Three contractors were touring the White House on the same day.
One was from New York, another from Missouri, and the third from Florida. At the end of the tour, the guard asked them what they did for a living. When they each replied that they were contractors, the guard said, "Hey we need one of the rear fences redone. Why don't you guys take a look at it and give me your bids."
First the Florida contractor took out his tape measure and pencils, did some measuring and said, "I figure the job will run about $900 - $400 for materials, $400 for my crew, and $100 profit for me."
Next was the Missouri contractor. He also took out his tape measure and pencil, did some quick calculations and said, "Looks like I can do this job for $700 - $300 for materials, $300 for my crew, and $100 profit for me."
Finally, the guard asks the New York contractor for his bid. Without batting an eye, the contractor says, "$2700."
The guard, incredulous, looks at him and says, "You didn't even measure like the other guys! How did you come up with such a high figure?"
"Easy," says the contractor from New York, "$1000 for me, $1000 for you, and we hire the guy from Missouri."
We’ve been walking through the book of Nehemiah for the last few weeks. This is the story about how God gave His people a vision for a restored city and then used them to make it happen. In order to achieve big things for God it is not enough simply to get a vision of what He wants, we have to keep that vision before us. Nehemiah wasn’t the first person with the vision of a rebuilt Jerusalem, but he was the first who kept that vision in front of him until it was complete. We said last week that keeping the vision in front of you is one of the steps to fulfilling a God sized vision, along with tools like waiting for God’s timing, prayer and a knowledge of His word.
At this point in the story, Nehemiah who was the cupbearer for the king of Persia, which at the time was the most powerful empire on earth, basically left his position as basically the kings prime minister to travel across the desert and rebuild the broken city of Jerusalem. When he arrived, he rested, then he assessed the damage and finally he recruited teammates to rebuild the city.
It sounds like a great beginning, and it was, but this story can’t end at this point with a happily ever after. Because part of the assessment of the task at hand was that it would be dangerous. There was a reason the two groups that came before weren’t able to complete the rebuilding of the city, they had enemies. This concept applies to us. If we are going to attempt to be the people that God has called us to be both as individuals and as a church, as the body of Christ, then we can expect opposition. Whenever revival comes to the body opposition will come as well. We should expect it? If we believe that we have a supernatural enemy, then we must expect supernatural opposition when we attempt supernatural things.
It doesn’t matter if you try to do something grand or something big, if you’re doing it for God, our enemy will not be happy. By the way there is a reason I said something grand or something big, nothing you do for God is small. The impact that you can have on the life of a person by helping with kids club or just being a greeter every Sunday Morning can echo through eternity, because you are helping to implant the love of Christ into people. Whenever God is involved, trust me what you do is big, whether you think it is or not. Big things happen in our lives where we are, grand things take a little more effort, and a little more faith, but we should live our lives with a vision to be involved in both. But when we take those steps out we should just expect opposition. It happened to Nehemiah, it will happen to us.
So let’s pick up the story where we left off. Nehemiah, has gotten the kings authority, he has completed the journey form Persia to Jerusalem, he has recruited the people to be teammates in the rebuilding with him and now it is time to begin laying bricks. So where do you begin? They have an entire city to rebuild. Where do you begin when you feel like your life is in shambles, how do you put the whole thing back together again? Well you start by having your priorities in order. You can’t do everything at once, so don’t try, you’ll just frustrate yourself and everyone around you, you start with just one piece and pick the rest up as you go along. That’s what Nehemiah did, look at chapter 3 verse 1, “Then Eliashib the high priest rose up with his brethren the priests and built the Sheep Gate.” He started with one building block, he had the priest rebuild a gate that was close to the temple, a gate that got some use. Understand it was a symbol, it was meant to inspire everyone else to start working. See it’s one thing to say, “I rebuilt a section of the wall today and tomorrow, I’ll probably rebuild another section of the wall.” But they rebuilt a gate, it had a name, people could relate to what they did.
