Nehemiah 3–4

0:00 Well, I'm going to guess that a lot of you, not all of you, but a lot of you anyway, have been like me for the last three or four days, just absolutely maxing out your time watching college basketball in the NCAA tournament. It's been a bit of a heartbreaker for Louisville, Kentucky, at least those of us who are Cards fans. I think we were expecting a little bit, you know, to go a little bit further than maybe we did. And yet, despite all of that, the whole thing is still just massive fun. I've thought a little bit about why that is. Why do we as a nation enjoy that so much? I mean, you know, the times in our nation's life when we get most excited about things tend to be around sporting events. You've got March Madness, you've got the Super Bowl, you've got the Olympics when those come around every couple of years, and the nation just kind of goes into a tizzy about sports events.

0:51 Why is that? Why is sports something that so often captures our attention and captures our minds and hearts? Well, I think there's a lot to it and competition has part of it. But I think part of what's going on there is that sports is one of those times in life, kind of more than any other area of life, where you get to see right on the surface and distilled right down sometimes into just a few seconds a total determination to win and nobody's pretending that they don't have that total determination and if you go if you were to go into your office and you know every single day you had a total determination to win eventually you just irritate everybody around you even if you are the kind of person who has a total determination to be the you know CEO of your company someday, you can't show that you've got that because you mark yourself out as a target and somebody to be knocked off because somebody else wants that job. But in sports, it's all out.

1:52 You get to the end of the game, you know, the last minute of a basketball game can sometimes last half an hour. And for that entire minute of game time, everyone on that court is showing it on their face. A total determination to win. Sometimes in sports there are bigger stories as well. Those bigger stories even are marked by total determination. Somebody gets hurt in their junior year and they have to fight back to get back to the court by the beginning of their senior year season. Somebody breaks a leg or breaks an arm or they have a bad game or they have bad season even.

2:34 And they fight back over time because they have a total determination to win. That's the kind of thing I think we see in the passage we're going to study today. Nehemiah chapter 3 and 4. A total commitment to the work that was in front of the people of Israel. So let me invite you to take a Bible and turn over to the book of Nehemiah. It's in the Old Testament. So if you want to use one of these sort of maroon-colored pew Bibles like this one, you can find it on page 398.

3:06 At least that's where the book starts. Our text this morning starts on page 399, so you'll be able to find it there. We are in the middle of a series that we're going to be in for the next, I don't know, four or five weeks, something like that, going through this book of Nehemiah. Originally, Nehemiah was one single book together with the book that precedes it in the Old Testament. So Ezra and Nehemiah used to just be one book and probably because of the size of scrolls in the ancient world and that sort of thing. It eventually got divided into two different stories. But together, Ezra and Nehemiah tell the story of these Israelite exiles who were allowed to return to Jerusalem after Cyrus of Persia conquered Babylon.

3:47 So in 586 BC, Babylon, Nebuchadnezzar had come in and conquered Jerusalem, carried off its inhabitants to Babylon. A few years after that, Cyrus the Persian conquered Babylon, looked around and saw all these Jews. And, you know, he knew where they came from, but he didn't want them around anymore. And so he said, okay, you guys can go back to your ruined city of Jerusalem. And Ezra Nehemiah tells the story of what took place as those exiles made their way back to the ruined city of Jerusalem. All these events in Nehemiah take place in the middle of the 5th century B.C.

4:19 So it's like 445 B.C. So about 100 years after the first exiles returned and about 450 years before the birth of Jesus. So it's an old story, right? If you think about it, it's something like 2,450 years old from where we're standing right now. It's an old story. And yet because it's written by Nehemiah himself, it reads with an immediacy that I think is just captivating. And Nehemiah just says things all the time. You're like, that is so relatable.

4:50 Like, you're clearly a human, right? And you actually existed. Because what you're saying makes sense to me. Well, last week we looked at chapters 1 and 2 of this book. We saw how Nehemiah, he's a high official in the court of King Artaxerxes of the Persian Empire. Chapter 1 tells us that he was the cupbearer to the king. Which sounds like not a very big deal, and yet it was a huge deal. Because part of what you were supposed to do, besides, you know, every meal, you pour out a little wine in your hand and you taste it in front of the king to make sure that it's not poisoned. But your biggest job was not so much tasting the wine as it was to sit with the king if he didn't have some other high-ranking official with him or, you know, his family or something like that. You were the main conversation partner with the king. And so sometimes it was about personal stuff. Sometimes you were just kind of, you know, shooting the bull. Other times you were talking about policy for the entire empire. And so Nehemiah, as the cupbearer, was a guy who, if everything kind of turned correctly in a conversation could exert massive influence on

