Nehemiah 4:15-23 | God Works Through His People

Intro

Hey Y’all! How is everyone? Everybody good? Who is ready for DNow? I’m ready! Pastor Erik is ready, he’s pumped! It’s going to be a good weekend.

Anyways, I want us tonight to explore this idea tonight of serving faithfully where you are. and this idea of how to serve faithfully in a culture that is not going to reward faithfulness.

So i want to ask you a question, how do you know what The Lord’s will is? What do you do when you aren’t sure what you are supposed to do? I know all of you have given some sort of thought to what you want to do with your life. Seniors, you’re going to graduate, you’re going to have to pick a major if you go off to college or you will need to find a job. We have all had these thoughts of what you want to do. but how do you discern the Lord’s will? In the present, what does faithfulness look like?

So tonight we are going to explore these themes. We are still in Nehemiah 4, the second half of it tonight. We are also going to jump around to a couple different spots in the bible so be ready to flip around tonight.

Context

Remember the book of Nehemiah is Nehemiah’s memoirs, he is not writing a theology, he his writing down what happened, it was written for the Hebrew people at a specific place in a specific time. So when we study Nehemiah, there may not be a 1 to 1 application to our present context. but the themes present in the book are timeless.

So last week we saw that there was opposition to the rebuilding of the wall in Jerusalem. There was supposed to be an attack, the enemy was going to try and sow confusion and disunity. They enemy was trying to cause bodily harm to the people. There was supposed to be a surprise attack. which brings us to where we are tonight.

So if you have a bible great, if you need a bible go ahead and throw a hand up and we will get one to you. And if you need a bible at home take that one with you. You’ll want to have the text in front of you so you can see these themes jump out in the text.

So lets read this whole section and then we will go through it and jump around, but before we do that, let’s pray for our time in the word tonight.

pray

Alright lets read this whole passage Nehemiah 4:15-23

Nehemiah 4:15–23 ESV

15 When our enemies heard that it was known to us and that God had frustrated their plan, we all returned to the wall, each to his work. 16 From that day on, half of my servants worked on construction, and half held the spears, shields, bows, and coats of mail. And the leaders stood behind the whole house of Judah, 17 who were building on the wall. Those who carried burdens were loaded in such a way that each labored on the work with one hand and held his weapon with the other. 18 And each of the builders had his sword strapped at his side while he built. The man who sounded the trumpet was beside me. 19 And I said to the nobles and to the officials and to the rest of the people, “The work is great and widely spread, and we are separated on the wall, far from one another. 20 In the place where you hear the sound of the trumpet, rally to us there. Our God will fight for us.” 21 So we labored at the work, and half of them held the spears from the break of dawn until the stars came out. 22 I also said to the people at that time, “Let every man and his servant pass the night within Jerusalem, that they may be a guard for us by night and may labor by day.” 23 So neither I nor my brothers nor my servants nor the men of the guard who followed me, none of us took off our clothes; each kept his weapon at his right hand.

God works through His people

Alrighty, let’s see what is going on here. The first thing we see is, the work on the wall resumed. God frustrated the attack of the enemy and the work has resumed. we see that God’s people have resumed the work. They knew what they were supposed to do. God was using his people to accomplish His mission. We talked about this during week one, The Church is the chosen instrument through which God works. God works through His people, so if you are writing things down write that down, God works through His people. We are reminded of this theme of God choosing and working through His people here in this text.

I love how Nehemiah wrote this, “we all returned to the wall, each to his work.” They dealt with the threat, God was faithful, they returned to the wall, they returned to the mission. each person to their work. So we need to ask ourselves, what is the end goal? What is the Lord ultimate will? How do we come along side of him in this?

So let’s break this down. What is God’s ultimate mission? His ultimate goal is to bring about His glory. So, how do we join in that, we join in His mission of building the Kingdom.

A side note, if you have been with us on Sunday mornings, we have just finished a year long study of the End of Days, and we really just finished up studying the entire book of Revelation. We learned that in the end of all things, we are not going to go to heaven. Heaven is going to be here, creation is going to be renewed, redeemed and restored. Everything is going to be as it was intended. Everything will be made new, and God will dwell with His people. Heaven then will be dwelling with God. It doesn’t matter so much that heaven is a destination, but that Heaven will be dwelling with God for eternity.