By starting with priorities Nehemiah inspired everyone to get involved, continue reading from verse 1, “Next to Eliashib the men of Jericho built and next to them Zaccure the Son of Imri built, also the sons of Hassenaah built the Fish Gate; they laid its beams and hung its doors with its bolts and bars.” Do you see it? They started with a priority, they rebuilt the gates and used them to inspire people to begin building all over. How do you begin to rebuild your life when things have fallen apart? You’ve messed up, or things happened that were beyond your control but they left you felling run over? You begin by putting one piece in order, and then move to the next, before you know it you’re rebuilding your life all over, everything isn’t perfect, but you’re getting better and the foundation is solid.
How do you know where to begin? Follow the advise of James 1:5, “If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all liberally and without reproach, and it will be given to you.” This is one of the great promises of God. When you need wisdom, not just for where to begin or where to go next, but for any area of your life, all you have to do is ask and He will give it to you.
If God wants to work in our lives like this, why do we wait so long to start, sometimes the biggest opponent to accomplishing God’s vision is our own apathy. Look at this, the people have started to build, gates are going up, stuff is happening everywhere and then you get to verse 3, “Next to them the Tekoites made repairs; but their nobles did not put their shoulders to the work of their Lord.” Do you catch the tone of irritation in this verse? He says, everyone was working, the Tekoites were working, but their nobles, their leaders weren’t. They weren’t doing the work of their Lord, capital L. What he’s saying is that they didn’t want to get involved for whatever excuse they came up with and they were the nobles, they were the leaders, but catch this, the people they were supposed to be leading weren’t following, they were doing the work of the Lord.
These nobles could have been remembered as being part of something great, but instead because they were content to just stick with the status quo, they are remembered as people who didn’t follow the Lord and become a part of fulfilling His vision. Don’t let your apathy, your comfort level with the status quo stop you from being a part of what God wants to do today. The past may be great, it may be horrible, but God doesn’t want you to live there, God has plans for you life today, find what they are and be a part of a team working to fulfill them.
If you want to know where, here is a simple piece of advise, work in area’s where you have an interest and a passion. Look at where Nehemiah put people to work start reading at verse 23, “After him Benjamin and Hasshub made repairs opposite their house. After them Azariah the son of Maaseiah, the son of Ananiah, made repairse by his house, After him binnui the son of Henadan, repaire another section, form the house of Azariah to the buttress…” You can keep reading to the end of the chapter but you get the point, he put people to work repairing the wall by their house. This is where the interests were, when attacks came from the outside this is where they would take their stand, it goes to figure then that the place they were most interested in building not only quickly but well was the wall by their home. So that’s where they went to work. When you look for a place to serve the Lord pick a place that you care about, a place where your heart already is. But listen also pick a place where you are passionate. If you don’t like kids don’t be in kids club, if you hate to cook don’t work in the kitchen, if you’re afraid to sing in public the praise team probably isn’t for you. But when you are interested and passionate about something, that is the place of your to get involved.
The project began with priorities, the people got involved they worked in the area’s of their interest, things were going well, but then the enemy came, he always does, it may be through a person or circumstances, but the enemy comes. In this case the main person was Sanballat. Understand that even when you have the best of intentions, that when we begin to fulfill a vision for God in our lives, the result is that someone else becomes angry. That’s Satan working in their life. Look at chapter 4 verse 1, “But is so happened, when Sanballat heard that we were rebuilding the wall, that he was furious and very indignant, and mocked the Jews.” You remember Sanballat from chapter two, he’s the one who used a lie to launch his attack at Nehemiah asking Nehemiah if he was rebelling against the king by rebuilding the city even though Nehemiah carried papers signed by the king to rebuild the city.
