Washed in the Word

We'd love to hear from you. Text us.Corporate trainer Brian Tracy argues: “Leaders think & talk about solutions. Followers think & talk about problems.” Business Guru Peter Drucker observed that: “Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right thing.” Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said “A genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus but a molder of consensus.”  Our world is sorely lacking good leaders & godly leaders are increasingly chimerical in our culture.  So, for several weeks we have been mining the book of Nehemiah attempting to extract leadership lessons from Nehemiah’s notebook.  This is our fifth & final week together in this endeavor.  So far, we have gleaned 13 leadership lessons, today we shall unveil the final 3.  So please grab your Bible, a pen, & print out the free downloadable sermon outline & accompanying study guide at www.washedintheword.life & let's get Washed in the Word!Free Sermon Outlines & Study Guides for Old Testament books are available at:  https://washedintheword.life/ot-study-guides Free Sermon Outlines & Study Guides for New Testament books are available at: https://washedintheword.life/nt-study-guides

We'd love to hear from you. Text us.Howard Hendricks of Dallas Theological Seminary used to say: A leader is a person with a magnet in his heart & a compass in his head.  Joel Barker argues: “A leader is a person you will follow to a place you would not go by yourself."  Colin Powell asserts “Great leaders are almost always great simplifiers, who can cut through argument, debate, & doubt to offer a solution everybody can understand.”  But perhaps Napoleon said it best “A leader is a dealer in Hope.” Today we are speaking of leadership.  We are on our fourth session taking leadership lessons from Nehemiah’s notebook.  So far we have discovered ten practical biblical principles on leadership.  Today we continue that task adding three more from Nehemiah 7. The ancient orator Publius Syrus (Cyrus) was correct: “Anyone can hold the helm when the sea is calm.” But many times, the sea is not calm.  The enemy loves to send squalls & storms so we need leaders who bring us safely to harbor while ferrying the gospel from point to point.  So please grab your Bible, a pen, & print out the free downloadable sermon outline & accompanying study guide at www.washedintheword.life & let's get Washed in the Word!Free Sermon Outlines & Study Guides for Old Testament books are available at:  https://washedintheword.life/ot-study-guides Free Sermon Outlines & Study Guides for New Testament books are available at: https://washedintheword.life/nt-study-guides

We'd love to hear from you. Text us.Leadership guru John Maxwell contends "A leader is one who knows the way, goes the way, & shows the way."  Henry Kissinger argued: "The task of the leader is to get their people from where they are to where they have not been." Ronald Reagan said: "The greatest leader is not necessarily the one who does the greatest things. He is the one that gets the people to do the greatest things." All of those statements apply to the man we are studying today.  Nehemiah was one of Scripture’s great leaders.  We are investing several sessions learning leadership lessons from Nehemiah’s notebook.  Grab your Bible, a pen, & print out the free downloadable sermon outline & accompanying study guide at www.washedintheword.life & let's get Washed in the Word!Free Sermon Outlines & Study Guides for Old Testament books are available at:  https://washedintheword.life/ot-study-guides Free Sermon Outlines & Study Guides for New Testament books are available at: https://washedintheword.life/nt-study-guides

We'd love to hear from you. Text us.Did you know that Nehemiah might be one of the shortest people in all the Bible?  After all he was known as knee-high-miah. Now, knee-high-miah isn’t the shortest man in Scripture for there is also Bildad the Shoe-height, right?The award for the shortest fellow in Scripture probably goes to “the guard who slept on his watch.”  That guy must have been pretty diminutive indeed. Nehemiah’s physical stature is subject to conjecture, but his status as a leader is not.  Nehemiah is one of Scripture’s great leaders.  God used Nehemiah to achieve in 52 days what 50,000 Israelites could not achieve in 95 years. So, it is no surprise that we can glean many leadership lessons from Nehemiah’s notebook.  Grab your Bible, a pen, & print out the free downloadable sermon outline & accompanying study guide at www.washedintheword.life & let's get Washed in the Word!Free Sermon Outlines & Study Guides for Old Testament books are available at:  https://washedintheword.life/ot-study-guides Free Sermon Outlines & Study Guides for New Testament books are available at: https://washedintheword.life/nt-study-guides

