In a classic episode from The Andy Griffith Show in the 1960’s, Andy Taylor, the sheriff of Mayberry, is out of town. His deputy, Barney Fife, is in charge, and he has deputized Gomer, the local mechanic. The two deputies are walking down the street one evening when they notice that someone is robbing the town's bank. They hide behind a car, scared out of their wits, and don't know what to do. Finally, Gomer looks at Barney and says excitedly, “Shazam! We need to call the police.”
In utter exasperation, Barney shoots back: “We are the police!” (Stephen Mansfield, Mansfield's Book of Manly Men, Nelson, 2013, page 12; www.PreachingToday.com)
Sometimes, we look at our world being robbed of its moral values, and it scares us. Then we realize, “We are the church!” We are the ones God has called to be salt and light in a dark and decaying world. We are the ones God has called to build His Kingdom with new followers of Christ, who have been rescued from the one who came to steal and kill and destroy, i.e., from Satan himself.
It sounds like the days of Nehemiah, when God’s people were charged with rebuilding the walls around Jerusalem. You see, Jerusalem was the place where God chose to establish his reputation; but 400 years before Christ, the place was in ruins. God’s reputation had been wrecked, His honor stolen, because His people were disobedient. That opened the floodgates of evil to overtake and destroy the city in the form of the Babylonian Empire. 70 years later, a scattering of God’s people had returned, but nothing much happened for a hundred years. Then God moved in their hearts to rebuild the city and thus reestablish His reputation in the area.
They, like we, had to build God’s Kingdom in tough times. So how do we do it? How do we build the Kingdom of God amidst such darkness to reestablish God’s good name in our land? How do we equip people to follow Christ when the world is pushing them and us in the opposite direction?
Well, if you have your Bibles, I invite you to turn with me to Nehemiah 3, Nehemiah 3, where we see how they got the job done.
Nehemiah 3:1-4 Then Eliashib the high priest rose up with his brothers the priests, and they built the Sheep Gate. They consecrated it and set its doors. They consecrated it as far as the Tower of the Hundred, as far as the Tower of Hananel. And next to him the men of Jericho built. And next to them Zaccur the son of Imri built. The sons of Hassenaah built the Fish Gate. They laid its beams and set its doors, its bolts, and its bars. And next to them Meremoth the son of Uriah, son of Hakkoz repaired. And next to them Meshullam the son of Berechiah, son of Meshezabel repaired. And next to them Zadok the son of Baana repaired. (ESV)
Now, I’m not going to take the time to read the whole chapter, because it continues to list the names of various people who worked on various parts of the wall. However, I do want to draw some principles from this chapter, which will help us build God’s Kingdom and reestablish His good name in this place like they had to do then. And the first thing I notice is the number of different kinds of people who worked on the wall.
There were priests (vs.1,22,28), goldsmiths (vs.8, 31-32), perfumers (vs.8), rulers (vs.9,12,14-19), merchants (vs.32), and women (vs.12). Warren Wiersbe, in his commentary on Nehemiah, noted that “42 different groups are identified” here in this one chapter alone (Warren Wiersbe, Be Determined, p.39). And that’s the first principle we discover in this chapter. If we’re going to build God’s Kingdom in desperate times, then…
WE MUST ALL WORK.
Every single one of us must do our part to get the job done. Every single one of us must put our hands to the task, not just the leaders, not just the specialists, but every one of us. In fact, Nehemiah’s name is not even mentioned in this chapter!
That’s because it takes all kinds of people to get the job done.
In 1950, Indy car pit crews consisted of four men – including the driver! No one was allowed to get near the car except this small crew of specialists. Do you know how long it took them to replace two tires and fill the tank back then? More than 60 seconds!
Today, an Indy pit crew consists of 11 members – excluding the driver. Six are permitted direct contact with the car. Five serve as behind-the-wall assistants; so that now, a full service pit stop that replaces all four tires, adjusts the wings, and tops off the tank takes less than eight seconds!
However, Formula 1 pit crews are even bigger – sometimes involving over 20 people who all have their role to play. When everyone understands his role, and when everyone on the pit crew does his job with purpose and passion, take a look at how fast they can get the job done (show video: Pit Stop). The team completed the same job in under three seconds. (YouTube, “Formula 1 Pit Stops 1950 & Today”, Posted 4-12-14; www.PreachingToday.com)
When the pastor, along with just a handful of people, attempt to do the work of the church, progress is slow and sometimes awkward. However, when every member knows and does his or her part, the difference is absolutely amazing! When we ALL pitch in to do the work, we can accomplish amazing things to the glory of God.
