Revision Success
Nehemiah 6:15-7:5
“Mission Accomplised” http://www.sermonspice.com/search?q=success&topic=1&page=1
Mission accomplished! It’s finished. After all the opposition, all of the threats and all the trouble — finally the work of the walls of Jerusalem is finished. What is amazing is that the wall of Jersualem which ran nearly two miles in length around the city was completed in 52 days. They had laid in ruin for almost 150 years but now stood 10 feet wide and 15 feet in height. The men, women and children, priests, perfume makers, merchants, jewelry makers, worked in the midst of the summer heat and were still able to finish it in less than two months. Imagine just for a moment, the Corps of Engineers rebuilding two miles of damaged levees in just two months or the state of Louisiana finishing two miles of construction from start to finish on I-10 through Metairie in just two months. It was a magnificent and unforgettable achievement! Nehemiah and his small army of volunteers had completed the task!
But the work was not done yet. The goal of God was not to see if Nehemiah and the Israelites could pull off this task. It was not just to have the city of Jerusalem fortified again. The goal of God has been and always will be the reclamation of his people to a life wholly dedicated to him and doing His will and ultimately, the salvation of the world. The rebuilding of the walls of Jerusalem? That was just a small, though monumental, step in that direction. And so Nehemiah knew that as incredible an achievement as it was, the work of God and the call of God on his life and the people of Israel was not done. The natural tendency after a great work is take a rest, kick back, and marvel at what you have accomplished. After the successful completion of a great project, that’s when you can become most vulnerable as a follower of God. But Nehemiah realizes the walls were only the first step. In spite of the victory that they have experienced, the fatigue they may feel, and the sense of accomplishment they may have, this is just the beginning.
Nehemiah teaches us several things about the journey of faith. First, servants of God retain a future focus. Yes it is about the immediate work of God before us but great servants understand this is just part of a larger plan and greater work and thus always keep an eye toward the future and the next thing which needs to be accomplished for God. Nehemiah finishes the wall and then immediately goes to the next thing. The wall is completed, but the servant of God knows the work is never done. So Nehemiah doesn’t stop and rest in his success, he moves on to the next challenge and continues to work for the welfare of God’s city, God’s people and ultimately the salvation of the world. Now that the walls are complete and the city can once again be a safe place to live, Jerusalem now needs to be rebuilt. 42,360 people had traveled back from Persia out of captivity to resettle in their homeleand. All were Jews and yet none of them were natives. They had all been born in Persia. So many of those settled in other towns around Jerusalem, or in the country, and that had left the holy city of God completely abandoned, except the few priests and others connected to the temple of God. Now that the walls were rebuilt, the next task becomes to rebuild the city and that starts first getting people to commit to make Jerusalem their home. The walls may be done but the work is just beginning.
Servants of God live and work from the perspective of eternity. They always have a forward focus. Hebrews 11 is one of my favorite chapters in the Bible. It’s about the heroes of the faith. It’s like a Hall of Fame of faith. It defines faith as a forward focus. People of faith never stay mired in the present but always look forward to what God is seeking to do next. There are two kinds of people: settlers and pioneers. People of faith are never settlers. Pioneers are always moving forward claiming new territory, new land and new realities. Settlers always come in behind pioneers and plant roots. They stay right where they’re planted. Once they’ve got things just the way they like them, they never want them to change. People of faith never settle in the present. They keep pioneering toward God’s promising, preferred future. It’s not about what God has done in the past, as wonderful as that may have been, nor is it about what you’re doing right now but rather faith is about what wants to do through the future. It’s about the in breaking of the kingdom and what we can do next to help make that a reality and bring it to fruition. If you don’t keep that forward focus, you begin to live in the past. You begin to draw your identity and meaning from things that have happened and not what God is calling you to do. You’ve heard that expression "remember when?" You don’t want to become a "remember when" person. When you quit living for the future, you begin to die. Yet that’s where a lot of people are. Most people don’t know they’re dead. They’re the living dead, because when you quit living for the future, you die.
Second, great servants keep re-visioning by constantly imagining and articulating God’s preferred future. Proverbs says, "Where there is no vision, the people perish." It is isn’t about what I want or what you want or even about what we want as a church. It’s about what God wants and his preferred future. What does it mean to imagine God’s preferred future? Mike Slaughter was a young pastor of 27 when he was sent to a 110 year old Ginghamsburg United Methodist Church in Tipp City, Ohio, population 2000. The church averaged 90 people in worship on Sundays. Surrounded by cornfields, a gravel parking lot, rusty garbage cans and old broken down mobile trailers which were used for Sunday School rooms, the church left a lot to be desired. No pastor before him had stayed more than 2 years. One day Mike realized after he had been spinning his wheels trying to grow the church and that he was going to become another short two year appointment in the long history of this church unless something changed. He needed God’s vision for the church. So he went into the back of the property in a big field, sat down and began to cry in frustration: God, I can’t do this alone. And I’m not going to do another thing unless I know it’s your will. Mike was prepared to stay in that field as long as it took until he had a vision of God’s preferred future. And later that day, it came to him. He knew what he had to do and began to implement. It wasn’t without its challenges. Of his initial 90 in worship, it shrunk down to 60 when he introduced praise songs. Tthey grew grew to 700. Realizing that we’re a visual culture and that could be used to reach more people for Christ, he introduced video screens and shrunk back down to 400. Today, Tipp City is a town of 6000 people, Ginghamsburg has 6000 members and more than 4500 in worship each Sunday. At one meeting, a pastor came up to him and asked, Did you ever imagine Ginghamsburg would ever become like this? And Mike answered, Yes, actually I did. Even with over 4000 in worship? God gave me the vision that we would over 4000 in worship and more than 100 acres of land.