So how do we join God in this? In the New Testament, we see Jesus tell, make disciples of all nations.

Okay great, we know what the mission is, so how do we carry this out? How do we make disciples of all nations? What does it look like for us to join God in the building of His Kingdom?

The first thing that we need to do is to figure out, where has God put us? For us, it’s Gray, Georgia. And for almost all of you I believe you are placed in a school, either at Clifton Ridge, Gray Station or Jones County high School. In those schools you are randomly placed in to different classes, and different people, your age are placed around.

you can probably guess where I am going with this, but I want you to see this. If God, who is in control of all things, and has written out the days of your life, and knows all things, then what may seem random, is in actuality, caused and ordained by god to happen. This means it is no accident that you are sitting next to who you are sitting next to in your classes, it is no accident that God has given you the gifts and abilities He has given to you, so that you can just sit there and get through 3rd period and graduate. No, if you are a follower of Christ, God has placed you exactly where you are supposed to be in order to join in the building of His Kingdom.

The People you are sitting next to in your classes, they either know jesus or they don’t. If they know jesus, great, work together to bring about the Kingdom, if they don’t know Christ, show them Christ, bring them to the feet of Jesus, you get to sit next to them for 180 days, somewhere in there you can find a way to talk to them about Christ.

Too often in the church, we love to say, “man someone really needs to reach those people.” And the fun thing about the Gospel, and about being a follower of Christ is that more often than not, that someone is you. The person that sees the need in the community is the one God is calling to do something about it. If you are in your class, and you’re like “Man someone needs some Jesus” great, you are the one to show them Jesus. You have been uniquely placed by God to build the kingdom. Nothing is random if God is sovereign.

Serve Faithfully where you are

And the cool thing about this, is we are not the ones who can save. Which may sound confusing. So let me explain. We are not the ones who have to worry about saving people. When we talk to people about being a follower of Christ, we aren’t tasked with convincing them, all we are trying to do is to relay the message. To tell them who Christ is and what He’s done. We have said this before in here, that we are just messengers. Messengers of the King. In those moments we are tasked with just showing who Christ is.

Have you ever gotten to leave class a go tell another teacher something during class? Maybe that doesn’t happen as much but when I was in middle school and sometimes in high school If a teacher had something to tell another teacher during class, they would send a student to go tell that teacher. And you wanted to be that student because you go to on an adventure, sort of. And when I was in middle school we had this old old old lady teach us English, like she knew English so well because she was there when it was invented, but she would always have to tell a teacher something and for some reason she needed to send students to deliver a message, and usually the teacher would question us as to why, or try to talk us out of the thing we were sent to do. But we were just the messenger.

like we aren’t tasked with trying to convince them, we are just the messenger. when kings used to send diplomats, the messengers were only to say exactly what t0 he king had said, they weren’t there to argue or explain just to relay the message and that is what we are, we are here for the message. We are sent by the king to deliver a message.

Look at verse 20, Nehemiah 4:20

Nehemiah 4:20 ESV

20 In the place where you hear the sound of the trumpet, rally to us there. Our God will fight for us.”

All we are called to do is to serve faithfully where we are at, you are called to serve faithfully where you are at. if you’re writing things down, write this down Serve Faithfully where you are. Like we learned earlier in this book some of these people didn’t truly know what they were doing when it came to building this wall, but they got out there and started working. They knew what supposed to be done, so they started building. The served faithfully where they were, even after the threat, they got back out there.

And I want to look at a couple passages that this verse is alluding to in scripture. We are going to see two examples of what happens when we serve faithfully, and when we try to do things our own way. When Nehemiah wrote “Our god will fight for us” he was taking a passage from the history of the Hebrew people. Turn with me to Exodus 14:13-14

Exodus 14:13–14 ESV

13 And Moses said to the people, “Fear not, stand firm, and see the salvation of the Lord, which he will work for you today. For the Egyptians whom you see today, you shall never see again. 14 The Lord will fight for you, and you have only to be silent.”

