Nehemiah 4
Notes
Transcript
Yesterday I ate a clock.... very time consuming.... especially when I went back for seconds....
For so many of us in the pastoral world, the third chapter of Nehemiah is one of the harder ones to preach on, it seems to be superfluous to any life application in present day, and it is easier to go from the second chapter to the fourth chapter where we run into so many complications in the building of the wall, which is kind of interesting because we see the work being done in chapter 3 and then in chapter 4 we kind of take step back to what happened during that work. When I read the 3rd chapter of the book of Nehemiah it reminds me of one of the greatest movies of all time, about a man named William Wallace.
See William was a Scot, and as a child he watched as English soldiers came and killed his brother and his father while they were being occupied by King Edward I. His uncle, Argyle saved him and took him abroad to study, but as a young man William returned to his homeland, peaceful and wanting nothing but peace and to find the love he had as a child, Murron. Time passes, and you see it will almost be impossible for William to be the man he wanted to be, he would find it hard to be a peacemaker, and most of that goes out the window as soldiers tried to assault Murron and William steps in to stop it. In an act of retaliation, they take Murron and have her put to death; little did they know, this would be what stirred the fire that had been burning quietly inside William.
He begins a revolt when he kills the Lord who had Murron killed, and starts a national movement to lead his people against the English invaders. The most commonly know phrase is when William is about to lead his men into battle and he screams, “They may take our lives, but they will never take our freedom.”
Really, there are so many similarities to what happens in these stories, Nehemiah is moved by his compassion for his people and he cannot fathom not doing something; William motivated by the murder of his love, the leading if groups of people against a common enemy or in a common direction; and when William against all odds makes that famous quote, it reminds me of what we will see in Nehemiah as he is on the wall and the oppressors are coming against them and he basically tells them, “Do what you want, say what you want, but we are not leaving this wall,” in the next few chapters of this book.
So you may ask yourself, what is it we are supposed to learn from this chapter and I think with everything you can see here you could almost see as a foreshadowing of the work Jesus did on the cross, and his call for His church to work together to deliver and share the gospel in the world in which we live. Nehemiah was the one who rallied the people to restore the physical wall, Jesus is the one who calls us together to build his church as one body in Him.
1 Then Eliashib the high priest arose with his brothers the priests and built the Sheep Gate; they consecrated it and hung its doors. They consecrated the wall to the Tower of the Hundred and the Tower of Hananel.
What I love the most about this is one of the first people mentioned in the rebuilding process isn’t a carpenter, or a stone mason, but it was a priest and his brothers. The truth of the matter is Eliashib did not have to take part in any of the work that was going on. It would have been easy for him to say, “Not my problem, not my job, leave me out of all of this, my job is to go and be a priest, my job isn’t to rebuild some wall.” Yet, that isn’t what we are seeing here at all, it was him saying, “Look, there is some work that God has called his people to and that is more important than the rest of what I have to do, we need to get to action.”
I want you to just think for a moment about some of the places in your life you have worked where you had supervisors for a lack of a better term who did very little work, but stood behind a clipboard or whatever and pointed at everything that needed done, and compare them to the supervisors you have had who got into the work with you, who didn’t just point and direct, but got their hands dirty with you and walked alongside you in the work you were doing. Which of those two people were you more excited about working with, or working for in the job? I can almost bet every single one of us would say it was the person who was there working alongside you and doing the work with you.
This is so important, because what we see is these priest doing just that, humbling themselves and saying the work of the Lord is so important we have to keep doing what he wants us to do.
One of the most common ways I have seen the other side of this in the church is when we talk about evangelism and sharing our faith, which in essence is the work that Jesus put us to before he left this earth when he set forth the great commission, is there are so many people in our churches who will say evangelism isn’t there job, I’m not the preacher, leave that to the pastor and the elders. So we don’t get about that business, we don’t exactly think we are above it, but we think its not meant for us.