It takes all kinds of people to get the job done, especially when they are working in their area of greatest concern. There is a phrase that jumps out in this chapter, and that’s the phrase, “opposite their house”. Take a look at it.
Verse 10 – “Jedaiah the son of Harumaph repaired OPPOSITE HIS HOUSE.”
Verse 23 – “Benjamin and Hasshub repaired OPPOSITE THEIR HOUSE.”
Verse 28 – “Above the Horse Gate the priests repaired, each OPPOSITE HIS OWN HOUSE.”
Verse 29 – “Zadok the son of Immer repaired OPPOSITE HIS OWN HOUSE.”
Verse 30 – “Meshullum the son of Berechiah repaired OPPOSITE HIS CHAMBER.”
Each worked in the area of their greatest concern – near their own homes! You see, if the enemy breached the wall there, their house would be the first one under attack.
I think it was D. L. Moody who said, “If everybody would sweep the area in front of their own home, then the whole street would be clean.” You see, we’re not talking about everybody doing everything, no. We’re talking about everybody doing something, working in their area of greatest concern.
If we’re going to build God’s Kingdom in desperate times, then we must ALL work. But more than that…
WE MUST ALL WORK TOGETHER.
We must all pull in the same direction, towards the same goal. We must all labor side-by-side in harmony with each other. That’s what the people in Nehemiah’s day did.
There is another phrase which sticks out in this chapter, and it’s the phrase, “next to him” or “next to them”. Look at it in…
Verse 2 – “next to him” and “next to them”
Verse 4 – “next to them” three times
Verse 5 – “next to them”
Verse 7 – “next to them”
Verse 8 – “next to them” two times
Verse 9 – “next to them”
Verse 10 – “next to them” two times
Verse 12 – “next to him”
Verse 17 – “next to him”
Verse 19 – “next to him”
All these people are working “next to” each other. 15 times the phrase appears. Then 15 times a very similar phrase appears.
It’s the phrase “after him” or “after them”. Look at it in…
Verse 16 – “after him”
Verse 17 – “after him”
Verse 18 – “after him”
Verse 20 – “after him”
Verse 21 – “after him”
Verse 22 – “after him”
Verse 23 – “after them” two times
Verse 24 – “after him
Verse 25 – “after him”
Verse 27 – “after him”
Verse 29 – “after them” two times
Verse 30 – “after him”, and
Verse 31 – after him”
30 times it’s mentioned in the text. One after another, they’re working side-by-side to get the job done. And that’s what we need to do if we’re going to build the Kingdom of God in desperate times. We must all work together to get the job done.
One day, a little girl in Canada wandered into the countryside in the dead of winter. When her family realized she was missing, they organized a search. They called the people of the community together, and each went their own way looking for the little girl. Soon it became dark and the temperature dropped even further. Still no one could find the girl.
Then someone suggested that they join hands and cover the grass fields together. That’s when they found the little girl, but it was too late. She was curled up on the ground, frozen in the cold. Then someone cried, “If only we had joined hands before!” (Bible Illustrator)
God calls us to rescue the perishing, to seek and save the lost for Jesus’ sake. But we must join hands and work together if we’re going to get the job done.
You see, we really can build God’s Kingdom in these desperate times. We really can encourage people to follow Jesus even when our culture is pushing in exactly the opposite direction. We saw it in the church’s response to Hurricane Katrina several years ago.
John Marks, a producer for television's 60 Minutes, went on a two-year quest to investigate evangelicals, the group he had grown up among and later rejected. He wrote a book about the quest called Reasons to Believe: One Man's Journey among the Evangelicals and the Faith He Left Behind.
In the book, he describes the church's response to Hurricane Katrina, which turned the corner for him and became a key reason for him to believe again. One Baptist church in Baton Rouge fed 16,000 people a day for weeks; another housed 700 homeless evacuees. Years after the hurricane, and long after federal assistance had dried up, a network of churches in surrounding states was still sending regular teams to help rebuild houses. Most impressively to Marks, all these church efforts crossed racial lines and barriers in the Deep South. As one worker told him, “We had whites, blacks, Hispanics, Vietnamese, good old Cajun… We just tried to say, hey, let's help people. This is our state. We'll let everybody else sort out that other stuff. We've got to cook some rice.”
