What I want to talk about as we enter into this Easter week is that one of the calls upon the Christian life is to get angry. A lot of times people say that Christians aren't supposed to get angry. Does God ever get angry? A lot of times in scripture we read about God's anger and as Christian followers of Jesus we need to get angry about the things that God gets angry about. A major consistent theme that's mentioned hundreds of times throughout the scripture is that God gets angry about injustice. As we begin Nehemiah 5, we'll see that it's all about anger, proactive anger about injustice. Here's a definition of injustice: any action that inflicts undeserved hurt or unfairness. Injustice occurs when people with power and influence act against, or fail to act on behalf of, people without power. Are we people with power and influence or without? One case was when God was angry with Moses and his resistance to go to Pharaoh and speak up on behalf of the Hebrew slaves. He was angry with Moses' failure to act on the behalf of the powerless. We read in the Bible that God is angered by the mistreatment and neglect of strangers, widows and orphans.

On the first day of Easter week, Jesus rode into Jerusalem and the people recognize him as King. They remember from scriptures, the only scriptures they had in the Old Testament, that God was coming as a Messiah who would establish the Kingdom of God on earth. Nowhere in the Old Testament was there the understanding that a Messiah would come and establish a Kingdom in heaven. But he would establish the Kingdom of heaven that was not of this earth on Planet Earth and Jesus was acknowledging himself the King of this new Kingdom of God.

In the gospel of Luke, the first act that Jesus committed when he went into Jerusalem on that first day of the week, Easter week, is that he went to the temple. And when he got to the temple, he was ticked - he was ticked big time. The Bible, in the book of Luke, said he began to drive out the moneychangers and he said, "My house will be a house of prayer; but you have made it a 'den of robbers.'" Here's what moneychangers did. Easter happens at Passover, so Jewish people were coming from all of the surrounding nations and they had different currencies. So, there were tables set up where people took advantage of people coming to worship and they would charge them money to exchange their money and they took advantage of them. Those with power and influence took advantage of those without power and influence. If you wanted to make an offering at the temple, and that's the only way you could come into the temple, you had to buy that offering which would be like a pigeon or a dove for poor folks. The moneychangers would tell people they had to buy that dove from them; not out in the street at a fair price. It's called ripping off the poor.
    
Are you ready to go in your Bibles? Someone said to me, "Mike, why are you always talking about the poor?" It just keeps coming up in the scripture as a reoccurring theme. Nehemiah 5, "Now the men and their wives raised a great outcry against their fellow Jews. Some were saying, 'We and our sons and daughters are numerous; in order for us to eat and stay alive, we must get grain.' Others were saying, 'We are mortgaging our fields, our vineyards and our homes to get grain during the famine.' Still others were saying, 'We have had to borrow money to pay the king's tax on our fields and vineyards. Although we are of the same flesh and blood as the rest of our people and though our children are a good as theirs, yet we have to subject our sons and daughters to slavery. Some of our daughters have already been enslaved, but we are powerless, because our fields and our vineyards belong to others.'" A big difference though, they did not have power or influence. Some of us have power and influence and some of us don't have power and influence. Remember how we talked a few weeks ago that there are 27 million slaves in the world today. "When I heard their outcry and their charges, I was very angry." Is anger ever appropriate? Yes there is a righteous anger. "I pondered them in my mind and then accused the nobles and officials. I told them, 'You are charging your own people interest!' So I called together a large meeting to deal with them and said: 'As far as possible, we have bought back our fellow Jews who were sold to the Gentiles. Now you are selling your own people, only for them to be sold back to us!' They kept quiet, because they could find nothing to say." Pray with me as we prepare to come to this communion table. Father God, we sometimes fail to recognize our own indifference and isolation from the needs of people all around us in sin. And we pray that You may open our eyes and that through You we may serve Your people better. It's in Jesus' name we pray. Amen.

