Sunday 3 August 2025

Nollamara Church Of Christ Sermons. Raw transcript of meeting:

Date Of Sermon: 3^rd August 2025

Speaker: Jamie Boland

Sermon Title: Holy discontent: Earthly license for heavenly interference

Scripture Reading: Nehemiah 1:1-4

 It is taken from Nehemiah chapter one and we are ringing reading verses one to four

the words of Nehemiah, son of her. In the month of kids live in the 20th year while I was in the citadel of suse, Hannah and I, one of my brothers came from Judah with some other men, and I questioned them about the Jewish remnant that had survived the exile and also about Jerusalem. They said to me.

Those who survived the exile and are back in the province are in great trouble and disgrace. The wall of Jerusalem is broken down and its gates have been burned with fire. When I heard these things, I sat down and wept. For some days I mourned and fasted and prayed before the God of heaven.

Thank you, Linda. So, as I said earlier, we're continuing our look at the Lord's Prayer. Our sermon series is planting seeds. Do you remember the vision statement I shared a few weeks back? As we bring before God, the future of this church, we wanna plant seeds for a tree in whose shade we might never bask.

We are thinking about praying into being the future life of Nola Mara Church and what we did a few weeks back, we started by looking broadly at discipleship. Okay? And by discipleship we mean what does it, what does it mean to follow Jesus? And do you remember what we said? What's the goal of discipleship?

Do you remember? Is it information? It's imitation. The goal of discipleship is imitation. We want to do as Jesus did, and when you read the gospels, you are gonna see that Jesus was a man of prayer. Prayer was the very thing that sustained his life and ministry. That was the heartbeat of all Jesus did. And the disciples, they're following Jesus.

They're following him very closely, and they see that Jesus is a man of prayer. And so they come before him. And what do they say? They say, Lord, teach us. To pray. In my previous sermon, we looked at the first line of the Lord's Prayer, our Father in heaven. Hello, be thy name. What a wonderful line. Our father in heaven.

Hello. Be thy name. And what did we say? We say God is both father and king. God is both father and king. And the wonderful thought is for us, we don't come before God as beggars, you know, groveling for approval. We come as beloved children. That is who we are. We've been adopted into God's family. We come as children who are beloved by him, but we need to remember, he's not just our heavenly father.

He's also the most high God, and as his children, we want to be good. We want to hella His name. We want to do that by honoring him and surrendering our lives to him. And from that, from that posture of acceptance and submission, we move to petition. We wanna, we wanna ask, we wanna plead with God to work in our lives.

Now, the title of my message today, you switch to me. Here we go. Holy discontent. Earthly license for heavenly interference. Let's, let's commit this time to the Lord.

Father, we thank you for this time to gather as your people. Holy Spirit, we thank you for your presence here with us. We ask and pray that you would bless God's word to us in Jesus' precious name. Amen. Now there's a fascinating story that comes out of Romania. In the 1980s, a Hungarian passed by the name of L.

He crossed the border and he went, he went into Romania from Hungary, and he took charge of a small, uh, countryside church. Now this countryside church, very small, it's filled with ethnic Hungarians, who at the time in Romania were a persecuted minority. Now the pastor he replaced had openly supported the communist regime of Nikola Cheki.

Could you imagine going to church? And your pastor is openly supporting the communist regime, and that's the situation he found ish went there. And he wasn't, he wasn't having a bar of this. He, he did not support the communist regime. Now, for him, his understanding of the Christian faith and the coming of God's kingdom, it meant that he couldn't just stand by and watch the various injustices he saw.

And so what Turkish began to do is he began to speak out. He spoke out against the heavy, heavy surveillance carried out by the secret police. He spoke out about the government, you know, imposed food shortages about the, you know, destruction and relocation of entire villages. And he also spoke out quite vociferously about the oppression of minorities and religious groups.

Now, needless to say, this caught people's attention. A small church of 40 people suddenly grew to over 5,000. Okay. These are the things that people were wanting to hear. Esh also caught the attention of the communist government. Special agents repeatedly threatened him with violence, but he continued to preach.