Marks concludes: I would argue that this was a watershed moment in the history of American Christianity… nothing spoke more eloquently to believers, and to nonbelievers who were paying attention, than the success of a population of believing volunteers measured against the massive and near-total collapse of secular government efforts. (Philip Yancey, The Question That Never Goes Away, Creative Trust Digital, Kindle Edition, 2013; www.PreachingToday.com)
Simple believers did what the government could not do. By working together across racial barriers, they not only helped rebuild the area; they were and still are a testimony to a world that has no answers.
If we’re going to build God’s Kingdom in these desperate times, then we must all work, and we must all work together. However…
WE MUST ALL WORK HUMBLY TOGETHER.
We must labor with an attitude of submissiveness, putting away the pride that too often separates us.
That means we must approach the task with the mindset that no job is too small. No task is beneath my dignity to perform.
Verse 14 is an intriguing verse. Take a look at it. It says, “Malchijah the son of Rechab, ruler of the district of Beth-haccherem, repaired the Dung Gate. He rebuilt it and set its doors, its bolts, and its bars.”
Now, the Dung Gate was in the south end of the city right near the garbage dump. It was the gate through which all the garbage was carried, all the sewage and the waste, all the trash and the filth. This was probably the lowest of the low jobs in the project, a job that very few would choose to do. But look who’s doing it here! A ruler from a nearby district! A city leader is repairing the toilets!
I remember my early years in Ellsworth when our new church was struggling financially. I volunteered to take a pay cut to help the church out. Then I took a part-time job as the janitor for the Ellsworth County Senior Citizens center.
Now, I have to admit that I did not do it with the best of attitudes all the time. After all, I was a man with a four-year, graduate degree cleaning toilets. It just didn’t seem right. God had called me to preach the Word, care for His people, and lead them to do great things, NOT to clean toilets.
Thankfully, that job lasted only a little more than a year, but God used it to teach me some very important lessons, the first of which was a lesson in humility. You see, my calling DOES include things like cleaning toilets if that’s what it takes to get the job done. If we’re going to build God’s Kingdom in desperate times, then sometimes it means repairing the refuse gate; sometimes it means doing the dirty job nobody else wants to do.
A team of researchers from the University of Michigan and Yale studied how people in unglamorous jobs coped with their often devalued work. When the researchers tried to think of supposedly unrewarding jobs to study, they chose hospital janitors. But what they learned from their studies took them completely by surprise.
When the researchers interviewed the cleaning staff of a major hospital in the Midwest, they discovered that a certain subset of housekeepers didn't see themselves as part of the janitorial staff at all. They saw themselves as part of the professional staff, as part of the healing team. And that changed everything.
These people would get to know the patients and their families and would offer support in small but important ways: a box of Kleenex here, a glass of water there, or a word of encouragement. One housekeeper reported rearranging pictures on the walls of comatose patients, with the hope that a change of scenery might have some positive effect.
The researchers coined a term for what these special housekeepers brought to their job – job crafting. Job crafting means that people take their existing job expectations – or job descriptions – and expand them to suit their desire to make a difference… One of the lead researchers put it this way: “People who job-craft don't just reshape their jobs to make life better for themselves, but to serve others in some beneficial way.” (David Sturt, Great Work, McGraw Hill, 2014, pp 7-9; www. PreachingToday.com)
That’s the attitude that makes all the difference in the world. When we view even the menial jobs as part of the bigger job of building God’s Kingdom, then it gives our work meaning.
We begin to understand that no job is too small, and no one is too big to do it.
I love the attitude of the Tekoites here in Nehemiah 3. When they finished their job in verse 5, they didn’t say, “All done! Now I can go home”. No! They took on another job at another part of the wall.
Nehemiah 3:27 After him the Tekoites repaired another section opposite the great projecting tower as far as the wall of Ophel. (ESV)
That was in stark contrast to their nobles, who refused to work at all.
Nehemiah 3:5 And next to them the Tekoites repaired, but their nobles would not stoop to serve their Lord. (ESV)
They thought they were too big for the job. Someone once asked Leonard Bernstein, a great band leader, “What is the most difficult instrument to play?” He responded with a quick wit: “Second fiddle. I can get plenty of first violinists, but to find one who plays second violin with as much enthusiasm or second French horn or second flute, now that’s a problem. And yet if no one plays second, we have no harmony.” (Bible Illustrator)
If we’re going to build God’s Kingdom in these desperate times, we must be willing to play second fiddle to one another. That means we must all work humbly together.
Make me a servant, humble and meek.
Lord, let me lift up those who are weak;
And may the prayer of my heart always be
Make me a servant, make me a servant,
Make me a servant today. (Kelly Willard)
