find somebody and welcome them. Give them an embrace and rejoice together that we're here together. Welcome to Friday night Bible study. So glad that you can make it at the end of this week, and I trust it's because you are blessed when you come under God's word being preached and declared. And there are many bible studies out there, but very few have such wonderful praise and music before it.

So I'm just so grateful that we have a wonderful team that sacrifices out of their time to serve us in the the area of song. Can we show our appreciation to them from our hearts? Thank you, praise team. As always, thank you. And if you're here for the first time, a very special welcome to you.

Welcome to our Old Testament study as we go through the book of Nehemiah, and we'll get there in a moment. But at this time, we also believe that giving is an act of worship, and so there are ways that you can contribute to the ministry here at NBC, ultimately to the Lord and the advancement of his gospel. And the ushers will help us with giving at this moment, and while that takes place, I have two brief announcements. Let me add one more, and it's not really an announcement. It's just to let you know what we do here on a weekly basis, so I'll start there.

If you didn't know, we're here multiple times a week. We're here every Wednesday to pray at 7PM. And if you don't know where we pray, we don't do it here. I would love to see a prayer meeting packed this sanctuary out one day, and I hope that that would remain so. My desire is for us to be a praying church, and we are a praying church, and I want that to grow.

And I know that's the the heart cry of many here, but we do go downstairs to our fellowship hall and there's a designated room for us to pray. And so if you've never been there, all you have to do is make your way downstairs behind those two screens in the lobby. There there's stairs there that lead us downstairs, and you can join us there every Wednesday at 07:00. And if you can't join us in person, you can always join us by sending your request. We always take our requests via email, and we bring them before the people there, and they it can be anonymous.

You can name yourself if you'd like, but we bring those prayers before God, and we trust that he will answer those prayers. So please don't hesitate to send your request to us. It's a delight of ours to pray on your behalf. Besides that, you know that we're here every Friday at 7PM. We're here to study the Hebrew Bible, the Hebrew scriptures, and often neglected part of our Bibles, and people fail to realize that the left side of our Bibles is heavier than the right side.

And so we need the complete revelation of God's word. That's why we are taking our time going through every book possible, and somebody asked recently, what are you gonna do when we finish? And I I said, I don't know if I'm gonna be alive by the time we finish, to be honest. That's up to the Lord. I'm not in no rush, and if he wants us to finish, then he'll give us the grace and strength and the timing to do it, but we're going very carefully through every verse we can in the Hebrew Bible on Fridays.

And as you know on Sundays, in case you don't know, we're here every Sunday at 10:30AM for the Lord's Day service to commemorate the resurrection as the early church did, but also to go through his word again. And we are going through the book of Revelation, focusing on the millennial reign of Christ, such a controversy these days. And all these different ideas that are being proposed, I'm biting my tongue because there are things that are out there that I'm listening to recently that's quite disturbing about how people's eschatology is influencing their day to day living, and there's a new movement out there that's stemming from the idea that the church is gonna be the one to usher in the kingdom, and it's causing some trouble for people in their faith of how they view politics and how they view government, but that's for another time. Besides that, we have our picnic. Our picnic this Sunday, September 20, couple days from now, as you know, we'll be celebrating after the Lord's day, fellowshipping outside if the weather permits.

If not, we have plenty of space to do in the basement and other parts of the the the building here, so we're looking forward to that. If you wanna bring us a small side dish, you're free to do that. If you wanna bring a change of clothes just in case the weather is in our favor, you can do that as well, Become ready to just stay a little bit, after the service, and that's what I love about this church. I've been to many services. At the the moment the benediction goes out, it seems like there's a competition who can get to their their car the fastest as though there's a prize waiting for them in the parking lot or something.

But I love how slow people are to go to their cars after the services on Sundays especially, and I hope that is a culture that remains, with us as a church. Lastly, we've been announcing, a soon coming baptism service. We don't have a date set yet, but you've been so kind to us to inform us if, of your desire or your questions regarding water baptism. And so, we're gonna announce this a couple more times before we officially set a date, but if you desire to be water baptized, if you've hesitated for some reason, or if you question your previous experience with baptism, that's also a valid reason to be baptized again. We would love to have that conversation with you.