He was told, if you continue to preach the name of Jesus and speak against what the regime is doing, you are gonna face, you know, threats of violence, keeps preaching. Eventually one night police were sent to arrest him. They come in the middle of the night, they're there to grab him. Word spread and sued hundreds of Christians from different denominations poured out of their homes.

And what they did is they stood as a barricade. They, they were there to surround and protect his house, okay? They were this, you know, makeshift wall of protection. And what they did is they stood there day and night. They were praying, they were singing hymns, and they were holding candles. A few days later, police broke through the wall of protest as to seize talkish, but rather than dispersing and heading home, what the protestors did, they marched all the way to the police station.

They just followed the police. As they marched, the crowds grew. People flocked from the surrounding areas, and eventually the numbers swelled. This is interesting to an estimated 200,000 people that was almost that entire countryside region. Now, to quell the protests, the government said, we'll send in the military.

And at one point the military was ordered to open fire. Okay? At least 100 people died. Now that's more people than are sitting here today. 100 people died, men, women, and children. Now, despite this, those protesting held their ground. Now, understandably, they were angry and they were ready to revolt. Then a pastor stood in front of the crowd and he addressed them.

He began with three simple words. He said, let us pray. And in unison, this giant mass of ordinary people. And we're talking here about farmers, teachers, students, housewives, they're ordinary people. They all fell as one to their knees and recited the Lord's Prayer. Our father in heaven, hello, be your name.

Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. They stood before the military of this land and they pray this prayer. Within days, the protest spread from this little countryside town all the way to the capital Bookes. And on December 22nd, 1989, exactly one week after the arrest of lashes, the communist regime that had ruled Romania with an iron fist for over 20 years had fallen.

Its remarkable. Historians agree. The spark that lit the fuse was the preaching of this man who refused to accept the status quo. A man who was prepared to say that God's will was not reflected in the way things are. This was a man who was fueled by the fire of holy discontent. Now, do you know what I'm, do you know what I mean when I say holy discontent?

Holy discontent is that deep unrest we feel when we see that gap between God's perfect will and our present reality. Did you get that? We see this gap between the way things are and the way things God wants them to be, and it creates within us this deep unrest that's holy discontent. Now, our reading today was from Nehemiah.

Now we all know the story well, yeah. It's set. During the time of exile, God's people, they've been enslaved by the Babylonians. The city of Jerusalem and God's temple have been destroyed. The Babylonians are then conquered by Persia and King sis Cyrus. He comes along, he issues a decree that allows the Jewish people to return home.

It's, it's, it's time to repopulate the land. It's time to rebuild. Now, the story of Nehemiah takes place almost 100 years later. And as we heard, a report comes from some men, they've returned from Judah. Now the natural question for Nehemiah, he's not there. He doesn't, he's not on the internet scrolling to see what's happened.

He needs to hear this report, and the natural question is to inquire about the way things are going. You see, the temple's been long rebuilt. It's been rededicated, but not everything's going well. Listen again to the report that comes to Meyer. The men say those who survive the exile are back in the province and are in great trouble and disgrace.

They're back in the land. The temple's been rebuilt. It's been rededicated, but not everything's well. The people that are there, they're in great trouble and disgrace. God doesn't have contempt and shame for his people, but here they are in disgrace. The wall of Jerusalem is broken down and its gates have been burned with fire.

And Nehemiah says, when I heard these things, I sat down and wept. Can you see the response here? Nehemiah is beside himself. He's distraught. His heart is broken over the state of Jerusalem, and the thing is for him, what can he do about it? What can he do from where he is? He's not there in the land, he's in exile.

He's a servant to the king of Persia, and Jerusalem is almost 1500 kilometers away. The rest of verse four says, for some days, I mourned and fasted and prayed before the God of heaven. Nehemiah is not just servant to the King of Persia. He's a servant to the king of the universe. Amen. Amen. And when he hears about the state of Jerusalem, his heart is broken, not just emotionally but spiritually.