5:53 imperial policy. So it was a massively powerful official position in the empire. Anyway, Nehemiah got word that his ancestral city of Jerusalem, he's a Jew, and he's never been to Jerusalem before this, but he knows of Jerusalem, and he got word that his ancestral city was lying in ruins. And so he asked the king's permission to lead an effort across the desert to go back and rebuild the city, put its walls back up, and maybe even set Jerusalem up to be a kind of formidable capital city of some kingdom yet again. Now, that was a huge chance for Nehemiah to take, right? It was a risk for him to say to Artaxerxes over dinner one night, hey, your majesty, what do you think about me leading some soldiers over to this former great capital that your predecessor conquered and rebuild it and put its defensive walls back up. What do you think about that? Massive risk, especially since Artaxerxes,

6:56 the same dude, had already just a couple of years earlier commanded that a similar effort to rebuild Jerusalem be stopped, and brutally so. So Nehemiah is going in, and the king can have him killed if he wants to. And he's saying, hey, Mr. Artaxerxes, how about I go and set this place up to rebel against you again? What do you think? Huge risk. But he prayed, and he did it. And shockingly, Artaxerxes agreed to let him do it. So Nehemiah, a contingent of soldiers, set out. They arrived in Jerusalem.

7:29 They walk around the walls and inspect it. And then at the end of chapter 2, Nehemiah pulled all the people of the city together, which weren't very many. He makes a big deal out of that later on in the book. It's like, we've got to have people. We have these beautiful walls in this temple, but we're still going to get conquered because we don't have any people. And they actually end up throwing dice in the villages around the city to get other people to move in. Like, you're like, oh, dang, got a six. Now I have to move into Jerusalem, you know. And so they actually do this to get people in the city. So he's really, he ends up being worried about that. But he pulls together the people who are there, and he convinces them to help rebuild the walls. But it wasn't just a matter of doing the building that was hard enough and you know you had these walls that were knocked to the ground and there's a huge cliff and all the rubble is falling down the cliff and so they've got to lug it back up to the top of the cliff all that's got to be done but to make it even worse there were rumblings of opposition to the project there were people who were not happy about it so you get this this guy Sanbalat who's a governor of one of the provinces around the area he doesn't want a fortified Jerusalem in his vicinity. And he's got this sidekick, Tobiah, and they, along

8:35 with a couple other friends of theirs, are just incensed by this plant. They are mad. And so at the end of chapter 2, things are already feeling a little dicey. Well, we're going to pick up today the story in chapters 3 and 4, where the walls are actually rebuilt. We're not going to read it all now. If you read ahead, you would know what an undertaking it would be to read chapter 3 here in the service. We're not going to do that, but I do want you to see what we're dealing with. So take a second and look down through chapter three. What you've got there in three is really an exhaustive list of all the families and clans that worked on the wall and what sections they each worked on. And then in chapter four, if you turn the page, you've got the next piece of the narrative that really just tells the story about the threats that the Israelites were facing.

9:22 And there's not a battle or anything that happens here, but there are threats, right? It's just, It's words that are causing all kinds of trouble among the Jerusalemites. And it tells them in chapter 4 how they responded. Now, let's pause before we get to the main idea and points. We'll get there in just a second. But I want to pause and just ask the question. Okay, this is a really good story. It's dramatic. It's got all kinds of personal anecdotes and that sort of thing. It's a great story. But what is its point? I mean, there are certain times in the Bible, right, Where you're reading in 1 Samuel or 2 Samuel or Chronicles, and it's just really clear where the stories that you're reading fit into the grand scheme of the narrative of the Bible, right?

10:04 And you're just like, yeah, I get this one because this story is about covenant, or this story is about kingship, or this story is about temple. That makes sense because I know where all of that stuff's going in the story. It's all going to wind up at Jesus, right? So it's really easy to tell where you are in the story in certain of the little narratives in the Bible. But this one's a little more difficult, I think. I mean, rebuilding the city walls, what does that have to do with anything in the grand storyline of the Bible? Well, I mean, for one thing, I think there are certain lessons to be learned about how the people of God are to act in a world where there is hardship.

10:44 And we're going to get to some of those lessons. But, but the biggest question, the sort of driving tension through the story of Ezra and Nehemiah is this question. They're trying to rebuild Jerusalem as a great city, right, like it was under David and Solomon. And the big question running through Ezra and Nehemiah is this question, can they do it? Is this resurrect the grand nation of Israel project going to work?

11:15 That's the question. I mean, think about where we are in the story. These people have just come off almost a century of exile. Their city was razed to the ground by Nebuchadnezzar. All of them were taken off in chains to Babylon, where they've been working in a kind of pseudo-slavery for the last century. The temple has been destroyed. The line of King David has been cut off. And Jerusalem, the great city, the city of the king, was razed to the ground so that not one stone was left on top of another one.

11:51 And that's where they are. And yet, in the midst of all that, even while they're doing their pseudo-slave labor over in Babylon, they're reading prophets like Isaiah and Jeremiah and Ezekiel and Daniel and Zechariah and Zephaniah. And they're reading things like, Jerusalem will one day be the center of the world. and all the kings of the nations shall stream through her gates bringing the riches of the cosmos to the king who sits on the throne in Jerusalem. They're reading that kind of stuff and there's not one stone left on another in Jerusalem.