When you look at the word of God and ask the question: what is a true measure of faithfulness, what is a true demonstration of faith; it's never one of having correct belief. The Bible talks about the great requirement in Micah 6:8, ". . . to act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God." One of the reoccurring themes again and again and again throughout scripture, hundreds of times, is this theme of justice. What blows me away is how in the church we get caught up in a few verses that are mentioned a few times. It's amazing how the church today in 2007 will argue about women in ministry. You can find it mentioned maybe twice in the Bible, yet that becomes a major, major issue. Or people get hung up about people who have gone through divorce having full rights and privileges in the church. I think divorce is mentioned about three times in scripture. Yet justice and God's concern for justice is mentioned hundreds of times and so often the church is silent about justice.

After his baptism, when Jesus came into his own hometown of Nazareth and stood up in the temple to read scripture, he read from the book of Isaiah. Remember, the Jewish people only had the Old Testament; and every Jewish male was trained in a school of scriptures of different rabbis. So when Jesus read from Isaiah 61, the people who heard him read would have been aware of all of the scripture surrounding it. For example in Isaiah 59:15, it says, "The Lord looked and was displeased that there was no justice." Remember the theme that ticks off God is that there is no justice. "He saw that there was no one, he was appalled there was no one to intervene." We go to Chapter 61 and Jesus picked up the book and read, "The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me, because the Lord has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners." You will know that the Kingdom of God and the Messiah of the kingdom will have come on earth because there will be justice brought to the poor. That's how you will know the presence of the Lord because the purpose of God, the government of God, will be carried out. What we will notice again and again and again throughout scripture is that it is the religious folks who don't get it. The problem is not those who are outside the church, the problem is with those of us who are inside the church. When Jesus talked about the lost and the blind, he was talking about religious leaders. They are blind. Nehemiah was talking to the nobles and the rulers of his own people. Jesus was struggling with the Pharisees and the Sadducees. The Pharisees were the religious right of Jesus' day and the Sadducees were the secular left. They were the ones who were blind and lost. They were living in the midst of the work of God, but because of the blessings they experienced, they were insolated to the needs of other people. They were blind to injustice.
    
Again you're saying, "Mike, when are you going to get off this Sudan thing? When are you going to quit talking about the poor?" It's not my fault that it came in Nehemiah 5 this week. It's just a reoccurring theme. Someone emailed me recently and said, "When are you going to talk about homosexuality?" That's about 27 more books of the Bible ahead of where we are now; and, we're going to read about injustice 2,078 times before we ever get to the topic of homosexuality.

One of the issues we see unfolding here is the issue of slavery. Again, I want to point out to you on this Easter week, where Jesus Christ came to establish the government of God on Planet Earth, that slavery is still a major issue. Twenty-seven million people are enslaved on Planet Earth. It has come into our own house. How many of you remember the Zambian Boys Choir that came here in the 1990s? It just came out in Christianity Today that the Zambian Boys Choir was being held in slavery when they sang three different times in this church. Some religious dude went to their village in Africa, recruited all of these kids, promised their parents that he would bring them to American, educate them, and that they would get paid. He would send money back to Africa and build villages. They were never paid. They were forced to sing as many as seven concerts a day and this idiot made a million dollars a year off those boys who sang in this church. We didn't realize it, but we participated in an evil act of slavery.  So it is still happening.

Here is the danger we see in this scripture: whether we're aware or not, we can become part of the problem when we exploit other people for the sake of our own personal gain. In this passage, they were exploiting their own sisters and brothers by charging unfair interest. We accept it as a common practice today. It says one percent, but it means one percent a month. The Bible says that it's ridiculous if anyone charges 12 percent interest. Whoa! I know a lot of you in this room are paying a whole lot more than 12 percent interest. What we have to become aware of as followers of Jesus is how we can exploit other people for our own benefit even when we purchase something like a Tommy Hilfiger shirt. What we have to do is become informed consumers because I might buy something that I want to wear and it was made through the hands of slave labor. The great requirement doesn't say to believe in justice, the Lord requires you to do justice and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God. This is the commissioned responsibility. Every Jewish male sitting in this synagogue would have known all of these scriptures. They learned to recite and memorize books of scripture. They would have realized that Jesus had left off the next scripture. They will be the citizens of the kingdom of God that will be established by this Messiah. "They will rebuild the ancient ruins and restore the places long devastated; they will renew the ruined cities that have been devastated for generations." The responsibilities for those that have submitted themselves to the governor of this Kingdom of Jesus Christ will be to rebuild, restore and renew.