This is the city that carries God's name and God's name is being dishonored, and his people are living in shame and disgrace. And what we see is that Nehemiah is not content with the way things are, and this holy discontent that he feels within him, this restlessness strives him to prayer and fasting.

And what we're gonna see is that God opens doors. Nehemiah is released by the king. He's able to go the walls rebuilt and Jerusalem, it's restored to its form of dignity. The people can rejoice. But it begins here with holy discontent, a godly burden that leads to change aligned with God's will. Now, this is something we see throughout the Bible.

Listen to these words from Matthew chapter nine. When Jesus saw the crowds, he had compassion on them because they were harassed and helpless like sheep without a shepherd. Then he said to his disciples, the harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field.

Jesus is there. He can see that God's people are harassed and helpless like sheep without a shepherd. He sees their deep spiritual need and he stirred with compassion. Do you understand? God has so much more for his people than than just being lost and helpless. God has so much more for those who call on his name than being lost and harassed and helpless.

And Jesus sees this gap between what is and what should be, and it creates a holy discontent that moves him to action. And what's the action He tells his disciples, pray. Pray that the Lord of the harvest will send out workers. You know, sometimes we can feel a deep ache when we see all the brokenness around us.

Yeah, we can look at this broken world around us and we can feel this deep ache. And not only can it hurt, it can also be overwhelming. Can I tell you, this is what it means to see the world as God sees it. If you hurt by looking at this lost and broken world, you are seeing the world the way God sees it.

And that AQ feel is meant to create in us a holy discontent that moves us to prayer and action. Now, imagine for a second, you're a, you're a talented musician, okay? You're a very talented musician. You go to the concert hall, there's a concert on, and as you're sitting there, you're listening to an orchestra that's out of tune.

How would that work for you? Yeah. Could you imagine? If you care deeply about music, you can't just sit there and enjoy it. Something within you would ache for the notes to resolve. That's how we should feel about this broken world. We should feel the tension and we should ache for God's vision for the world to unfold.

Nehemiah saw the broken walls of Jerusalem and he couldn't rest. Think of Moses. He grew up in privilege and luxury, and he saw the suffering of his people and he couldn't remain any longer in Pharaoh's palace. And Jesus the king, as he enters Jerusalem, what does he do? His heart is broken because God's people rejected the way that would bring them.

Peace. That's this. Holy discontent. Think of this opening example from from Romania. Some things may just be too big for us to change on our own. A change of regime is no small thing. Now, sometimes we may not be able to act, but we can always pray, amen. No matter how troubled the world is around us, there's one thing we can always do.

We can always pray. Amen. You may be familiar with this well-known phrase. Prayer moves the hand that moves the world. Is that something you believe? Prayer moves the hand that moves the world. Jesus taught his disciples to pray. Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Let's just pause for a moment and think about this.

If you ask some Christians what they want most, they probably say, you know, we long to escape earth for heaven. Lord, this world is a terrible place. Just get us out of here. You ever heard that? You know, beam us up, Scotty. Now the Bible does end with a prayer that says, come Lord Jesus, come. And Paul himself said, Marin, Arthur the Lord come.

Can I tell you, it is right to long for the future coming of God's kingdom. It is right to long for the day when Jesus will write every wrong wipe, wipe away every tear and destroy once and for all sins, sickness and death. And all of this is reflected in this line of the prayer that Jesus taught us to pray.

But what do we do while we wait? What do we do while we wait until that day? What does God want us to do? Does God just want us to look at the round of world, the world around us and in despair? You know, we can sit at home, we can watch the news, and we can complain. We can moan, we can fret, and you know, sometimes we can resign ourselves to the way things are.

That's what we can do. We can resign ourselves. This is just the way things are. Or we can see the gaps, the gaps between what is and what should be. The gap between God's perfect will and our present reality. That's what this line of the Lord's Prayer is all about. It's intercession fueled by a longing for heaven to invade earth that that Jesus would have us be a people.