12:27 There's nobody that lives there except the jackals and the foxes. But then they get word from Cyrus that they can go back. And so off they go with all those prophecies in their minds and they start rebuilding the temple and reestablishing the law and pulling one rock up the cliff and setting it on top of another one in order to start building the wall that's gonna make Jerusalem a great city again and they think bring all these prophecies to pass.

13:03 So the question that's running through Ezra and Nehemiah is is this going to work? And that's what creates the tension because you're rooting for them. You're rooting for them through the whole story. Build the temple. Put those stones up on those walls. Don't let sunball outfix you or stop you. Don't be scared. Do it, do it, do it. You're rooting for them. But is it going to work? We're not really going to get an answer to that until the end of the book.

13:35 And I'm not going to give it to you now. For now, our attention is on a more immediate problem. Can Nehemiah get these walls built? And what we see here is a brilliant picture, I think, of the people of God working together to do what needed to be done. And I think there are lots of lessons in that for us as a church and also us as individual Christians. So here's the main idea of the passage. The kingdom, the work of the kingdom, the work of the kingdom, whether you're talking about Old Testament Israel or the New Testament church, The work of the kingdom requires the total commitment of God's people.

14:13 The work of the kingdom requires the total commitment of God's people. Sounds like a speech a coach in the NCAA tournament might give to his team. The final four requires the total commitment of everybody on this team. Well, that's really it. The work of the kingdom requires the same thing, total commitment of God's people. Two points to the sermon. We're going to look at chapter 3 and then chapter 4, just kind of opening up that main idea, talking about what total commitment looks like. Number one, looking at chapter 3, the work of the kingdom is an all-in effort.

14:47 The work of the kingdom is an all-in effort from God's people. And number two, the work of the kingdom requires a muscular faith. It requires a muscular faith. That's what we see here in these chapters, as these people under Nehemiah's leadership start building the wall. Every single person, with very few exceptions, which we'll talk about, putting their shoulder to the plow, and a faith in God that undergirds and supports smart, decisive, muscular action.

15:20 That's what we're going to talk about today. So point number one, we're going to look at chapter three, the work of the kingdom is an all-in effort. The work of the kingdom is an all-in effort. In other words, what I mean by all-in effort is that everyone, with just a few exceptions, everyone picked up a shovel or a trowel or a rock and they got to work. If you look down at, you know, outside of chapter 3, but down in 4, 6, chapter 4, verse 6, you can see Nehemiah's description of this.

15:51 The people had a mind to work. That's about the best you're going to get as a description of an assessment of what happened here and why it happened. It's because the people had a mind to work, and that's exactly what we see in chapter 3. You look down through chapter 3, and at first it looks like a fairly boring list of names and locations around the city. It tells you who built what sections of the wall with some little details here and there, but not much, really. And it is that. It's a big old list of names and locations around the perimeter of the wall.

16:23 But you start to look at it, and you realize that it's also far more interesting than it looks at first glance. Which, as we have studied the Bible together over the last years, Genesis, for instance, or if you've been around when I've preached Matthew, I think I did the Matthew genealogy back around Christmas. I hope one of the things you've learned from all of that is that it is always true of the boring lists in the Bible that they are far less boring than you think they're going to be. They're not in there just to be in there.

16:54 They're not a mistake. they're always teaching something, and they're never boring. If you're willing to look around in the thickets a little bit of those lists, there's always stuff in there that is golden. Well, just to give you a sense of how this thing is organized, if you were to sort of trace it out, map it all out, which lots of different people through history have done, what you'd find is that the narrative of chapter 3 actually makes its way all the way around the wall of Jerusalem, like one section at a time.

17:26 So from this point to this point to this point to this point, this person worked on that section, and it goes all the way around the city until it gets all the way back around to the same spot. So if you look at verse 1, you can see that it starts at the Sheep Gate, right? Eliashib the high priest rose up with his brothers and the priests, and they built the Sheep Gate. So we're going to start at what was known as the Sheep Gate, which was the portion of the wall that was closest to the temple. And it was called the Sheep Gate because when they were going to make sacrifices on the Day of Atonement or whatever it was, The Sheep Gate was where the sheep from the countryside would be brought into the city, to the temple, so that they could be sacrificed.

18:00 So that's where we are, the portion closest to the temple. And that's why Eliashib, the high priest, is said to consecrate it, because this is the beginning of the work, right? So by consecrating this first piece of the work, it really consecrates the whole thing as it goes on around. And then, you know, skip the whole thing, go down to verse 32. You got this section, this section, this section, this section, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. 32, between the upper chamber of the corner and the Sheep Gate, right? So it's gone all the way around from Sheep Gate to Sheep Gate. Now, the vast majority, there's like 42 clans or families or individuals mentioned here in 42 sections of this wall that are getting rebuilt or repaired.