You can always send an email to the church on the website mbchicago.org, or you can approach any one of the elders and we'd love to spend some time with you clarifying anything on your end. Well, that's all I have for us in terms of announcements, but I invite you now to turn with me to the book of Nehemiah. Let's go together to the book of Nehemiah. As you know, we've gathered together again to explore a marvelous book in our Bibles written by a godly man named Nehemiah. Now, I wouldn't be surprised that as returning to our Bibles, if some of you who have been carefully studying with us these past few months may be wondering what is left for us to study.

And the reason why I say that is because from the very beginning of this book, the main purpose, the main focus of looking at Nehemiah's narration and his retelling of this piece of Judah's history is the rebuilding of the walls of Jerusalem that had been destroyed many years before his time through the Babylonian exile. And as we saw last week in chapter six, this wonderful task that Nehemiah prayed for and and desired to get his hands on has reached its completion. The walls are rebuilt, and the enemies of Judah did not succeed in stopping the people of God from accomplishing it. And the passion of this man and all his fasting and praying has now materialized. Everything that we have studied about Nehemiah up to this point revolved around that objective, that challenging objective, that important objective, but we've seen the climax, haven't we?

It's done. It's over. The walls are resurrected, the gates are in place, the people are now secure. So what is left for Nehemiah to write about? Well, as we're about to see in this new chapter, Nehemiah is not concerned merely and simply for the walls to be rebuilt.

Nehemiah wanted those walls, yes to come again into existence, but also to fulfill the purpose that they were designed for. And that was to be a shield for God's people against external threats and temptations, while also serving as a symbol of the separation that the people of God were called to unto the Lord from the nations. And that is why for the rest of this book, Nehemiah is going to shift his leadership focus from rebuilding the walls to shepherding the convictions of the people within those walls. Because you see, this godly man understood that the security of the holy city was not dependent upon any physical structure. It ultimately rested upon the obedience of God's people.

Here's what we have to remember before we start reading. The destruction of these walls to begin with did not come from anything other than the people's unrepentant ongoing rebellion against the Lord. It wasn't like Babylon just emerged from the scene as the dominating world empire and surprised Judah by besieging it and destroying it. Babylon was God's agent on the earth to discipline his people. And the manifestation of God's wrath in that setting brought down these walls because it stemmed from the people who continually rejected his patience throughout the centuries calling them to come back to himself.

And so in order to avoid that fatal mistake repeating again, Nehemiah now is going to give his attention while he is in Jerusalem to facilitating and fostering the faith of the people so that it can come to a place where they can sustain the blessing that they have enjoyed thus far. And that is really what this Bible study is all about. We have considered in past Friday nights how the enemy attacks the work of God, especially when it is significant, when it is serious, when it is in alignment with God's word and his will. We've also considered how the enemy attacks the leaders of such work, how he targets leaders of different ministries, especially in the context of the local church. And we've even seen how his assaults appear and manifest within and from the outside, and that was hopefully helpful, that was that was something for our own equipment.

But now the Spirit of God through Nehemiah's example is going to bring us to the other side of the battle. Nehemiah is now going to show us through this passage wonderful principles to protect, to preserve, and to prosper the work of God that he has blessed us with and entrusted us with as a community. This Bible study is framed in the context as a community. Many times we seek individual application, and though that is there every time we open God's word, what we're going to see here will highlight some of the things that a local body of believers must do, and must secure especially those who are in leadership positions to enjoy God's continued favor over their ministry. And I believe that this is a timely word for us as a church because like Nehemiah at this point of his story, we too have reached a milestone as a ministry, haven't we?

I mean, look around you, This is massive. This is an answer to many prayers. This is an answer to fasting. This is God's grace to us and he is giving us something to steward, and it's been beautiful these last few months. But how do we protect it?

Is it possible for this to go south very quickly? Yes. But is it possible for it to sustain, and not just sustain but to thrive as we tread along and as we move ahead in this journey in whatever the Lord has called us to. Absolutely. And what we'll see here in these handful of verses of chapter seven are principles that we can draw from that can be applied to the church because all scripture is breathed out by God and is for our benefit.