So set on fire for God's name to be hallowed, that we're not willing to settle for the status quo, wholly discontent. Is a spirit driven restlessness that moves us to pray until the reality of heaven invades the brokenness of earth. That's what Jesus is calling us to in this line of the prayer. And so the question is, what's stopping us?

What's stopping us from seeking God and seeing heaven invade earth? I love this story. Let me lighten the mood a little. It's a fictional story. It has several different iterations, and you've probably heard it before, but let me read. A bar owner in a small Texas town applied for permission to extend his premises.

He wants to build a bigger pub, but he was opposed by members of a local church. The Christians there launched a vociferous campaign of protests, prayer releases, petitions, and even prayer meetings. Planning permission was granted, however, and building work. Julie began. The Christians felt bitterly disappointed until the week before the grand opening when a lightning bolt struck the bar and burned it to the ground.

The church, church folk were beside themselves with joy. Our prayers have been answered. Our cause has been vindicated, and so the Furies bar owner decided to sue the church on the grounds that it was ultimately responsible for the material demise of his livelihood. Suddenly, everyone changed their tune.

Those who have been trumpeting a miracle only days earlier now rose up as one to deny all culpability. The case made its way to court where a judge surveyed the brief. I don't know how I'm going to decide this. He side, we appear to have a pub owner who believes passionately in the power of prayer and a congregation that has lost its faith entirely.

Now, as I said, that's fictional. Maybe what's stopping us from seeking God to invade heaven. Or earth with heaven is that we've, we've been stuck with unbelief. We've just settled for the way things are. This is just the way the world is. This is the saddest quo. The sooner we accept it, the better we'll be.

This line of the press is, don't do that. Are you with me? Lord, I believe. Help my unbelief. Yeah. Are we a people who are willing to believe that God has so much more for his people? I like this quote from Walter Wink. He says, history belongs to the intercessors who believe the future into being by means of our intercessions.

We cast fire upon the earth and trumpet the future into being. Can I tell you? When we pray, your kingdom karma will be done on earth as it is in heaven. We are issuing both a plea and a protest. We are protesting to God that we don't like the way things are, and we are pleading with God to move. Are you with me?

Yes, we are pleading with him. God, move your hand, bring some glimpses of your promised future reign into the here and now. Can I tell you what the problem is for me? And perhaps it's a problem for you as well. My problem is this. I can find that all too often. My prayers are mostly about me and my little world.

My wants, my needs, things that I can pray for, things that I can see the answers to, and I find that I'm too easily satisfied when God comes through and deals with problems in my world. God answers my prayer for my little needs. He blesses me. I'm content, and then I get complacent until problems flare up again and disrupt peace in my little kingdom.

Is that anyone else's experience? Intercession requires that my center of gravity shift from my own personal needs to the needs of others. And can I tell you that's not something that comes naturally. I know that I'm not the only naturally self-centered person here. Okay? We can all confess. Praying for the needs of others is hard.

Praying for the needs of things so much bigger than ourselves is hard. What it takes is it takes faith and it takes discipline. And then it takes faith again. 'cause sometimes we're praying for things that seem so big, so out of control. We are thinking, are my prayers even making a difference? In fact, this very sentiment was expressed in our small group about two weeks ago.

I wonder how many times have you secretly questioned whether your little prayers make any difference in the face of all the overwhelming problems in this world? Lord, am I even making a difference? Why am I wasting my time? I should stay in bed. Pete Gregg, from the 24 7 prayer Movement says this, our whispered prayers can seem feeble, foolish, and futile against the sheer scale of life's troubles.

A butterfly confronting a cliff. Get a get a picture of that in your mind. A tiny little butterfly up against a cliff. That's what it can seem like when we're trying to pray for things that are so big and overwhelming in this world, and yet the Bible teaches us that our prayers are vastly powerful.

That's why in the Lord's Prayer, Jesus doesn't just teach us to pray personally for daily bread, my little world, my little needs, but also for regime change for the coming of God's kingdom on earth. I know. I think we all know it's easy to pray for daily bread because that's an immediate personal need that we feel.