18:44 And the vast, vast majority of the people that are listed here, like 40 out of 42, are completely lost to history except in this chapter right here it's the only place we ever hear about him there's like two that are mentioned elsewhere in in Ezra Nehemiah and and that's that's it we don't know these people we have no idea who they were or what happened to them or their families and with only a couple of exceptions they just don't show up anywhere else and so it's just they get this snapshot in history of he worked on that section of the wall for those few days what an incredible thing huh it is an incredible thing to think that the legacy of your entire life might come down to a few days of working on one section of what's going on among the people of God for a few days and yet that's what happened to these people they're nobodies and yet here they are doing the work of rebuilding the walls of their city I think as you start to look through this list

19:46 you start to notice some things that are really kind of striking. I mean, some of them are sort of funny. If you start to play the movie in your mind, others of them are tragic. There's little stuff that happens that one way or the other is just really striking and wonderful. And you start to get a sense that this rebuilding effort really was an all-hands-on-deck kind of thing, not the usual deal. And there's something there for us to see and learn from. So let me just show you a few details in here. I mean, look first at verse 1.

20:16 We've already talked about the high priest, Eliashib. He's consecrating the work, right? So it's a work that's being done self-consciously as a work for the glory of the Lord, right? This is Jerusalem. This is the city of the great king. This is where God has put his name. And so rebuilding the walls and making it strong again is a work for the glory of the Lord. And Eliashib consecrates the work so that it's done in the name of the Lord. That's one thing to notice. Another thing to notice is that Eliashib, the high priest, and his other priests are building walls.

20:49 I don't know if you've ever done any bricklaying. I've done like about that much of it. It's just nasty work. It's hard. It's heavy. It's gross. You get dirty. You know, it's out in the sun usually. It's hard work. And yet here's Eliashib, the high priest. He's like the second, he's probably the first ranking dude at this point in history because they don't even have a king. But even in that golden age, he's the second highest person in the whole kingdom. And he's out there with a trowel or something, putting mortar on stones. It's not something you usually expect to see priests or people in that highest station doing.

21:24 But here he is. Here's Eliashim out in the sun. And look at verse 8, too. It mentions that these people in verse 8, next to Uziel, the son of Harhia, goldsmiths, repaired. And next to him, Hananiah, one of the perfumers worked on the wall. And they restored Jerusalem as far as the broad wall. Now, I have no idea who Hananiah is. I have no idea what Hananiah was like.

21:56 But it's not your everyday wall building kind of dude that grows up and says, I'm going to be a perfumer. And yet there he is, out there on the wall, doing something utterly different than you would normally expect a perfumer to do. Same thing with the goldsmith there. I mean, they weren't coating these walls in gold. I mean, these were pretty ramshackle makeshift walls. They weren't coating them in gold. They weren't, you know, mixing gold into the mortar.

22:26 Nothing like that. No, it's just that the goldsmith left his normal place of employ, left his normal gifting and his normal skills, And he went and did something that was definitely not in his gifting. He worked on the wall. That's an important, I think, antidote to the way a whole lot of Christians think about service in the church. A whole lot of Christians think about service in the church as a kind of two-step thing. First, I will find my gifting, and then my church will recognize my gifting.

22:59 Now you'll notice that it's sort of not the church will find my gifting and then put me in a place of service. It's generally I, myself, through a test or just through self-assessment or whatever it is, I will find my gifting. And then if it's doing its job correctly, the church will recognize it and put me to work where I think I'm gifted. Well, I think one of the things that Nehemiah is showing us here by mentioning the perfumers and the goldsmiths working on the rocks is that when push comes to shove and when there's a need among the people of God, it doesn't matter what you think your gifting is.

23:35 You do the work. So if, you know, if Aaron Robertson comes up on a Sunday evening and says, hey, we're really hurting for volunteers in the nursery, it is not your place to say, I am not gifted at changing diapers. It is your job to get gifted at changing diapers. And there are people who can help you do that. And it doesn't work. It doesn't work if everyone in the church says, I will only serve where I think I'm gifted.

24:08 It works when everyone says, regardless of my gifting, I will serve where I am needed. And that's what these perfumers and goldsmiths did. Look at verses 9 and 12. When you compare those, you've got first, Rephiah, the son of Hur, he's ruler of half the district of Jerusalem, and he worked. And then look at 12. Next to him, Shalom, the son of Halahesh, ruler of half the district of Jerusalem. So apparently Jerusalem had been divided into two different districts, and a governor placed over each one of those halves, and both of those governors are out there doing the work.

24:46 Governors, rulers of the great city of Jerusalem are out there building the wall. I think you've got to pause and see what an amazing thing that is. I mean, it would have been so easy for somebody like a governor over half the city of Jerusalem to say, you know what, my job is supervision. I supervise. And besides that, I have other things to do. I have to think about water for the city and food for the city, and I've got to think about this and that. And, man, we've got to have a high council meeting this afternoon. I'm just really sorry I can't get out there in the sun with you.

25:18 But friends, that's a mark of good leadership that those two governors of the city were out there working on the wall of their city. It communicated to the people, this is important. And by contrast, look at verse 5. There's a fascinating little line in there. Next to them, the Tekwites, that Tekoa was a town a little bit outside of Jerusalem. Next to them, the Tekwites repaired. But their nobles would not stoop to serve their Lord. their nobles would not stoop to serve their Lord.