We'd love to hear from you. Text us.Our society is clamoring for good leaders.  So is God’s church.  So for the next several sessions we will be in Nehemiah 6 & 7, as there is perhaps no other book in all the Bible so chock full of practical biblical wisdom on leadership. Nehemiah was one of the Bible’s great leaders who successfully undertook one of God’s great projects & he completed it in record time.  Ten teachings ago we started our series in Nehemiah with a talk entitled Leadership Lessons From Nehemiah’s Notebook.  Six chapters later we return to Nehemiah’s Notebook to peek into page two to learn sixteen additional biblical leadership lessons.Grab your Bible, a pen, & print out the free downloadable sermon outline & accompanying study guide at www.washedintheword.life & let's get Washed in the Word!Free Sermon Outlines & Study Guides for Old Testament books are available at:  https://washedintheword.life/ot-study-guides Free Sermon Outlines & Study Guides for New Testament books are available at: https://washedintheword.life/nt-study-guides

We'd love to hear from you. Text us.In our previous 5 chapters Satan has thrown everything but the kitchen sink at Nehemiah to try to stop God’s people from accomplishing God’s work.  The walls were now up, & all that is left is to set the ten great gates.  Yet, even just inches from the finish line we come to chapter 6 & we see that Satan the tenacious continues with his hellacious, pernicious business.  In chapter 6 we are introduced to three new ways in Nehemiah’s day that Satan sent attacks meant to distract.  Now, to be forewarned is to be forearmed.  God gave us Nehemiah 6 not only because it is what historically happened, but because we are called to learn from it.  Romans 15:4 declares: "whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, that through endurance & through the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope." 1 Corinthians 10:11 declares: "these things happened to them as an example…they were written down for our instruction....(for) No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man." Therefore, it is crucial that we dissect these three attacks meant to distract & how the people of God ought to react.  Grab your Bible, a pen, & print out the free downloadable sermon outline & accompanying study guide at www.washedintheword.life & let's get Washed in the Word!Free Sermon Outlines & Study Guides for Old Testament books are available at: https://washedintheword.life/ot-study-guides Free Sermon Outlines & Study Guides for New Testament books are available at: https://washedintheword.life/nt-study-guides

We'd love to hear from you. Text us.Leaders matter.  Weak leaders leave weak legacies.  Strong leaders often achieve that which others fail to even conceive.  If leaders matter, a leader’s character matters more.  Hitler was a leader, but his twisted mind led to twisted goals & ghastly outcomes.  The truth is we need both character & competence in those who lead us.  Sadly, some folks have neither character nor competence.  But praise God, Nehemiah was a man who had both in spades. Warren Wiersbe notes that: “the building of the wall did not create these problems; it revealed them. Often when a church enters into a significant project, all sorts of problems start to surface that people didn’t even know were there.” These God’s sized projects test: our faith, our patience, & our priorities.   Inevitably, these stretching scenarios bring out the best in some people, but it can reveal the worst in others.  Which is exactly what we see in Nehemiah 5.  Now, once we got a handle on the depth of the problem we spent last time probing the depth of the solution. We end our time in Nehemiah 5 together today considering the depth of the leader.  Grab your Bible, a pen, & print out the free downloadable sermon outline & accompanying study guide at www.washedintheword.life & let's get Washed in the Word!Free Sermon Outlines & Study Guides for Old Testament books are available at: https://washedintheword.life/ot-study-guides Free Sermon Outlines & Study Guides for New Testament books are available at: https://washedintheword.life/nt-study-guides

We'd love to hear from you. Text us.Some people just seem to know how to solve problems.  Nehemiah was one of those people.  God used this man to achieve in 52 days what 50,000 Israelites had left undone for 90 years.  Nehemiah rebuilt the walls of Jerusalem.  Along the way Satan threw everything but the kitchen sink at him.  Satan raised up a formidable trio of local officials to constantly distract, detract, & attack.  They continually clamored for endless fruitless meetings & they crafted all kinds of half-truths & outright lies about Nehemiah.Yet, Nehemiah was not deterred, instead he galvanized God’s people to shoulder the boulders turning rubble in to a reliable obstacle able to throttle any army their rivals could marshal.  Just as Nehemiah nears completion of this grand task, when God’s people were weary from their exertion, Satan switches tactics.  Instead of working from the outside in, Satan began working from the inside out.  Satan took the opportunity to try to destroy the community’s unity.  When the number of mouths grew but the crops didn’t.  When loans were due, but all the assets were already leveraged.  When taxes were unsustainably onerous, those who were in a position to assist instead of responding in love with charity, sadly used this tragedy as an opportunity to ruthlessly exploit their neediest brothers & sisters.They forgot Isaiah 5:8 which said: Woe to those who join house to house, who add field to field, until there is no more room. They embodied 1 Timothy’s the love of money is a root of all kinds of evils. Having surveyed the depth of the problem last time, let us endeavor to discover the depth of the solution in our time today.  Grab your Bible, a pen, & print out the free downloadable sermon outline & accompanying study guide at www.washedintheword.life & let's get Washed in the Word!Free Sermon Outlines & Study Guides for Old Testament books are available at: https://washedintheword.life/ot-study-guides Free Sermon Outlines & Study Guides for New Testament books are available at: https://washedintheword.life/nt-study-guides