I know a whole lot of church people who are so heavenly minded they are no earthly good. They have what I call privatized faith. They have this theology of escape where they talk about being saved and are sitting around waiting for God to take them to heaven. Jesus didn't die and resurrect from the grave to take people to heaven, but to recolonize the earth with heavenly people. Remember that far-out fruitcake cult leader a few years ago? They all drank some kind of poison and some space ship was going to come to take them away to heaven. That's not the purpose. God's purpose is to recolonize the planet with heavenly people whose priority will be to restore the broken, the poor, the oppressed and the powerless.

The Christian life is a hard life. It has never been called easy. I finally figured that out in year 20 of our marriage when I thought it was too hard, we probably need to get divorced, I need to find happiness. It's not about happiness. It's about living out the will of God. It's demonstrating the purpose of heaven so that when people look at our marriage relationship, they see the way God intended it; not how sin had broken it. When John the Baptist was committed to serving God's purpose and he was a herald that went before the Lord Jesus, he was arrested by Herod. When you get into those hard situations and there are dark seasons of the faith, sometimes you have to go through months and months of numbness by faith until you see the light of the resurrection dawn in your life again. John was sitting around in prison and began to doubt. He sent his disciples to Jesus to ask Jesus if he was really the Messiah or should he keep looking for someone else. Jesus told them to go back and report to John what they heard and saw. The blind received their sight, the lame walked, those who have leprosy are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised and the good news is proclaimed to the poor. To be a part of this community, this community of restoration, is to really understand that we exist to be a recovery movement in the world. God doesn't create junk. We're here to rebuild and restore.

Here is the Christ response in Nehemiah to injustice. The first thing we must do is speak out. Nehemiah 5:9, "So I continued, 'What you are doing is not right.'" He didn't shut up. You can't negotiate with demons. A lot of church people think that the church board runs the church or controls the church. And whatever they say is what is going to happen. When I came into this church, one of the first actions that I committed as pastor of the church was to remove one of the godfather's from being a Sunday school teacher. This godfather had taught Sunday school in this church since the 1940s, but he was teaching that black folks were accursed of God, and that the Jews of Israel weren't the real Jews but that there was some lost tribe who were a bunch of white folks. So I went into that Sunday school class, it was my third week here and I said, "You are not teaching Sunday school any more, brother." I thought, "Well, this is it. The church is going to call the District Superintendent and I'm outta here. But it doesn't matter if I'm out of here because I'm not going to get into any kind of bargaining position with the devil." Too many times in the church, people think we can negotiate with the devil and a lot of the devil's work is sitting in our midst today. You don't negotiate with the devil; you call the devil by name and you exorcize demons - you don't negotiate. Nehemiah said that the first thing you have to do in the face of injustice is speak out. He said in verse 9, "What you are doing is not right. Shouldn't you walk in fear of our God to avoid the reproach of our Gentile enemies?" Why a lot of people in the world right now give no credibility to Christianity is because of Christians who don't do anything. They look at us and say, "I don't see any advantage of being a Christian. They act like everyone else." We give our enemies an opportunity to look at God with reproach because we do not speak out definitively against evil.