25:52 So the little people of Tekoa came in and worked on the city or the walls of their capital city while the mayor and the council and all the governors and whatever of Tekoa stayed in Tekoa because they would not stoop to serve their Lord. And that's a fascinating little phrase, isn't it? They would not stoop to serve their Lord. There's a couple of things to notice there. One is that just like was communicated by Elisha of the priest consecrating the whole thing, Nehemiah and his people understood that what they were doing in building those walls was for their Lord.

26:26 They understood that it was work for the Lord. And you know what Paul does in Philippians and Colossians? He says the very same thing about your work. That whatever your work is, whether it's being a lawyer or a doctor or a teacher or a barista or a student or whatever your work happens to be at this stage of your life, He says you should do it as working for the Lord, not for men. And that's true whether you like your job or whether you hate your job. It's true whether you want to be in your job for the rest of your life or whether you're hoping it comes to an end tomorrow.

27:02 Who you work for, Jesus the King, is far more important than just what you do for him. That's what gives meaning and dignity to your work, is that you're doing it for him. And then look at that phrase there. They wouldn't stoop to serve the Lord. What does that mean? Well, it's making fun of them. It's making fun of them. It's saying, okay, on the one hand, you've got like the God of the universe over here, the one who is majestic in all glory and in splendor and light, and no one can approach him without literally dying.

27:39 You've got him over here, and then we've got you. And you think for some reason that if you're going to serve him, the God of all the universe, it will require you to lower yourself to his level. They would not stoop to serve the God of the universe. It's a ridiculous phrase, but it's making fun of him. Listen, brothers and sisters, you need to drive out any of the same kind of similar thoughts from your own mind.

28:10 It doesn't matter what you're asked to do. It doesn't matter what kind of service you're rendering. You will never stoop to serve the Lord. Never. Look at 14. This one, I think, is funny. Akijah, the son of Rehob, another ruler, so he's another governor, ruler of the district of Beth-ha-Karim. So this includes Bethlehem, in fact. Ruler of the district of Beth-ha-Karim repaired the dung gate.

28:45 He rebuilt it and set its doors, its bolts, and its bars. You know why they called it the dung gate? They called it the dung gate because it was the main sewer line of the city. It's like where all the stuff went through the little canals or whatever they had. And then it went out the dung gate and down the hill to, you know, the place where it went. And you just imagine this guy, Malkijah, ruler of the district of Beth HaKarem. And he shows up and they're doling out the work.

29:18 And Nehemiah says, all right, up next, the dung gate. And Malkijah, this ruler, says, I'll take that. What a disgusting job. And yet it's being done by this ruler because he's all in. Friends, this little point right here that Malkijah volunteered to work on the dung gate will preach in so many different ways.

29:51 I mean, for one thing, just notice that good leadership doesn't insist on working in the palace. Good leadership does not insist on working in the palace. It just does what has to be done. I mean, listen to me. If you're a young guy who has aspirations to leadership in the church, whether it's here or anywhere else in the world, right? Do you ever wonder why the elders here at Third Avenue, when you let us know about your aspirations to ministry, aspirations to leadership, Do you ever wonder why we sort of insist that you do the simple things and sort of the jobs that nobody else wants to do?

30:28 Do you ever wonder why we do that? I promise you it is not because we're trying to torture you. It's not hazing. It's not that we had to do it in the past and now you have to do it. It's none of that. It's because very, very often, more often than you can imagine right now, Leadership is doing the jobs that nobody else wants to do. And if you're not comfortable with that, you're not going to be a good leader.

31:01 I mean, related to that, I mean, you know, you may not know this. I don't know. Most of you, I think, if you're members of Third Avenue, you'll notice this. And this may not be obvious all the time. But you, as a church, have seven lay elders who are not in the pay of the church. They're not on staff. They're not being paid in some other way. They're lay elders. They have other jobs. They have families. They got a life. And yet, they're volunteers. And whether they knew it or not, when they agreed to let us nominate them as elders and when they took the job as an elder, whether they knew it or not, a good portion of what they signed up to do is dealing with the church's dung gates.

31:46 That's what they signed up for. to do the hard jobs, to do the jobs that nobody else wants to do. And what's incredible about it is that they're volunteering to do it. You guys pay me a whole lot of money to work on the Dungades sometimes. Not that much. Well, I'm just going to carry on. Thank you, though. But you don't pay them anything.

32:18 You don't pay those seven guys anything at all. So here's what I'd ask you to do. When you walk by them at some point, and you look at them and say, wow, what an amazing job. I would love to be a lay elder. You just need to know that before they came to church this morning to look so shiny and elder-like, they probably had to spend a little bit of time in prayer washing off what they got on them in the past week of working at the Dung Gates. And you should thank them for that work. Look, here's the point. There's more that I could say. But here's the point. It's just an extraordinary list of names, isn't it?