Honestly, I think there is a good reason for most of us thinking that way, for quite a few decades it was the method of the church and pastors to try to unburden people with the sharing of their faith and in an attempt to grow the church pastors taught you didn’t need to share you faith, all you had to do was get the people to church and he would take care of the rest. The problem is, that isn’t the way its supposed to be, Jesus gave his life for us so we could go into all the world and make disciples, baptizing them in the name of the father, the son, and the holy spirit, teaching them all that he has said. And that was the rallying cry that Jesus gave us on his way out, and was a mirror of what we see here.
It is our goal, all of us to come to this cry, and go out into our world. It would also be easy for us as we have so often in this series talked about the work that God has set before us as body here, to be a ligth to restore the city of Georgetown and help bring it back to life and its roots, for us to say, I can’t play a part, that’s not for me, that’s for all the rest of y’all, but what we will see is there is a part for all of us to play in this mission, not just the great commission, but the mission God has given us.
So over the next few verses what we see is how while we are all diverse, we each have a part
6 Joiada the son of Paseah and Meshullam the son of Besodeiah repaired the Old Gate; they laid its beams and hung its doors with its bolts and its bars.
7 Next to them Melatiah the Gibeonite and Jadon the Meronothite, the men of Gibeon and of Mizpah, also made repairs for the official seat of the governor of the province beyond the River.
8 Next to him Uzziel the son of Harhaiah of the goldsmiths made repairs. And next to him Hananiah, one of the perfumers, made repairs, and they restored Jerusalem as far as the Broad Wall.
9 Next to them Rephaiah the son of Hur, the official of half the district of Jerusalem, made repairs.
10 Next to them Jedaiah the son of Harumaph made repairs opposite his house. And next to him Hattush the son of Hashabneiah made repairs.
11 Malchijah the son of Harim and Hasshub the son of Pahath-moab repaired another section and the Tower of Furnaces.
12 Next to him Shallum the son of Hallohesh, the official of half the district of Jerusalem, made repairs, he and his daughters.
What do you notice here? Perhaps, you notice where I asked you to underline in your Bibles all the places you see the words Next to, and after him in this chapter and what you are seeing is there is a place for everyone. What is happening is Nehemiah had a specific place for everyone based on their strengths and gifting, and not only that but he put them in a place close to their home for those who actually lived in Jerusalem, the idea was if the people were close to home it wouldn’t take them as long to get to the work where they needed to be so there wouldn’t be as much wasted time, also, if something happened and they were attacked while they were working they could quickly retreat to the safety of their homes to help protect their families.
But what you may also notice is all of the different titles and jobs of the people in the list, there are so many different backgrounds all of these people come from. The same is true for all of us when it comes to doing the work that Jesus has sent us out to do as workers of the great commission, we all come from different places and specialties with the gifting God has given us and He has still called us all together to complete the work at hand.
You think well what does all this in Nehemiah have to do with me? Well it shows how we are supposed to work for his good no matter our background with the task at hand, and the easiest way for us to do that is in the places close to home, and let me stop and just use an aside here for those of us who go on missions trips and want to do good all around the world I am by no means saying we shouldn’t do that. It is obvious even in this scripture about Nehemiah that people travelled a great distance to help rebuild the wall that didn’t live inside the city, and that goes back to the fact that Nehemiah was such a good manager of people, so we aren’t saying you shouldn’t do that, but for most of us, the place Jesus has called us to share the gospel are in those places closest to our homes; in our jobs, in our schools, in our friend groups. All of these places make the most sense for us and are the safest places we can share.
Its probably safe to say the people you work with, even if they aren’t Christians, if they know your character as a person, they’ve seen how you work, they see how you care for the people you work with, come into contact with, the way you do your job, they will in the least hear you out when you want to share your faith with them. That isn’t to say they will immediately give their lives to Jesus in the office, but it means they won’t stone you to death either, all because of your character. This is the same thing we had seen with Nehemiah in the presence of Artaxerxes, and even would explain why Paul will write in Colossians 3:23-24
23 Whatever you do, do your work heartily, as for the Lord rather than for men,
24 knowing that from the Lord you will receive the reward of the inheritance. It is the Lord Christ whom you serve.
