2022-08-21 Rebuild - Nehemiah

It’s Time to Re-Calibrate

Rebuild

2022-08-21

GFC

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Introduction

Lego is one of the most amazing toys ever invented. I wouldn’t be surprised if it is the world’s number one toy. (blank) How many of you are Lego fans? What I like about Lego is that you can build so many different things with the same blocks. Especially when you combine many different sets of Lego. Now for some people, what I just said was sacrilege. They never combine their sets. In fact, I know a few people who build their Lego sets and never take them apart. If that’s you, you can do as you like, but I will have to emphatically state that you’re dead wrong! It’s a 3d puzzle and just like a cardboard puzzle, the enjoyment of Lego isn’t the completed project, but in the building of the project. Once you’re done, you enjoy it for a while, and then you take it apart so that you get to rebuild it again some time in the future. It’s a toy. Toys are made to be used and used again.

Renovations on the other hand are different. Since we moved into our house in 2010, we’ve renovated almost the entire building. In fact, while on my Sabbatical I continued the renovations to our basement that I had started before my Sabbatical. Much larger egress windows were required for fostering so we decided to go ahead and redo much of the basement. (blank) Renovations are not like Lego. I enjoy a lot of the work, but I would never take it apart so that I could do it again. That would be ridiculous. I’m also not a masochist. I’ve put way too much blood, sweat and money into these renos to want to do them all over again. I want them to last a long time.

Why do we build things with Lego? Why do we do renovations? Why do we rebuild things like old houses and cars and campers? To a certain extent it is for the enjoyment of the project. A lot of mechanics love to rebuild old cars for this very reason. They love to bring old things back to life. They love to create beauty out of brokenness. To make something functional that wasn’t.

Nehemiah Built a Wall.

Nehemiah did the same. Nehemiah’s project makes most of our projects look puny. He didn’t set out to rebuild a house, or a chariot, he set out to rebuild an entire wall around a city. As ancient cities go, Jerusalem wasn’t very big. Babylon, and Nineveh were huge. But even though Jerusalem wasn’t large, it was still a big project. Archeologists estimate the perimeter of Nehemiah's wall was probably about 1.7 miles long and included about 10 gates and at least 8 towers. They were also about 15 feet think and 20 feet high. That’s a lot of stone to pile up. It was a massive project that required complete buy in from the population of Jerusalem and Judea. When you read the account in chapter 3, that’s exactly what Nehemiah got. His descriptive account is of who built what and where. Nehemiah and his associates divided up the wall into sections and then got different groups to build each section. Often these sections were built by those who lived or worked close by. (read 3:10) The sections were built by family groups, trade groups like goldsmiths, religious groups like priests, groups from other towns, etc. The buy in was very impressive. So impressive that one group of people stand out like a sore thumb. (read 3:5, 27) Nowhere else is any other group of people mentioned as not helping. (blank)

What was the wall like? I’ve already described the length, width and height, but not how it was constructed. (show wall) As you can see, it wasn’t made of perfectly square stones. The outside was made of stone that was somewhat squared, but the inside is made of all kinds of stone packed in with dirt. (blank) It was not an architectural wonder like the best built sections of the Great Wall of China. It was a basic stone wall. That certainly would have helped people from all kinds of trades and backgrounds to be able to build it. Many of the original stones would have been reused. Likely the most talented builders were tasked with building the gates and towers. We also need to keep in mind that the builders were also not building it from scratch. Throughout the book of Nehemiah, the word used for the building we would be translate as ‘rebuild’ or ‘repair’. They were fixing what was broken. They built on the foundations of the earlier Jebusite and Israelite walls that had been destroyed by the Babylonians. I imagine that different parts of the original wall were torn down at varying levels.

Motivation – Future, not Past

It is clear by the people’s enthusiastic and sustained effort that the people of Jerusalem and Judea were inspired by Nehemiah’s vision. As I stated last Sunday, he wanted to build the wall for the safety and security of the people of Jerusalem and Judea, to protect the temple and the worship of God there, and to bring glory to God and remove the disgrace of the destruction. The rebuilding of the temple and wall signified that God had forgiven his people for their sin of idolatry.

There is one other aspect of their motivation that I want to speak to. To explain it I want to draw our attention to an architectural wonder from India, the Taj Mahal.

The Taj Mahal is probably India’s most famous building. It’s made of marble and it’s stunning. But, do you know what it is and why it was constructed? It’s a mausoleum, a burial chamber. It was commissioned and built in the mid 1600’s by Mughal emperor Shah Jahan for his favourite wife and himself. (blank) In todays dollars it cost 1 billion US to build. Probably the most expensive burial place ever built. Simply amazing! But what I want to point out is that it was backward looking. And while many have been inspired by its physical beauty and the love the Shah had for his wife, the building itself wasn’t built for the people who would follow. No one uses the building. Other than tourists coming to look, and workers maintaining it, it sites empty. For most of its history it didn’t do anything for anyone living close by.

Nehemiah’s wall building on the other hand, was forward looking. It wasn’t to conserve the past but to build a future. It was built for the current people of Nehemiah’s day and all those who would follow after. It was built for the living, not the dead. And because it was God’s task, he enabled, protected and provided for them. Despite much opposition, Neh. 6:15 tells us they completed it in 52 days.