32:51 Just so much going on. All these people from all these different walks of life. High, low, some gifted for the work, some as far from gifted as possible. They are ungifted for the work. And yet they all work together to make it happen. And the way the text talks about it, if you look at it, is that they worked next to him and next to him and next to him and next to him and next to him. Now, I know this is Old Testament, but the New Testament says that that's exactly how the church of Jesus Christ is supposed to look and act. This is a metaphor for what the church is supposed to look like every day of its life. Just like those people on the wall, every one of us right here are from different walks of life, at different stages of life, with different sets of gifts and skills. But when we come together here, we have one aim, and that is to bring glory to Jesus Christ. And so we all, whoever we are and however we're gifted, we all put our shoulders to the plow to make that happen. You remember what Paul wrote in Ephesians? We talked about it just a few weeks

33:54 ago. He gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers to equip the saints for the work of the ministry, for building up the body of Christ until we all attain to the unity of the faith and the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, so that we may no longer be children tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, but rather speaking the truth in love, we grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ from whom the whole body joined and held together by every joint with which it's equipped.

34:29 When each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love. That's a lot of phrases and we talked about them a few weeks ago, but you can see the point. It's as the body is working together, all the different parts working properly, that it grows and builds itself up. That's what we're striving for. So let me give you just a couple of things for you to think about. Maybe you go back this afternoon and read chapter three again. Give it your best shot on the names. Like nobody's going to know if you get them right in your own head anyway. But as you read it, here's a question I want you to ask yourself. Who are you most like in this chapter like who's the guy or who's the girl there's some some women in here too who's the one who says who says you know that that's me right the one that kind of speaks to your heart and says I really resonate with that guy that that really sounds a lot like me who is that for you I mean maybe you're Hananiah the perfume maker who's found yourself laying bricks all of a sudden with hands that are you know usually showing off perfumes to people and maybe you're maybe you're

35:32 Shalom, who did everything he could with everything he had. He even put his daughters to work laying bricks. Or maybe you're Malkijah, the ruler at the dung gate. Who are you? Who resonates with you? Here's another question, maybe even deeper and better. Who should you be? Who in this chapter should you be? Who kind of calls out to you kind of from over there and says, hey, you need to join me over here. Maybe you're the proverbial goldsmith who just has decided not to join the work yet. I deal with more precious things than this. My work is more important than bricks. Maybe you're somebody from out of town who's decided that this isn't your problem.

36:20 You don't really need to get that involved. Maybe you're a governor, ruler type who's Decided that you're not going to stoop to serve your Lord in that way. Look, here's what I'm saying. Building this wall was an all-in effort from the Israelites. And the work of the church, the work of the kingdom of Jesus, requires a similar all-in effort from God's people.

36:51 So how are you contributing to that or not? That's point number one. Second, the work of the kingdom requires a muscular faith. The work of the kingdom requires a muscular faith. In other words, it requires action that's undergirded and driven by trust in God. Action that's undergirded and driven or fueled by trust in God. That's what we see in chapter 4. If you let your eyes kind of roll over chapter 4, you'll see that it's actually made up of three different episodes, each one of which has the same structure.

37:25 All three of these, they move very quickly, And it's the same structure every single time. So first you've got some kind of a challenge to the work. And then in response, Nehemiah and the people have a kind of muscular faith in God. They've got a trust in the Lord. They know that the whole thing depends on him. And yet that trust in the Lord results in not just sitting on their hands and waiting for the walls to build themselves, but it results in decisive, smart action. So that's the pattern over and over again. First the challenge and then the muscular faith response.

37:57 from Nehemiah and his people. So let's look at them. So the first one is in verses 1 to 6. Look at that with me. When Sambalat heard that we were building the wall, he was angry and greatly enraged, and he jeered at the Jews. And he said in the presence of his brothers and of the army of Samaria, what are these feeble Jews doing? Will they restore the wall for themselves? Will they sacrifice? Will they finish it in a day? Will they revive the stones out of the heaps of rubbish and burned ones at that? Tobiah the Ammonite was beside him. He said, yes, what are they building? If a fox goes upon it, he will break down their stone wall.

38:30 Hear, O our God, for we are despised. Turn back their taunt on their own heads and give them up to be plundered in a land where they are captives. Do not cover their guilt and let not their sin be blotted out from your sight, for they have provoked you to anger in the presence of the builders. So, we built the wall. And all the wall was joined together to half its height, for the people had a mind to work. Now, people don't typically think of the Bible as funny. We tend to spiritualize it in a way that sort of sucks all the humor out of it.

39:02 But there is definitely some comedy in this show right here. And some of it is here in these first six verses. So Sanballat, if you remember, is one of the surrounding governors of the area. A guy who absolutely does not want a fortified Jerusalem in his sort of, you know, sphere of activity. So when he hears about the wall getting built, he's furious. And Nehemiah even says that he is angry and greatly enraged, like both of those things all at once. I mean, I don't know.

