3 Reason the World Needs the Word of God:

Because it encourages obedience (8: 13-18)
Because it encourages confession of sin (9: 1-3)
Because it brings about realisation of inability (9: 4-5)

And turn with me to the book of Nehemiah as we continue on our series of the book of Nehemiah. We will be looking from Chapter 8 from verse 13, all the way to Chapter 9 Verse 5A. In other words, the beginning…. the beginning half of verse 5. So, Nehemiah, chapter 8. from verse 13. to Chapter 9, verse 5A. That’s the beginning of… of that.
I’ve titled this sermon The World Needs the Word of God. It was just so timely that it turned out to be this title of this message as we continue to do the to do the outreach. Now, a lot of Christians complain about false gospel, and rightly so. They complain that every time you turn on your TV. It’s just false Christianity being preached all over the place. You talk about TBN, Daystar. Whatever it is that’s on TV. It’s there’s, there’s a droplet, maybe one… one was there of someone preaching the… the true gospel, but mostly just false Christianity. I remember when I started watching this thing, I fell for a preacher… false preacher called Creflo Dollar. I truly fell for him. I thought he was brilliant. Because these things can catch you! And eventually realized in time that he was not actually who he claims to be, and they don’t call him Crefflo Dollar for nothing! So, it’s… it’s all that the Christians complain about this. And… and the thing is, they’re doing so well. They’re sprayed in this false gospel so well. But true Christians complain, but they don’t spread the gospel! True Christians complain, but they don’t go out and share the gospel. Where are the 2 Christians? And The thing is, what concerns me. Is this false gospel is really doing its work, isn’t it? I mean, people are being converted into. this false gospel! It’s reaching out every corner of the world. You see it even in movies. Movies are created around this false gospel, so they’ve been able to entrench themselves in movies, in stories and dramas. Everywhere! You see on TV when the government has state funerals, it’s just false Christianity been preached there. They have managed to embed themselves in all of these things. The question that I always ask myself, or that my wife normally says to me, she says: “Well, you complaining! You’re sitting here! Why aren’t you out there?” Preaching the what you believe is to be the true gospel. And that is just… a fact! What we see knocking on our doors, every day on Sunday, is not true Christianity. Where is Christianity – true Christianity? Why are we not knocking on doors? People need an alternative to what they are hearing. We cannot continue to complain about false Christianity if we who believe we have true Christianity. I’m not spreading the gospel. The only people seem who are obeying the Great Commission go out and make disciples, seems to be false Christians. True Christians seem not comfortable by not obeying that command. That is why, when you complain as Christians, that the world is going upside down, that immorality is rampant, corruption is rampant, and all of these things are rampant. The question is what have you done about it? You have the most powerful weapon. But you’re not using it! So today I’m going to give you 3 Reasons Why the World Needs the Word of God. Without the Word of God, this world is going the same direction. Nothing’s gonna change. Corruption is gonna increase. Immorality is gonna increase. People are gonna think they are women when they are men. So, babies are going to be killed. Men and women are going to be picked against each other – everyday!
Because true Christianity does not take the word out there. So hopefully today, through this message, through what Nehemiah did and the results that Nehemiah got. Hopefully this will encourage each and every one of us, to realize how desperately the world needs the Word of God. And when I mean the world, I mean humanity, I mean every single human being. I’m looking at Ewoud for smiling there because we were discussing how John uses the world. In his book the world here simply means every single human being. Now just a quick background for Nehemiah, and I’m really just going to drive through it. Jerusalem was destroyed in 587 BC by Nebuchadnezzar. This is after God has warned and warned and sent prophets after prophets to Israel to say please repent, come back, come back, come back and they just kept killing the prophets, ignoring the prophets and eventually God said, Dis genoeg! Nou kry julle pak! And he sent… he sent Nebuchadnezzar, Nebuchadnezzar came, and he destroyed them in 587 BC. He was the King of Babylon. The Book of Ezra and Nehemiah together covers a little over 100 years from 538 BC to 430 BC. Now you think I’m counting upside down? No, in those years, the years were counting down. They count down all the way to 0 and then started again. The story of Ezra Nehemiah comes from the time of when Cyrus the Great, the founder of the Patient Empire, sent the Exiles home to rebuild their temple until when Hamaya exercises his or contempt of his in Jerusalem. So, at some point in history, Persia over through Babylon and Persia became the new boss – during that time. And it is through, During the patient time and the king was Cyprus. that the Judah was now released back into their own place, not out of slavery, but just back home to where they were first taken by Nebuchadnezzar. Now the story of Ezra and Nehemiah and Ezra Nehemiah sent us around three main personalities, and they are Zerubbabel who went to build the temple. So they went in stages. The first one was Rubel. He went to build the temple. The second one was Ezra. After the temple was built. Ezra, when to enforce the law of Moses. And then where we are now, is Nehemiah, who went to rebuild the wall. We know that the wall has now been rebuilt. We’ve gone through that. If you want to listen to those messages, just go back to our YouTube channel and you’ll be able to… to see those. The world has been built. Everything is sorted out. The temple is sorted out. The worship team is sorted out. Everything is now sorted out. We saw in how in chapter 8: 1-12 how Ezra began to open the word of God, at the request of the people. He read it. He gave an explanation to all those who were listening, giving them meaning of what was being read, such that they could understand. We saw how this went for six hours and you remember I said maybe we could emulate some of those. We also saw that it was that the people that requested the word of God to be read to them, it was not Ezra that initiated it, but it was the people that initiated We also saw how attentive the people were to the preaching of the word of God. We also saw how much respect they had for the will of God; in that they stood up when it was read. We saw that the end result of this preaching of the word of God was that the people were convicted of sin. We saw how they began to mourn and weep, as a result. The Word had pierced their hearts and exposed their sin. Hebrews 4: 12, reads as follows: For the Word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword. And piercing far as the division of the soul and spirit of both joints and marrow and able to judge the thoughts and intention of the hearts. Now, not only did the Word bring conviction of sin in their hearts, but it’s also humbled them, and they bowed and worshipped Him.