So what do Lego, my renovations, Nehemiah’s wall and the Taj Mahal have to do with our lives?

A lot.

Lessons on Rebuilding

Creativity, playfulness, breaking things

Lego is a wonderful toy that teaches us it’s okay to take things apart, rearrange the bits and make something new and wonderful. Lego is playful creativity. It is a medium through which our God-given creativity finds expression. (blank) Jesus said that to come into the Kingdom of God we need to be like children. There is something wonderful about children’s playful creativity that we as adults and us as a church can learn from. Yes, being part of God’s kingdom is serious business. We have a calling on our lives that is serious. Jesus expects us to give him everything, to lay everything on the line as he did. But I think if we look with the right eyes, we’ll see that during Jesus’ ministry he had joy and a playfulness about him that drew the crowds. Some of his figures of speech alone would have drawn smiles. Just think about a camel going through the eye of a needle. When I think of him blessing the children my mind thinks of Santa with children on his lap. Joy and a focus on the anticipation of the child.

As we rebuild the broken things in our lives, let’s remember that it’s okay to do so with anticipation and joy for what will come. To do so with playful creativity. Too imagine the impossible.

I think Lego also teaches us that sometimes we need to break things in order for new visions to become possible. Lego teaches us that nothing we have built in the past is sacred and untouchable. (blank) Nothing. This is especially true of institutions and ways of doing things. If a better alternative can be found, we should pursue it. By and large our church is willing to change up what we’ve done, but it isn’t always easy and we need to be willing to keep on doing do.

Beauty and looking backward

The Taj Mahal is both a positive and negative example. The positive is the pursuit of beauty and elegance, which I think is also God given. Let’s build and rebuild with beauty in mind without forgetting functionality and purpose. The negative is that it is backwards looking. Let’s not focus on the past but on the future. Let’s build for people who are living, not for the dead. (blank) And let’s make sure that the things we build have a purpose and enable life.

Future oriented and functional

As for my basement renos and Nehemiah’s wall, both projects have the needs of living people in mind and are future oriented. They are not Taj Mahals, stunningly beautiful with very little purpose. They are functional and purposeful. They also, like Lego, are reconstructions. They are built out of brokenness. We are a faith community in a broken world. Nehemiah’s Jerusalem was a broken world. I purposefully wrecked much of my basement so that I could rebuild it. (blank)

There is much in our world and personal lives that is broken. How many of you have broken relationships of some kind? How many have broken emotions? Or a sense of shame because of sin? How many of you feel as if you have no purpose? Does your life need a renovation? A complete overhaul? A rebuild? Just so you know, I’m not talking about our physical bodies. Speaking personally, there are certainly parts of myself that are broken and in need of rebuilding.

What about our church? What in our church needs repurposing? Which ministries need to be deliberately torn down so that new ones can take their place? Which ministries need to be built on old foundations? Or started from scratch? Are we past oriented or future oriented? Do we long for the glory years or look forward in anticipation of what God will do next? I believe that there are aspects of who we are as a church that need to be renewed. That need a rebuild. It seems to me that our foundations are good, but even there, we need to re-examine them so that what we build going forward will be able to stand.

Foundations and quality

On Friday morning in my quiet time I read 1 Corinthians chapter 3. Some of it really challenged me and stopped me up short. (read 1 Cor. 3:10-15) (blank) Do you catch what he is saying? We already have a foundation on which we as individuals and as a church are building on; Jesus Christ. His work in life, the cross and resurrection are everything to us. There is no other foundation. When Paul said he laid a foundation in Corinth it was the foundation of Jesus. When we serve in the church and as believers in the world, we are building on that foundation. How are we building? With all our effort? Or are we mailing it in? Are we building Biblically? Are we following the lead of the Holy Spirit? Are we being distracted by sin or even other good things?

Whether personally or corporately, the only way we can build for the future in a way that will have an impact is if we rely on the same God who helped Nehemiah build the wall in 52 days. Without his help it will be impossible. God helped the Jewish people of Nehemiah’s time in seen and unseen ways. He went before them. He inspired Nehemiah, he gave him favour with the King. He brought unity between the people, he gave them daily strength and helped them to deal with the problems they faced, both internal and external. God can to the same for us.

I have a dream. Or rather, I should say, last night I had a nightmare. Not your typical nightmare of falling and falling or being chased. It was a nightmare only a church leader would have. It took place here at church. We were having a membership meeting upstairs and downstairs a group of us was preparing a meal that would follow. The problem was that so many new people were at the church, people who had just started attending our church, that we needed more of our people who were familiar with the kitchen to go downstairs to make the food, which meant that we didn’t have enough people upstairs to still legitimately hold the membership meeting! Finally, we got some of the new people to help with the food prep. Wouldn’t it be awesome if that was a problem we had? I don’t know if it was a message from God or not. Maybe it is. While I was dreaming this it occurred to me that we need to be ready for such an event and work towards it.

Are you ready to rebuild what’s broken?

Let’s pray

Benediction: 1 Thess. 5:23, 24