I love Elie Wiesel, the Noble Peace Prize winner, who as a child spent time in a Nazi concentration camp. He said, "There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest." You made me so proud when a whole group of you got on a bus last year, went to Washington D.C. and became advocates for stopping the atrocity and genocide in Darfur. This is not a time to be quiet - this is a time to turn up the noise. Notice even our government is starting to turn up the noise. And Britain is starting to turn up the noise. We're going back to Darfur on June 14. We need to begin praying for our group of six. This is not a time to back down. This is a time to turn up the noise.
    
There's more that we can do with the Save Darfur coalition by going online to sign a petition. Go online to savedarfur.org and fill out the petition to send to the White House and the U.N. to take more action. On Tuesday night, the University of Dayton has asked Sidney and me to address the student body of U.D. regarding Darfur. So we must speak out.

Here is the second Christ response: we must commit to sacrificial solutions. Not donations, but sacrificial solutions. Look at verse 10. "I and my brothers and my men are also lending the people money and grain. But let us stop charging interest!" Not only is he speaking out, he's personally, with his community, acting and doing something about it. Verse 11, "Give back to them immediately their fields, vineyards, olive groves and houses, and also the interest you are charging them – one percent of the money, grain, new wine and olive oil. 'We will give it back,' they said. 'And we will not demand anything more from them. We will do as you say.'" I want to keep reading more of this; this is the word of God. We need to get it in us. "Then I summoned the priests and made the nobles and officials take an oath to do what they had promised. I also shook out the folds of my robe and said, 'In this way may God shake out of their houses and possessions anyone who does not keep this promise. So may such a person be shaken out and emptied!' At this the whole assembly said, 'Amen,' and praised the Lord. And the people did as they had promised." In the last week of Jesus' life, he was not riding into Jerusalem to make a donation, he was riding into Jerusalem to give his life sacrificially for God's rebuilding purpose and his charge to you and me is: follow me.

What we can do when we are committed to sacrifice together in community - there's an advantage to being a big church. We're growing and understanding the difference between donation and sacrifice. Look at the difference we are making in Darfur, Sudan. In 24 months time, we've come up with approximately 1.8 million dollars. I can't wait to get over there and see construction of our new water yards. Isn't it amazing? And this story is spreading. I have been in a different state almost every week sharing with other people about "Christmas is not your birthday." We're going to be at the Kennedy center at the University of Dayton on Tuesday night. Sinclair College has called and asked if we will come and speak about Darfur. At U.D., I'm going to challenge 1000 students to come up with $100. That will build one water yard, which will take care of 25,000 people and their livestock.

Jesus didn't come into Jerusalem to make a donation, but to sacrificially give his life for the restoration movement of God's kingdom on Planet Earth. Look at what we have done together - God through us. We're approaching about 20 groups that have gone to the Gulf for rebuilding. Some of you have gone three times. For 20 years, the Clubhouse program that has worked with at-risk children. The food pantry has already served almost 2,000 families the first two months of this year. Many of you brought food with you today for the food pantry. The clothing store is serving hundreds monthly…and on and on and on.

Next week, here at Ginghamsburg Church, we're starting a new sacrificial solution. We are starting new worship communities. It would be sinful to keep getting bigger in this place because God doesn't want us to build brick. Brick is expensive. Big buildings have to be heated, cooled and furnished. We are going to begin many, many micro communities. There will be two Sunday morning communities on the south campus with live music, Starbucks coffee and the Saturday night message on DVD. Remember, it's not about you and me being together live in this room - it's about doing justice, loving mercy and walking humbly with God. In the coming years, as a church, we're going to create many, many micro communities. Some of these communities will be in your home. We've already started three house churches and we're ready to launch 10 more where whole church happens in your home. Every week you will eat together, do communion together, worship together and get the message on DVD. It's micro communities where we will be connected for macro mission in the world. What does the Lord require of you? To do justice, to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God. Will you pray with me, church? Open our eyes, Lord, that we may see. Unbind our hearts, our hands and our feet that we may run to the ruins of injustice and rebuild on the foundation of the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.