You have to imagine God’s preferred future for your ministry, your church, your vocation and your life’s mission. It doesn’t matter how old you are. Ginghamsburg was 110 when a new vision was given. Moses was 80 when God’s preferred future was given in a burning bush. It gave him 40 more years. Abraham was 75 when he received God’s vision of a preferred future and he set out for a new place of promise. That’s the power of imagining and articulating the future. If you are not living to the future, you are dead!
Third, servants of God reflect the source of that success. Verse 16, "When all our enemies heard about this, all the surrounding nations were afraid and lost their self-confidence, because they realized that this work had been done with the help of our God." You don’t have to tell other people where this success comes from; they recognize that God’s hand was in it. They look at a servant and are not seeing a great servant but rather the presence of God and the hand of God in it. Great servants never forget or stop depending on the source of their success. Great servants realize that God is Creator and I am the creature and my sole responsibility on this planet is to worship him and serve his purpose forever and ever and to glorify him by doing it. That’s why we’re here. Great servants reflect the source of their success. They never take credit for what God has accomplished through them but give him all the glory and honor.
They are great not because of what they have accomplished but because they understand their dependence on God and his Holy Spirit to do his will and his work . Nehemiah’s enemies recognized that the hand of God was in it, not only because of the scale of the project but the speed it was accomplished as well. You can accomplish infinitely more with God than on your own. Thus, they saw the presence of God in it. And when God is honored, you will honor Jesus’ name which is the purpose of the Holy Spirit.
And fourth, servants do the work of a preferred future. There are several things to which Nehemiah turns his attention to re-establish life in Jerusalem and ultimately life in Israel. First and foremost, remember that Jerusalem is the Holy City. This is the place where God has chosen to have his house of worship. As Jerusalem goes, so goes Israel. It is the heartbeat of the rest of the nation. And so Nehemiah knows that it is absolutely essential to get Jerusalem up and running as the holy city of God. To have the walls and the temple of God is not enough. And so he concentrates on several things, which I think gives us insight into our needs and challenges of rebuilding life in New Orleans as well.
First is the priority of God. After finishing the wall, Nehemiah knew the first step in re-establishing life in Jerusalem and their life as Jews was the worship of God. So he recruits the singers, gathers the Levites back as leaders of worship and the caretakers of the Holy of Holies and sets in place the gatekeepers who guarded the entrance to the temple, everything needed to begin the worship of God. Nehemiah knew worship wasn’t a part of life but the center of our lives. The ancient Hebrews believed that worship wasn’t an hour a week but that your life is your worship of God. Doing the laundry, cutting the grass, doing your job at work and even how you treat others is your worship of God. But it starts with the worship of God. When we come to worship it keeps us centered and grounded in our faith and relationship to God. Because it is in worship that we reflect on the meaning of life and the purpose of life which is to worship God and serve others. William Temple says this of worship: “Worship is the submission of all our nature to God. It is the quickening of conscience by His holiness; the nourishment of mind with His truth; the purifying of imagination by His beauty; the opening of the heart to His love; the surrender of will to His purpose—and all of this gathered up in adoration, the most selfless emotion of which our nature is capable and therefore the chief remedy for that self-centeredness which is our original sin and the source of all actual sin.”
Placing God first is our greatest challenge in rebuilding our lives in New Orleans. I met with a group of Jewish community leaders two weeks ago and they said their synagogues are down in attendance by one third. Every church I talk to reports the drop. I have a hard time believing that Christians and Jews were the only ones who have left our city. It amazes me that at a time when we need God the most in our lives and his help in rebuilding our city, that so many seemingly have pulled away. Putting God first starts with your weekly worship of God. Is worship a priority in your life? Do you believe this is the most important hour of your week and that you need to be here each week?
