Party on the Wall

Yesterday, I took Lori to the symphony in Sacramento, we listen to the symphony played the soundtrack for a movie. I ordered these tickets way back in late August. I even ordered the parking. We planned our schedule, made plans for the day, and even thought about what to wear. We made an effort.

What do you make effort for in your life?

Effort shows value. I value my wife, as I should, so I made plans that I was hoping she would enjoy. She has told me that the number one way she knows that I am loved by her is the effort I put in to our relationship, our family and specifically how I honor her. She knows the value of the gift by the effort I put into it.

If effort is a good measure of how much you love something or someone, than what do you love?

We study the Bible to make our attitudes that of Christ Jesus.

We do it during the week, through our Bible app.

You can join us with little effort instead putting your effort into learning about God too by going to our app.

Today in worship today, we are looking at the part of the Bible that we have studied this year is called Nehemiah. Nehemiah, was a man who took steps to follow God by leading his people against all kinds of hardships to rebuild the security of the city of Jerusalem. Jerusalem was home to the rebuilt temple and the center of worship of God. The necessary security was a wall surrounding the city. We saw how God helped Nehemiah go through problem after problem of leadership until finally he led the people to finish building the wall. Now we come to the middle of chapter 12, where Nehemiah leads the people to show love to God by dedicating the wall to God.

Nehemiah 12:27–30 NLT

27 For the dedication of the new wall of Jerusalem, the Levites throughout the land were asked to come to Jerusalem to assist in the ceremonies. They were to take part in the joyous occasion with their songs of thanksgiving and with the music of cymbals, harps, and lyres. 28 The singers were brought together from the region around Jerusalem and from the villages of the Netophathites. 29 They also came from Beth-gilgal and the rural areas near Geba and Azmaveth, for the singers had built their own settlements around Jerusalem. 30 The priests and Levites first purified themselves; then they purified the people, the gates, and the wall.

I know that the Bible sometimes is really hard to understand, especially when we read books from the first part of the Bible called the Old Testament or the Hebrew Scriptures. The stories fit together with history and families across hundreds or thousands of years. There are some names in here that might help to be explained.

The Levites

These are the guys mentioned in the first part of verse 27, the people who were coming from all over to the dedication of the wall. The many city names and region names were just about how far they were coming but why would they be coming, were they great wall builders or something?

The Levites actually were a specific group of people in the whole group of people called Jews. Nehemiah was a jew, and much later Jesus basically the whole first part of the Bible is the story of God with the Jewish people. The Levities were a group, also known as a tribe of the Jewish people. Sort of like Yates is a group inside of English people.

Long before this time of Nehemiah, Nehemiah took place in 300s BC. Hundreds and Hundreds of years earlier than that. The Jewish people were made up of 12 boys whose father was named Israel. All the great great great great, keep going grandkids of these 12 make up the groups of Israel, technically we call them the tribes of Isreal. One of the 12 original boys was named Levi.

One of his great great great grandkids was Moses and His brother Aaron. Moses the guy with the 10 commandments, his brother, Aaron was given the duty of running the worship of what would become the Temple. Only Levites could lead the worship in the temple. It was their family duty.

Getting them all their, with instruments and songs to sing, in ancient times: no email, no youtube, nothing quick about this. It took effort, practice and readiness.

Yet they came from all around the area of Jerusalem. They took effort to serve God.

The priests who were from the Levites and the rest of the tribal people purified everyone.

Nehemiah 12:30 CSB

30 After the priests and Levites had purified themselves, they purified the people, the city gates, and the wall.

No one knows what that looked like or means. There is nothing in the Bible about what they had to do. All we know is they went into extra effort to show how special this time was, how grateful they were for the wall to protect Jerusalem and the Temple.

Tons of effort going into this because what God did for them mattered. It is unexpected that Nehemiah, a guy who likely couldn’t even worship in the Temple because he was a eunuch would be the most important leader to rebuild Jersualem.

Nehemiah lived during the time of the Bible when people knew God and worshipped God by following the law. The Bible tells us what those laws are and what the reward was for following that law. The protection of God for the Jewish people. But the people didn’t follow God’s law and after hundred of years and many, many generations God withdrew his protection and the nation of Israel was destroyed. Now Nehemiah and a priest named Ezra were leading the Jewish people to worship God in their homeland again, following the law and figuring out what it meant to serve God under a Persian King.

You and I aren’t trying to figure out the law anymore because of Jesus. Jesus, God himself, came to live with us, He died for our sins because all of us, gentiles, thats what we non-Jews are called, and Jewish people, all of us are sinful and need a savior

Romans 3:23–26 NLT

23 For everyone has sinned; we all fall short of God’s glorious standard. 24 Yet God, in his grace, freely makes us right in his sight. He did this through Christ Jesus when he freed us from the penalty for our sins. 25 For God presented Jesus as the sacrifice for sin. People are made right with God when they believe that Jesus sacrificed his life, shedding his blood. This sacrifice shows that God was being fair when he held back and did not punish those who sinned in times past, 26 for he was looking ahead and including them in what he would do in this present time. God did this to demonstrate his righteousness, for he himself is fair and just, and he makes sinners right in his sight when they believe in Jesus.

God saves you and his Holy Spirit comes into you.

God does much more than lead people to build walls. He breaks changes. He restores lives, brings hope where there was no hope. Peace where there was no peace.

I have seen God do great things in people’s lives. Rebuild lives in way people do not expect. Use bad circumstances to produce stories that people can only thank God for.

What has God done in your life? What are you grateful to God for accomplishing?