Not only does it help us to receive the reward the Lord wants to give us of inheritance, but it also makes people see us differently.
This section of scripture goes right along with what God is calling us to do as a church here in our community as well, we realize the best use of our resources, note I did not say the only use of our resources, is right here in this community, the one where we are every single day and our light is shining for Jesus, and it is important we use the gospel here to show what a difference Jesus can make.
13 Hanun and the inhabitants of Zanoah repaired the Valley Gate. They built it and hung its doors with its bolts and its bars, and a thousand cubits of the wall to the Refuse Gate.
14 Malchijah the son of Rechab, the official of the district of Beth-haccherem repaired the Refuse Gate. He built it and hung its doors with its bolts and its bars.
15 Shallum the son of Col-hozeh, the official of the district of Mizpah, repaired the Fountain Gate. He built it, covered it and hung its doors with its bolts and its bars, and the wall of the Pool of Shelah at the king’s garden as far as the steps that descend from the city of David.
16 After him Nehemiah the son of Azbuk, official of half the district of Beth-zur, made repairs as far as a point opposite the tombs of David, and as far as the artificial pool and the house of the mighty men.
17 After him the Levites carried out repairs under Rehum the son of Bani. Next to him Hashabiah, the official of half the district of Keilah, carried out repairs for his district.
18 After him their brothers carried out repairs under Bavvai the son of Henadad, official of the other half of the district of Keilah.
19 Next to him Ezer the son of Jeshua, the official of Mizpah, repaired another section in front of the ascent of the armory at the Angle.
I know some of you when you think about the work of sharing the Gospel in the places where you work, or the just in your personal life, you think you don’t have all the answers, and you are thinking you’re too small and someone with more knowledge, or standing needs to do it. What I hope you see here is the attention to detail that Nehemiah is sharing, its not just the big jobs that need the attention, its the small, seemingly insignificant jobs that are also of the upmost importance to Nehemiah.
There will come a time when the church is doing what it needs to do that some of us may think, look all I am doing is serving a meal, I am not doing anything that big when it comes to what God has called us to as a body, there are so many people doing so much more, I mean look at pastor he’s preaching the gospel, that’s the big deal. However, Nehemiah doesn’t let us think that. He shows us, whatever we are doing, big, small, seemingly insignificant, it all has meaning and importance to the Lord.
I want you to keep this in mind as we move forward. There will come a day, when I, one of the elders, or a deacon will come to you and ask for help with something we are doing, and the initial idea in your mind might be to pay it off because it doesn’t seem that important, but I want you to keep this in mind. Every job we do for the Lord is important and is going to be needed for the overall direction of what we are going to do. Can you see it that way? Can you jump in with the same eagerness of the people when Nehemiah came before them and set this task before them?
Lastly, I want to read one final verse from this third chapter, verse 20
20 After him Baruch the son of Zabbai zealously repaired another section, from the Angle to the doorway of the house of Eliashib the high priest.
Did you catch that? Let me read it one more time.
Baruch zealously repaired another section of the wall from the Angle to the doorway of the house of Eliashib.
Baruch was so zealous for the job that was being done and the work needed to be completed, he was so moved that he couldn’t just stop at what he was assigned, he had to do more, its almost like he got the same movement in his spirit that Nehemiah did and he had to keep going. Now that obviously isn’t something everyone did, but there are some of you who remember what this town used to look like, you remember what this church used to look like, and your desire for it to be that way again is going to reignite a passion in you as we move forward with God’s plan, and the question becomes are you going to allow that zeal for the Lord to keep you moving, past just what will initially be asked of you, into a place where you need to do even more?