39:32 Have you ever been both angry and greatly enraged? I mean, Sambalat is big mad about what he's hearing about the wall of Jerusalem going up. And so what you're expecting is for him. I mean, he's been mentioned a couple of times, he's rumblings about, you know, Sambalat, his army from, you know, the Samaria. He's got this army. And so what you're expecting is in his anger and great enragement, you're expecting him to do something about it, right? Like pull your army together and go attack or something, right? Verse 2 says you've got an army, but he doesn't do it.

40:04 He doesn't go to war. He doesn't try to stop the work. No, Sanbalat's got jokes. And he tells them to his own army, what are these pathetic Jews doing? Ha ha. Are they going to build a wall in a day? Ha. No, it took them 52, actually. That's not that funny. Are they going to make sacrifices? Ha, ha, ha. Probably, yeah. It's just not funny, but he's got these jokes.

40:36 Then you've got in verse 3 this Tobiah character. He's been mentioned before, too, next to Sambalat. He's also a governor of some kind. He's got some kind of rule. But here, he's obviously a stooge to Sambalat. He sees Sambalat making fun of the Jews, and he's like, yeah, boss, yeah, yeah, you're funny. Boss, I got a joke too. If a fox climbed on it, it'd fall. I mean, that is some Netflix special worthy stuff right there. Anyway, look how Nehemiah responds to all this.

41:11 Look how he responds to the mockery. He responds with an absolutely brutal prayer to God for justice. And I want you to notice that there is nothing nice about this prayer. He does not ask God to be merciful to Sambalat and his people. He does not ask God to bring Sambalat to repentance. No.

41:43 What he prays is, hear our God. Turn back their taunt on their own heads. Give them up to be plundered in a land where they are captives like we are captives. Do not cover their guilt and let not their sin be blotted out from your sight. For they have provoked you to anger in the eyes of your people. See, some of that's crossed the line. He's mocked the work of the living God and the people of the living God, and so Nehemiah drops the mother of all bombs on his head.

42:25 God, don't blot out his guilt. Punish him. You know, there are a lot of places in Scripture where the people of God pray these kinds of prayers, asking God to do justice against the wicked. And what I want you to see from the Bible, from both the Old Testament and the New Testament, is that that is perfectly fine and good. It is right for the people of God to call out to God to do justice.

43:00 In fact, it may be that you need to add that kind of justice-seeking prayer to your arsenal of prayer. God, bring justice to this situation. Don't let this continue. You read the Psalms, you read Revelation. It is good and right for Christians to pray like that. And just incidentally, too, I don't know how many of you in this room in particular would be tempted to this, but you should be careful about mocking the people of God or setting yourself against them.

43:40 You should be careful about mocking the people of God or setting yourself against them because they will not or they should not mock you right back to your face. They will not or they should not draw the sword right back against you. But you know what they will do? They will turn to the God of the universe and say, Lord, bring a stop to that. And that's terrifying.

44:14 Again, just incidentally, there may be some of you in here who need to turn off X and stop throwing mocking words back at those who are mocking you and just turn to the God of the universe and ask him to step in. Do you really think your 280 characters, or however many you get if you got a little blue check mark, are going to be more powerful against your enemies than the God of the universe?

44:53 Oh, look at the result of all this. Verse 6, he says, so we built a wall. What else do you want from us? This is what we did. It wasn't all that complicated. We prayed and we built. There's no panic, there's no need to shout insults back or make equally bad jokes. We just prayed, and we got on with the work. Similar thing in 7 to 14, look at that. When Sambalat and Tobiah and the Arabs and the Ammonites and the Ashtodites heard that the repairing of the walls of Jerusalem was going forward and that the breaches were beginning to be closed, they were very angry, again.

45:25 And they all plotted together to come and fight against Jerusalem to cause confusion in it. So we prayed to our God and set a guard as a protection against them day and night. In Judah, it was beginning to be said, the strength of those who bear the burdens is failing. There's too much rubble. By ourselves, we will not be able to rebuild the wall. And our enemies said, they will not know or see till we come among them and kill them and stop the work. At that time, too, the Jews who lived near them came from all directions and said to us ten times, you must return to us. So in the lowest parts of the space behind the wall and open places, I stationed the people by their clans with their swords, their spears, and their bows.

46:00 And I looked and arose and said to the nobles and to the officials and the rest of the people, don't be afraid of them. Remember the Lord who is great and awesome and fight for your brothers, your sons, your daughters, your wives, and your homes. I mean, you see what's going on here, right? And you've got the threat of Sanbalat and his cronies, but now you've also got whispers and murmurs starting throughout the city. So 10, 11, and 12 has three different things that are being kind of whispered through the city. One is that we're tired, right? That the burdens are too heavy for our backs. That's the first thing being said in Judah. Second thing is that the enemies are letting it be known that you don't know when we're going to show up and we're going to come and kill you before you even know that we're there. Third one's a little bit harder to figure out, but what it seems to be is that the people from outlying towns that lived closer to Sambalat and the enemies were coming in and telling their Jewish family, this is too dangerous. You need to return to us now. You need to come home to your cities and get out of danger. So you got tiredness, You've got fear, and you've got family members saying, stop, give it up.