Yeah, it's something personal, it's immediate. We can feel that, and that's easy to pray for, but it's so much harder praying for regime change for those things beyond our personal needs. What it takes to do that is a restlessness and discomfort that only comes from seeing the world the way God sees it.

And that's the reality that confronts us. We can be comfortable and ignore the way things are just so long as our little world's in order just so long as everything's in a nice little neat box for me in my own. Or we can develop a deep spirit given unrest and we can begin to pray for those things that break God's heart.

Listen to this deep burden of spirit given unrest by the apostle Paul. Something he carried. He says, I speak the truth in Christ. I'm not lying. My conscience confirms that through the Holy Spirit, I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart for I could wish that I myself were cursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my people.

Those of my own race, the people of Israel understand Paul suffered terribly at the hands of his fellow countrymen. Yeah. He was once the top dog and then he is rejected. He tells us five times they received from the Jews the 40 lashes, minus one. Get your mind around that. Don't, don't just gloss that, that is terrible, terrible torture that he's received at the hands of his fellow countrymen.

And if that's me, I'm wrestling with deep feelings of anger, resentment, and bitterness. I want revenge. That's what, that's why prayer is my prayer is God avenge me. God smite these guys. But Paul has such a burden for his people that he says, I'm willing to be separated from, from Christ and eternally cursed for their sake.

Can I tell you that's not natural? That sort of thing needs to be birthed by the Holy Spirit. Richard Fosters a guy who's written many books on prayers. He says this. If we truly love people, we will desire for them far more than it is within our power to give them, and this will lead us to prayer.

Intercession is our way of loving others. I think that's a very deep quote. If we truly love people, we will desire something for them that we, we ourselves can't meet that need. We can't give it to them. But prayer says we will pray for them because God can actually meet their needs. Now most of us here are probably familiar with the events of Dunkirk at the start of World War ii.

You're familiar movie came out a few years ago. The Germans had the Allied forces trapped. Okay. The German forces were there. City of Dunkirk with the sea behind them. They're hammed in nowhere to run. The German high command boasted with confidence that its troops were, and I quote, proceeding to annihilate the British Army.

And can I tell you far from being an idol Bo Post, both the military and political leadership of Britain conceded that their forces were sitting ducks. They knew imminent destruction was at hand. They publicly said, we expect the loss of over 300,000 lives. Now as Churchill made plans to publicly admit to a military disaster of unprecedented scale, king George, the six he called the people of Great Britain to a National Day of prayer.

And it's interesting, you can go online and see, you know, television footage of crowds who were queing to get into churches and cathedrals. Here's a, here's a still from a, a television, um, shot that I captured. Okay. They're, they're queuing to get into church. The entire nation united in seeking God, pleading God, please deliver our loved ones, God, do something, set them free.

They're interceding on their behalf. The following day, a flotilla of over 800, uh, vessels, mostly civilian. What they did is they crossed the English Channel in a desperate attempt to rescued Allied soldiers. Churchill's hope was that maybe they could send 10, uh, could, could save 10% of those men who were trapped somewhere around 30,000 men.

Now, here's the interesting part. For some explicable reason, Hitler ordered his ground forces to halt their attack, and for three days, German tanks and soldiers stood idle. They didn't move an inch. It was the decision that infuriated his generals. And to this day, military historians are baffled. They're completely confused by this clear tactical error.

That was miracle number one. The German plan was to send in the air force, the luva to pick off the men stranded on the beach. They're, they're just stuck. They can't go anywhere. They're hemmed in. We're just gonna fly by. We're just gonna drop bombs. That'll take care of the problem. This was thwarted when a freak storm hit the region in Belgium, flounders where the planes were stationed.

Okay? Only the storm was so bad, so unexpected only a few few planes were able to take off, and in the end, the Germans had to Hal aerial attacks. And what this did is it allowed the Amad of civilian vessels to get from England to Dunkirk, largely unscathed. That was miracle number two. Miracle number three.