That was when he tried to get Nehemiah not to start, now, he goes to a different plan, he begins to ridicule them. Understand what this is, Sanballat just started to make fun of them, this was a personal attack, the equivalent of calling them girly men. He just begins to spew insults at them that have nothing to do with the truth. If you have to resort to personal attacks on someone, if you’re not talking about their ability but about them, you probably need to spend sometime in prayer, because at that moment you are Sanballat. If someone calls you and talks to you about someone else and all they have are rude personal attacks, you don’t need to listen to them, that is poison and the best thing you can do for both of you is not to listen.
The insults are the beginning, the next step was unjust criticism. Listen none of us are perfect, when we start a project, there are always going to be area’s that we need help and people will come to us with constructive criticism to help us along, that criticism should be listened to, not always followed but listened to. That kind of criticism should be listened to, but that isn’t what we are talking about here, verse 3, “Now Tobiah the Ammonite was beside him, and he said, ‘Whatever they build, if even a fox goes up on it, he will break down their stone wall.’” Do you see it? This criticism was not meant to help but to hurt, this is something right off of an elementary school playground, because even Jr. Highers don’t talk like this, when someone talks to you like this, you pray for them, and keep doing what needs to be done.
Finally when the verbal attacks didn’t work he decided it was time to fight. But look at how he goes about it? Verse 8, “All of them conspired together to come and attack Jerusalem and create confusion.” Understand what has happened all these people have gathered around, they have all talked about how weak Israel is, how incompetent they are, how a weak little fox can knock over their wall, but when they decide to fight they all want to do it together, because they are afraid of Israel, do you see it? All of them conspired together because all of them were too afraid to do it alone. Israel wasn’t so weak, and neither are you, when you want to do something for God and Satan tells you that you are weak, he’s only trying to do it because he knows that you are strong and he is the one who is actually afraid, not afraid of you but afraid of what God will do through you. With God no matter how far down we may go, city destroyed, gates burned, people in exile, still they were strong, no matter how far down you may be when God stands with you, you are strong.
How strong were they? Look at verses 11-20, “Our adversaries said, ‘They will neither know nor see anything, till we come into their midst and kill them and cause the work to cease.’ So it was, when the jews who dwelt near them came, that they told us ten times, ‘From whatever place you turn, they will be upon us.’ Therefore I positioned men behind the lower parts of the wall, at the openings; and I set the people according to their families, with their swords, their spears, and their bows. And I looked, and arose and said to the nobles, to the leaders, and to the rest of the people, ‘do not be afraid of them. Remember the Lord, great and awesome, and fight for your brethren, your sons, your daughters, your wives, and your houses.’ And it happened, when our enemies heard that it was known to us, and that God had brought their plot to nothing, that all of us returned to the wall, everyone to his work. So it was, from that time on, that half of my servants worked at construction, while the other half held the spears, the shields, the bows, and wore armor; and the leaders were behind all the house of Judah. Those who built on the wall, and those who carried burdens, loaded themselves so that with one hand they worked at constructions, and with the other held a weapon. Every one of the builders had his sword girded at his side as he built. And the one who sounded the trumpet was beside me. Then I said to the nobles, the rules and the rest of the people, “The work is great and extensive, and we are separated far from one another on the wall…wherever you hear the sound of the trumpet, rally to us there. Our God will fight for us.”
Some basic steps Nehemiah used in this situation. First he grouped people by family. Why? Because people will fight hard to defend their family. But also because you know your family. The enemy was planning to infiltrate them, to send in spies who would blend in and then when the attack came it would be from within and without. You can’t do that with family because they know each other. The church needs to be a family because we need to know each other and protect each other from the attacks of the enemy. The other thing that we see is that they were committed to helping each other. If the attack were to come, then everyone, including Nehemiah was to rally to whoever was attacked. We need to be willing to rally together to support each other. When one part of the body is in trouble we are all to come to their assistance.
We’re going to talk more about this next week but the only hope for victory that the enemy saw was a sneak attack. They didn’t think they would win a frontal assault so they decided to join the work force and attack from within. Why as a church must we keep our focus on God’s agenda and not anyone else’s because when we take our eyes off of Christ it opens us to attack from within, and to succeed as a body we need each other.