So what is going on here? This is the part in the Exodus story of the hebrew people finally leaving Egypt and they are at the red sea, and by this time Pharoah has changed His mind and wants them back. So he has sent an Egyptian army after them to bring them back, or to kill them. So they are at the water, faced with death either way. The Egyptians or drowning in the red sea. But God, being God, gives them a third option, this is the parting of the red sea, one of the most famous miracles in the bible. Moses trusts the Lord, Moses knows that he is supposed to faithfully do what the Lord tells him todo, so Moses lifts his staff and the sea is parted and the Hebrew walk across on dry land. Moses served faithfully, he did what he was supposed to do, the Lord is the one who brings about the miracle, the Lord worked through moses.

Now turn over with me to Deuteronomy 1:30-35

Deuteronomy 1:30–35 ESV

30 The Lord your God who goes before you will himself fight for you, just as he did for you in Egypt before your eyes, 31 and in the wilderness, where you have seen how the Lord your God carried you, as a man carries his son, all the way that you went until you came to this place.’ 32 Yet in spite of this word you did not believe the Lord your God, 33 who went before you in the way to seek you out a place to pitch your tents, in fire by night and in the cloud by day, to show you by what way you should go. 34 “And the Lord heard your words and was angered, and he swore, 35 ‘Not one of these men of this evil generation shall see the good land that I swore to give to your fathers,

Now we see a different picture of when we try to do things no our own. This is the story of when they sent spies on to the promised land, and they saw Giants, and they were afraid to go in, even though the Lord said, go in and this land will be yours. The weren’t going to, and they disobeyed the Lord. They tried to do this on their own. They felt like God was trying to get lead them in to a trap, they did not trust the Lord.

So what happened to them? The wondered the wilderness for 40 years before they could enter the promised land. Some of the people didn’t get to enter the promised land.

And what we can take away from this is, the mission and purpose of God is going to be archived no matter what we can do, but are we going to follow Him and join Him or are we going to miss the promised land at the end of all things. God does not need us, but has chose us to join Him in the building of his kingdom. Has chosen the church to be the way in which He brings about his glory.

How do we live Faithfully?

So what do we do? How do we live faithfully? And especially how do we live faithfully in a world that is definitely not going to reward living faithfully for the Lord?

Look at the world the people of God were living in right here in Jerusalem and look at the world we live in. Look at this text, look at what the people are doing, they are doing the work, but look at how they are going about it. We see that the people are on heightened alert, they are on guard. Look at almost all of them have some sort of weapon on them. look at verse 17, Neh. 4:17

Nehemiah 4:17 ESV

17 who were building on the wall. Those who carried burdens were loaded in such a way that each labored on the work with one hand and held his weapon with the other.

They learned how to defend themselves. They learned how work and to defend themselves at the same time.

Now i’m not saying we should all carry swords around and be ready to defend ourselves physically, I don’t think is what we can take from that. I’m not even saying that we carry our bibles around and hit people over the head with it. But we are living in a world where increasingly we are seeing the convenience of Christianity go away. For the majority of the last century, it was extremely convenient to be a Christian. If you wanted to hold any sort of office, you had to be a christian, i mean it was a big deal when JFK got elected, because he was Catholic.

But my point is, we no longer live in a world where saying you are a christian comes with any worldly benefits. it is not easy to be a Christian, and i think this is a good thing. I think this will build a more authentic faith, and a more authentic church, but how do we live faithfully in that world.

We need to be ready to face suffering head on, when trials come we need to know what we believe and why we believe it. We need to know the Lord on a level that goes beyond the surface. We need to know the Lord deeper. We need to already be in a rhythm of worshiping with our whole selves, being in a rhythm seeing God for who He is in all of our lives, being in a rhythm of dying daily and following after the Lord.

We can’t try to figure that out on the fly when trouble comes, you need to be ready now. you need to be equipped now. This starts by being serious about your faith. This starts by realizing this is not a one time choice you made on a Sunday when you were 8 and now you are just going to be a good person. Good isn’t good enough to save you. Following Christ is a life long process, it is a daily thing. The only thing that saves you is submitting your life to follow Christ and following him daily.

So if you are a follower of Christ in here, and you aren’t taking your walk serious, this is calling you to resume the work, come to know the Lord deeper. Join in the mission of Christ.

if you are not a follower of Christ, or if you aren’t sure if you are a follower of Christ, this text is calling you to come to know the Lord for the first time, to lay down your life, so that you may find life in Christ. We as a body of believers need to be ready to join in the mission of Christ, to join in the building of the kingdom.

y’all pray with me .