About a hundred kilometers from this German air base in Belgium. The weather was completely different. British generals described the sea at Dunkirk as being like glass. Okay, that's what they said. Admiral Bertram Ramsey said A wind of any strength would've made beach evacuation impossible. Instead, what they encountered were conditions that were almost perfect.

The sea was like glass, and the sky above was covered in thick fog. It was like a screen of protection from the German Air Force. And understand most of these boats that we're rescuing these trap soldiers we're talking about boats that are used for sailing and fishing. Okay? These are not these, these are not vessels equipped for large time maritime rescue.

By the time the German army renewed its attack, over 338,000 men have been liberated 10 times. The expected number. In a famous speech to Parliament, Churchill spoke of a miracle of deliverance. I dunno if you can see this here. I read it. It says, the premier told parliament yesterday, a miracle of deliverance.

A week ago, he feared that 20 or 30,000 men might be Reem embarked instead. Over 335,000 men were saved. A second National Day of Prayer was called two weeks After the First, this time the nation, they united as one to thank God for the saving of lives, for confounding the enemy and for redirecting the entire course of the Second World War.

Okay? Please understand. Make no mistake if Hitler had not halted the attack, if he had pressed the destruction of Allied Forces would've been inevitable and the wall would've taken a much darker and more terrible path. And today we could well be speaking German or Japanese. Okay? You cannot understate what took place at Dunkirk.

Now, the funny thing is most of us are, are aware of the liberation, but we're not aware of this national day of prayer that, you know, precipitated it. This is truly miraculous, okay? Unless you believe all these events were coincidence. Anyone here coincidence or God answering prayer, God's word tells us.

If my people who are called by my name will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and I will forgive their sin and will hear their land heal their land. This is a promise that was given during the reign of King Solomon. What we see here is earthly license for heavenly interference.

Amen. God says, I want you to pray. I want you to pray. I want you to look to me. I want you to humble your hearts. I want you to confess your sin. I want you to turn to me and I will move. That's the promise. If we just humble our hearts, bend our knees, and yet many years later, God speaks through the prophet Ezekiel and says, I look for someone among them who would stand before me in the gap on behalf of the land.

So that I'd not have to destroy it, but I found no one. No one. Now, the situation of Ezekiel's Day was not much different to Romania in the 1980s. There was violence and corruption in the land, and God said just a few verses earlier, her officials within her are like wolves tearing their prey. They shed blood and kill people to make unjust gain.

Can you see things are not the way they should be, but there's no one to stand in the gap. There was no one of Ezekiel's time who was filled with this holy discontent, who's pleading to God, no one to pray. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. So the question is, what about us? Do we have a burden for those things that are beyond our personal needs?

Are we people who would stand in the gap? Yes. Do our hearts break for the things that break God's heart? That's the question

we're gonna close today by coming around the Lord's table. It's a time we have every week to remember Jesus. Jesus is the ultimate model of holy discontent. He saw that this world was not the place his father destined it to be, and he came. Jesus came and he felt the brokenness of this world, and he healed, taught, wept, and died to bring heaven to earth.

Amen. Amen. Jesus surrendered himself fully to the father's will, even when it meant suffering. The night he was betrayed the Garden of Gethsemane, he prayed, not my will be yours. Be done. He then gave his life so that God's kingdom could break into this world in a whole new way. Communion, this time, we gather around the table.

It's more than just a time of symbolic reflection. It is a time of declaration. When we eat the bread, drink the cup, we're saying yes to God's kingdom. We're saying, Lord, we want you to reign in our lives. We're also proclaiming the death of Christ until he comes again. When the kingdom will be seen in all its glorious fullness that day, we long for, that's what we're doing.

Every time we take communion, we proclaim his death until he comes. If I could ask those distributing the ambulance to come forward and serve as police, we'll hold the, the bread and the cup until everyone's been served, and then we'll partake together.

As I said earlier, there's some daily prayer points in the friendly messenger all centered around this theme of thy kingdom come, thy will be done. Can I please ask you not to just, uh, neglect that when you get home? Let's seek together to pray for these things to be done in our midst statement.