47:06 And you can imagine what the effect was throughout Jerusalem. Massive, massive temptation to just stop the work. But what's the response? Well, look at verse 9. So, we prayed to our God and set a guard as a protection against them day and night. Friends, it is hard to overstate just how much trash pop evangelical theology that one little verse, verse 9, just absolutely raises to the ground. I mean, for one thing, anything that goes by the name of prosperity gospel just crashes on that little pebble of verse 9. This idea that if you just believe harder God will make your life good just gives up the ghost as soon as it hits Nehemiah 4 9 it's just not true they think about it these people didn't say a prayer and then just

48:07 sit there they prayed and then they did what needed to be done they didn't wait for some army of angels to show up like the elves at Helm's Deep we have come to honor this allegiance we've to honor your faith, right? No, they didn't wait on that. They just did what needed to be done. They heard about a threat from Sanballat, and they set a guard. And there's a thing going on right now, a meme that I've seen on various places, and the meme is you can just do things. Did you know that you can just do things? That's true. That's true.

48:47 And the question is, is there anything, is there anything that you're praying and waiting on God to do that, I mean, you really could just do? Is there anything like that in your life? Oh, dear God, give me a good job. I'm going to sit here in front of the video game console and wait on you to give me a good job.

49:19 And when you do, it will glorify you. Well, okay, but why don't you go fill out some job applications? Why don't you take the job that was offered you that you didn't want to stoop to do and see what comes out of that? Oh, dear God, give me a good wife. I'm just going to wait here with the boys for you to act in your own good time.

49:52 Okay, bro, but why don't you just go ask the girl out? Look, Christianity is not about sitting around waiting for God to do something. It is about taking decisive action and at the same exact time knowing that it all fails if God doesn't bless the efforts. All right, last one. Look at 15. When our enemies heard that it was known to us that God had frustrated their plan, we all returned to the wall, each to his own work.

50:25 From that day on, I'm going to read this fast. Half 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 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. And each of the builders had his sword strapped at his side while he was building. The man who sounded the trumpet was beside me. And I said to the nobles and to the officials and the rest of the people, the work is great and widely spread and we're separated on the wall far from one another. So in the place where you hear the sound of the trumpet, rally to us there, our God will fight for us. And so we labored at the work.

50:56 Half of them held the spears from the break of dawn until the stars came out. I also said to the people at that time, let every man and his servant pass the night within Jerusalem so that they may be a guard for us by night and may labor by day. 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. I mean, you can see very easily the same kind of muscular action-taking faith in this one too. So if that last section showed an immediate response to an immediate threat, like we have to act now, this section just shows a kind of ongoing response to anything Sambalat might come up with.

51:36 And it's an ingenious plan, really. I mean, you can see the details of it. But look what undergirds it all. All the stuff that Nehemiah planned and put together and all these strategies and tactics and all the rest. But look what undergirds it all. Look at 19. I said to the nobles, to the officials, and the rest of the people, the work is great and widely spread. We're separated on the wall, far from one another. So when you hear the trumpet, rally to a stare, and look what undergirds it. Our God will fight for us.

52:07 You see what I mean? This is what I'm talking about by a muscular faith. For all the planning, for all the military strategy and engineering that's going on here, Nehemiah knows that it's all for nothing if God doesn't fight for them. That's what I mean by muscular faith. It's a faith that knows that the whole thing depends on God acting on our behalf, blessing our actions and our plans. And yet, it's a faith which doesn't leave us just sitting there on our hands, but it's a faith that spurs us on to action.

52:43 You know, if you think about it, the whole of Christian theology, the whole of Christian theology runs along those lines. In salvation, God does it all. now believe in Christ in the Christian life God has prepared good works for you now go do them the great commission God has chosen people from every nation who will be saved now go preach to them the whole pattern of Christian theology is this kind of muscular, faith-driven action.

53:27 That's what it is. In fact, I think you've got to get comfortable with that dynamic, as comfortable as Nehemiah was, or you're going to be forever uncomfortable in Christian faith. If you're always trying to say, well, God does everything, true, but I have to do nothing, you're going to be uncomfortable in the Christian faith. If you're convinced that it all depends on you, you will also be uncomfortable in the Christian faith. So let me leave you with this. Which error right there are you more prone to making? Are you prone to the error of waiting so hard for God to do something that your sword and your trowel are just sitting on the ground next to you while you wait for the angels to show up?

54:10 Or are you prone to the error of working so hard, convinced that the whole thing depends on you, that you've forgotten that the whole thing is actually for the glory of God in the first place. And it fails unless he blesses it. Let's pray. Lord, we thank you for this wonderful story in Nehemiah and for the lessons that it teaches us.

54:42 Lord, we pray that you would help us to take these lessons to heart. We pray, oh God, that you would cause us to be marked by a muscular faith. A faith that trusts in you and knows that ultimately it all depends on you and yet which at the same time is a faith that drives us to action. Our Lord, we pray that you would make us that kind of church. A church that is alive to you with bright eyes who want to do the things that will build the kingdom. We pray all of this in Jesus' name. Amen.