We'd love to hear from you. Text us.There are basically three kinds of people in the world, those who make things happen, those who watch things happen & those who wonder what happened?  Over 100 years ago, Henry Spence-Jones made the observation that leaders “have no easy task. No sooner have they provided a remedy for one evil than another presents itself.”  So, we see in Nehemiah 5.  Nehemiah had the herculean task of rebuilding walls that lay in ruins while powerful enemies encircled employing enumerable dirty tricks to try disrupt God’s work.  Going back to the first return under Zerubbabel, we have grown accustomed to reading of the difficulties put in the way of the returned exiles by those opposed to the work of God, but now the threat comes from within.  In many ways this is a far more dangerous menace because it strikes at one of God’s people’s most important assets: our unity.  Morale low from exhaustion & spirits beat down from oppression by the relentless opposition had taken its toll on God’s people, yet nothing is as morale sapping as taking blows from one’s own. What we can stomach from our unsaved neighbor, is hard to accept coming from our brothers & sisters.  Which is why Satan insidiously & tenaciously tries to fracture our unity.  He does this by tempting us to think more highly of ourselves than we ought.  To look out primarily for our own interests instead of those of others.  In the midst of this sad story, there is a silver lining.  It is that the Bible records the truth, even the harsh truth of our sometimes hard hearts.  It soberly & truthfully reminds us that even as we can be working towards God’s goals we also can be working against one another.  In Nehemiah 5 we see deep problems among God’s people.  Problems of selfishness about to cause the work of God to cease.  What Satan could not accomplish by attacking from the outside in, he was about to achieve by attacking from the inside out. We are going to invest three sessions together in Nehemiah 5.  This week we will endeavor to uncover the depth of the problem, next week the depth of the solution & we will end on week three by discovering the depth of the leader.  Grab your Bible, a pen, & print out the free downloadable sermon outline & accompanying study guide at www.washedintheword.life & let's get Washed in the Word!Free Sermon Outlines & Study Guides for Old Testament books are available at: https://washedintheword.life/ot-study-guides Free Sermon Outlines & Study Guides for New Testament books are available at: https://washedintheword.life/nt-study-guides

We'd love to hear from you. Text us.In Matthew 25 Jesus tells a parable about kingdom responsibilities & kingdom rewards.  In this parable Jesus invites us to partner with him.  The Master entrusts kingdom assets into our hands as stewards & He rewards those who use them for the Master’s glory.Some are given much & to whom much is given much is required.  Some are given less, but they too, are to be found faithful.Sadly, some squander what was entrusted & when the Master returns that wicked servant receives righteous recompense for His dereliction of duty.Now the Bible is clear that we do not earn salvation.  Salvation is a gift.  It is secured by the work of Christ.  Our salvation can only be received.  Yet, Jesus is also clear that those who receive this gift, are rewarded based on our faithfulness arising from our faith.Thus, we are saved through faith in Jesus’ work, & we are rewarded for our works done in faithfulness to Jesus.One day our works will be assessed by the Master.  That will either be a time of great reward or great regret.  Jesus is clear in Revelation 22:12:“Behold, I am coming soon, bringing my recompense with me, to repay each one for what he has done.  What is true for us individually is also true for us collectively.  God has called us together as His local body of believers for such a time as this to build the kingdom of God in this generation in this location.In light of these realities it raises the question “What grade will we get on our kingdom building project?”  Today we shall explore six ways to get an "A."  Grab your Bible, a pen, & print out the free downloadable sermon outline & accompanying study guide at www.washedintheword.life & let's get Washed in the Word!Free Sermon Outlines & Study Guides for Old Testament books are available at: https://washedintheword.life/ot-study-guides Free Sermon Outlines & Study Guides for New Testament books are available at: https://washedintheword.life/nt-study-guides