When the Jewish people were grateful to God for rebuilding the walls of Jerusalem they took effort to dedicate this gratitude back to God.

They made specific plans to acknowledge what God did and praise him in the way He desires to be praised

Nehemiah 12:31–32 CSB

31 Then I brought the leaders of Judah up on top of the wall, and I appointed two large processions that gave thanks. One went to the right on the wall, toward the Dung Gate. 32 Hoshaiah and half the leaders of Judah followed,

Nehemiah 12:37–38 CSB

37 At the Fountain Gate they climbed the steps of the city of David on the ascent of the wall and went above the house of David to the Water Gate on the east. 38 The second thanksgiving procession went to the left, and I followed it with half the people along the top of the wall, past the Tower of the Ovens to the Broad Wall,

Nehemiah 12:40–42 CSB

40 The two thanksgiving processions stood in the house of God. So did I and half of the officials accompanying me, 41 as well as the priests: Eliakim, Maaseiah, Miniamin, Micaiah, Elioenai, Zechariah, and Hananiah, with trumpets; 42 and Maaseiah, Shemaiah, Eleazar, Uzzi, Jehohanan, Malchijah, Elam, and Ezer. Then the singers sang, with Jezrahiah as the leader.

This is a plan of celebration and there are a whole lot of names here. Like I told you last week, names mean people. And people are important to God. God knows your name and you can see that here in the Bible because these people are named for eternity as celebrating what God did by dedicating this wall.

However all those names can be difficult for us to keep track of so let me give you the plan in simple terms.

The two groups appeared to walk around the wall and met up at the temple.

We live in a time of instant and constant spectacle and walking in a big circle might not seem like a big deal in a world of computers, lights, and drones. Yet this took a lot of effort. These people who had family that would work most of the day to survive, took time away to play instruments, march on a newly built wall, and praise God drawing attention to what God had done.

This was a big deal and showed how much it meant to them to Have God deliver in their lives.

When we stop and take time to thank God for the small in our lives, the stuff we might take for granted and then allow ourselves to go to the big. We all need to make effort to praise God for what He has done.

I remember the days when it took a lot of work putting people in diapers, wrestling them into car seats, and just getting here. Some of you know because of your health choose not to do somethings so that you can have the strength to make it hear today. This is effort.

Has God given you working fingers and toes? Healed relationships that seemed dead and never to return? Given you peace in your life? Has God provided for you?

God is worthy of worship. He is worthy of effort.

God did for the people of Nehemiah’s day and they thanked him through worship. This worship excited everyone. Everyone who saw it, everyone who was below the wall seeing what God did.

God’s actions and the actions of the worshippers then kept spreading, kept causing more action.

43 On that day they offered great sacrifices and rejoiced because God had given them great joy. The women and children also celebrated, and Jerusalem’s rejoicing was heard far away.

In this neighborhood on friday night you can hear the roar of every big play coming from Lincoln high school.

The joy of the worshippers on the day, we read about in Nehemiah, without any speakers or electricity was so loud that the joy could be heard far away. That kind of gratitude and joy transpired into actual commitment of the faith into service and giving.

Nehemiah 12:44–47 NLT

44 On that day men were appointed to be in charge of the storerooms for the offerings, the first part of the harvest, and the tithes. They were responsible to collect from the fields outside the towns the portions required by the Law for the priests and Levites. For all the people of Judah took joy in the priests and Levites and their work. 45 They performed the service of their God and the service of purification, as commanded by David and his son Solomon, and so did the singers and the gatekeepers. 46 The custom of having choir directors to lead the choirs in hymns of praise and thanksgiving to God began long ago in the days of David and Asaph. 47 So now, in the days of Zerubbabel and of Nehemiah, all Israel brought a daily supply of food for the singers, the gatekeepers, and the Levites. The Levites, in turn, gave a portion of what they received to the priests, the descendants of Aaron.

Names upon Names, because names are important to God. To simplify and then you can go back and read more about this part of the Bible. So to simplify, The people in Nehemiah’s day immediately started giving from their wealth, their tithes and offerings to support the worship of the temple. They did it as well as any time in the history of the Jewish people. True thankfulness for what God has done allows us to give what we have. We know that God can give us much more because we know that He gave it all to us in the first place.

Jesus told us that where are our money goes that is where our heart is.

Effort shows love. Money shows love.

Today we don’t live under the law. We don’t worship at a Temple. Jesus told us that everything changed because of Him

John 4:21 CSB

21 Jesus told her, “Believe me, woman, an hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem.

John 4:23–24 CSB

23 But an hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in Spirit and in truth. Yes, the Father wants such people to worship him. 24 God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in Spirit and in truth.”

Spirit is given to us through God, The Holy Spirit which enters our lives when we believe that Jesus died for our sins and rose again. But Truth takes effort, only effort in remembering all that was given by God.

Stop for a second and think about something. The last time someone did something nice for you or a time when you realized all the very nice things someone had done for you, in what did you do for them. Did you buy them a gift? Did you go visit them? Did you call or text them just to say thank you. Where you say so happy or grateful for them that you went to a lot of effort?

I remember almost 20 years ago when my friends gave me a perfect gift of tickets to a Niners game because they looked hard for what would I like. They went into a lot of effot.

How have you shown your gratitude to God?

Did you bring him gifts? Talk with him? Go into a lot of effort?

God didn’t just take these gifts of the people of Nehemiah’s day and horde them. He gave back with joy. Which led to more celebration and action for God.

Bring joy into your life, be grateful for what God has done and worship him with effort!