Second is permutation. Permutation means “changing the order.” “I gave my brother Hanani and Hananiah the governor of the castle charge over Jerusalem, for he was a more faithful and God-fearing man than many.” Nehemiah has led the people of Israel up until now in the project of rebuilding the walls but now he realizes for all of God’s preferred future to become a reality, other leaders need to step forward. Servants of God need to share leadership responsibilities. They need to find other good leaders and enlist them. This takes courage and grace. It takes courage because many a leader has the belief that no one can do it as well as they can. It takes courage to say that I may not be needed in this particular role anymore. It takes grace because sometimes a leader has to give up a role that they enjoy doing themselves in the recognition that it is now someone else’s turn which will then allow them to move on to the next great project of God. Giving over your leadership role isn’t getting out of leadership or retiring from service to God, it’s expanding the leadership so more can be accomplished than just by yourself and you can be freed up to lead in another area.
There are two reasons Nehemiah picked these Hanani and Hananiah: integrity and reverence. First is integrity. Steve Sonderman says integrity means a genuine heart. There are no hidden messages and no hidden agendas. Integrity shows convictions in what you believe. Integrity shows congruence in that a person’s walk matches their talk. And third integrity shows character when no one is looking. We’ve been hit with enough of a lack of integrity in our leaders in Louisiana: politicians in whom we placed our trust and entrusted the future of our city and its resources but who instead have instead used it for personal gain. Some offered the explanation that everyone else was doing it or I deserved my piece of the pie. In reality, they ended up hurting themselves, their constituents and their communities. When you sacrifice your integrity, you have given everything away. Integrity is a non-negotiable when it comes to leadership. What Bobby Jindal did when he started his term by calling a Special Session of the Legislature to focus on law and rules of integrity was a great thing. But listen to me carefully: laws do not make a person of integrity. You have to continually choose to be a person of integrity. Image of Great Wall of China The Great Wall of China is one of the largest building construction projects ever completed. It stretches across the mountains of northern China, and is over 4000 miles long and ranges from about 15 to 30 feet thick and was up to 25 feet tall. Built as protection from the Huns of the North, armies were stationed along the walls. It seemed impregnable. But the Great Wall did not keep the enemy out. In fact three times, the wall was breached in its history. Do you know why? They bribed the gatekeeper.
Second is reverence. God must be a leader’s first priority. Nehemiah knows first hand how important it is to have God at the center of your life when you are taking on a God-sized task. He never would have had the commitment of heart to overcome obstacles, the wisdom to see through the plots against him nor the strength to carry on amidst all of the opposition. God was absolutely essential to not only completing the task but doing it with excellence and in the timing of God. So Nehemiah looks for leaders who have put God first in their lives so they will be guided and strengthened in the challenges which will lie before them. If they are ever to become a people of God again and if Jerusalem is ever to become the Holy City of God, it will take leaders of God. But Nehemiah also knows that those who genuinely honor God can be trusted by others. When God is first, integrity never becomes an issue and then the general good of the people will matter.
The third thing Nehemiah turns his attention to is the city’s protection. "The gates of Jerusalem are not to be opened until the sun is hot. While the gatekeepers are still on duty, have them shut the doors and bar them. Also appoint residents of Jerusalem as guards, some at their posts and some near their own houses." Nehemiah 7:3-4 A city will never be re-inhabited, an economy will never get off the ground and the lives of people will never be restored unless there is safety and security. The walls weren’t enough. So Nehemiah placed guards and watchmen at the doors and along the walls and then he limited the hours of operation to the day time for the protection of the residents of the city. You not only need to feel safe, you need the security to able to restore life and people to the city.
Fourth is to perpetuate their posterity. Verses 5-6 : ”And I found the book of the genealogy of those who came up at the first, and I found written in it: These were the people of the province who came up out of the captivity of those exiles whom Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon had carried into exile. They returned to Jerusalem and Judah, each to his town. They came with Zerubbabel, Jeshua, Nehemiah, Azariah, Raamiah, Nahamani, Mordecai, Bilshan, Mispereth, Bigvai, Nehum, Baanah…” Servants look at the past to discover the living story and the continuity of faith. Most of chapter 7 is a record of Israel’s families that have returned from Babylon. But it is much more than a list of forgotten names. It is a declaration of a godly community’s spiritual commitment. These people that Nehemiah had gathered together needed to understand the significance of their past, from whence they came. Remember, these people were not natives. They were Jews born in Persia. And so Nehemiah begins to root them in the past by making their lives a part of a living history that will serve the present but more importantly carry them into the future. You see, these people tell a story with truths and values. They were heroes who had stayed dedicated to God and willingly, uprooted themselves and their families from their secure and familiar surroundings to follow God’s call to a more precarious and vulnerable existence. They moved to a city that had been ravished by the enemy. But they were men and women of faith. So Nehemiah calls on the people that have just finished the wall to recognize their roots which will be an anchor for their future. These who have gone before have transferred their faith to them and it is their calling and their legacy which they carry on with them.
As we rebuild our city, we would do well to follow the example of Nehemiah to place God first in our community’s life, to elect leaders of integrity and reverence, to once again make this a city of safety where children can play in their neighborhood and people can shop without fear and finally, to remember not only who we are but whose we are.