And so I want us to begin here reading the first four verses of Nehemiah chapter seven, and then zoom in to see what we can learn for ourselves as a church to know how to preserve this great work that God has given to us, this community, this family, this ministry. Let's read together in verse one of Nehemiah seven, Now, when the wall had been built and I had set up the doors and the gatekeepers, the singers, and the Levites had been appointed, I gave my brother Hananiah and Hananiah the governor of the castle charge over Jerusalem, for he was a more faithful and God fearing man than many. And I said to them, 'Let not the gates of Jerusalem be open until the sun is hot, and while they are still standing guard, let them shut and bar the doors. Appoint guards from among the inhabitants of Jerusalem, some at their guard posts and some in front of their own homes. The city was wide and large, but the people within it were few, and no houses had been rebuilt.

This is God's word. Let's pray. Lord, bless the reading and the explaining and the applying of your word to our hearts. Help us see Christ clearly. Help us see his wisdom, his heart, his love.

And as we see it, may our hearts enlarge so that we could run-in the way of your commandments. We pray that you would shoot down all distractions, anything that would snatch away the seed of the truth from our hearts. Instead, Lord, may the soils of our hearts be prepared to receive all that you have to say, be glorified in it, and may we know greater good in it at the same time, Lord. We ask these things in the precious name of our Savior, your Son, the soon coming King Jesus. Amen and amen.

I'm not sure if you noticed, but there's a repeated action being expressed here in the verses that we looked at, and it is that of appointing. Nehemiah appointed, Nehemiah gave charge. Nehemiah even called for others to appoint all within the first three verses. So we see here that this man is setting into place necessary practices to preserve the vitality of Jerusalem. At the same time, to protect her protect God's honor which was at stake here, and to also position the people of God for greater testimonies ahead.

This was a man who was being very strategic and careful of who would go where and what they would be doing, and because he is doing this for the people of God, we have to also understand that the Spirit of God would speak to us through it because the conditions that he sets here are also conditions that are universal concerning us, the church. There are things here that reflect the practices that the church must also apply and employ, and in doing so, we can know a security in God's favor for us. And I think there are at least six, six conditions highlighted here, and the first three of them appear in verse one. What is it that we must do to protect what God has done through us? What He has built and what He is building?

Well, the first thing that we notice here in verse one is the importance of gatekeepers. Look at it again. Now when the wall had been built and I had set up the doors and the gatekeepers, the singers and the Levites had been appointed. Highlight that, the gatekeepers. Now the gatekeepers throughout the Old Testament were generally assigned to the precincts of the temple.

They were raised up as a designated group tasked to screen who and what would enter into the house of God, and who and what would exit the house of God, assuring that whatever transpires, whatever is transported, whatever enters and exits would be in alignment with God's will, and the sanctity of this dwelling place would remain. And so these gatekeepers here can be found in a more detailed account and a more specific set of the responsibilities in first Chronicles chapter nine, and you don't have to turn there because what we find here in Nehemiah's day is something unique. Their responsibilities as the gatekeepers now extend beyond the temple, beyond the tabernacle to the city walls. There's an enlarging here happening with the gatekeepers. They're actually going to the borders of the city, and this is because Nehemiah wants to take extra precautions to ensure the safety of God's people.

Gatekeepers, they symbolize something for us as believers in Jesus Christ who take the church of Christ seriously. Gatekeepers show us the necessity of being a discerning people, especially those who are leaders. It's a representation to remain vigilant of who and what would enter into the fellowship of God's people, and who and what would leave and walk out of the community of faith. And it would be tempting to say that this kind of responsibility is reserved for those who are overseers, and though that is true in many ways, it's a call for the people of God as a whole to possess discretion, and to walk in the light, and to be observant, and to be listening. Because not everybody who enters a fellowship has good or holy intentions.

Now, we have to be careful here because this can easily become a mindset that is exclusive in a negative way, unwelcoming, or even overly suspicious, where people who walk in don't sense the love of Christ. That is not what this is a call for. Remember the gatekeepers if you