So how do we meet the challenge? Well to begin with continue to pray, in fact pray before, during, and after your work. You need to pray for God’s wisdom to give you a vision and set your priorities, you need prayer for when you are in the midst of the project, so that God will give you the strength to get it done, and you need to pray when you are done with the task for God to continue to work in what He has done through you and for whatever task it is that God has next. When the walls were rebuilt, and the gates were hung, that was not the end of the tasks that God had for Nehemiah to do. When you complete one task for the Lord, when He has done a work in you, that is a great thing, take a time to pause, but remember it is a pause and find what the next thing is that He has for you to do. As long as you are alive on this earth God has a next thing for you to do.
No matter the level of opposition continue to pray, next, continue to work on God’s vision. Remember Sanballat, he started with lies to intimidate them, he made fun of them, he criticized them unjustly, but it didn’t work, look at the two responses form Nehemiah. First he prayed, verses 4 and 5, “Hear, O our God, for we are despised; turn their reproach on their own heads; and give them as plunder to a land of captivity! Do not cover their iniquity, and do not let their sin be blotted out from before You; for they have provoked You to anger before the builders.” The first response was to pray, but look at the next verse, verse 6, “So we built the wall, and the entire wall was joined together up to half its height, for the people had a mind to work.” I love the mind set we see here. Nehemiah is mad, you don’t pray a prayer wishing someone be conquered and sent off as a slave unless you’re really upset. You realize what this means, when we get mad or upset at somebody, we’re allowed to talk to God about it, and He will listen, He might not take our advise, but I think He’d rather we vent our anger to Him then to anyone else.
But then notice the second part, the effect of the opposition was that the people had a mind to work. The ridicule came, the unjust criticism came, and it made the people determined to succeed. “A fox will knock it down huh? I’ll show you.” And they built that wall to half its height. It wasn’t tall enough to be defensible yet, but it was coming, all of the gates weren’t in place yet but they were coming. The people went to work.
So then the enemy planned to physically attack them. Realize that this called for a change in tactics. I don’t care how many people are working on a project, I don’t care how motivated they are, if they are armed with tools and get attacked by an army with weapons, they’re in trouble. This called for a change in tactics, understand the lesson, no matter how carefully we plan, we must be flexible enough to change. Nehemiah had all the people working as fast as they could to build the walls, he used everything he could to keep them motivated to do the work, he set priorities so they could see things begin to be accomplished, he put people to work by their homes so that they had an interest in what they were doing, he prayed, and it was working, but now the plans needed to be changed and rather than cling to the way things were done, he was willing to change to the way things needed to be done. If God is going to work through us consistently we have to be ready to change when He says it’s time. Nehemiah pulled people off of the work and put them on guard duty, all of the people had to carry their swords while they worked. He set people up with trumpets so that if there was an attack everyone could run to the sound of the attack and they would fight together. Instead of solely focusing on work, some of the people had to focus on defense, it wasn’t the way it started, given that they hadn’t been considered a threat before, probably very few of them were comfortable with their new role but they did it anyway because that was what was necessary to finish the job that God had given them. Listen God didn’t call us to be comfortable He calls us to be successful.
Finally as the walls are going up and the final gates are being built and secured, they had to stay alert. Verse 22 says, “At the same time I also said to the people, ‘Let each man and his servant stay at night in Jerusalem, that they may be our guard by night and a working party by day. Even as success came Nehemiah didn’t let his guard down, he realized the enemy was still out there and still wanted to see him defeated. As Christians even when we think everything is going well in our lives, we need to stay alert we have an enemy who wants to harm us. If you have never accepted Christ, it’s not about joining a religion it’s about realizing that it is a scary world, it is a place where people get hurt, but God wants to walk through this world with you. Jesus died on the cross so that no matter what may happen, in this world or the next He could always be there to comfort and protect you. It isn’t a promise that bad things will never happen, but it is a promise that when they do, He wants to work through them so that you are a success, won’t you let Him into your life today?
