One Holy Passion
Nehemiah 3
March 4, 2001
¡§Ordinary Heroes¡¨
Back when it was still a novelty to sing choruses; back when we youth thought that ¡§Pass It On¡¨ and ¡§I Wish We¡¦d All Been Ready¡¨ was the height of Christian cool; back when bell bottoms were in for the first time, one of the first choruses I learned was Psalm 48:1-2¡Xif you remember it, sing it with me! ¡§Great is the Lord¡K¡¨ This psalm speaks of the city of Jerusalem, though it doesn¡¦t mention it by name, and calls it ¡§beautiful for situation¡¨ (KJV) or my NASB says it is ¡§beautiful in elevation¡¨, and then calls it ¡§the joy of the whole earth.¡¨
This Jerusalem, however, was anything but¡Xmore like the laughingstock of the whole earth! If God loved the Jews so much, why did His city look like this? A better question: if the Jews were God¡¦s people, why did the city look like this?
Nehemiah was a man not content with this situation, as we have seen, and today we study the actual rebuilding of the walls. God has worked tremendously in preparing the stage for this to happen; much more time has elapsed in this preparation than it would actually take to rebuild these walls¡Xthough it is hard to say if the people realized this or not. And thus we come to Nehemiah 3, and are immediately faced with one of these lists that proves to be the bane of would-be Bible readers. 38 different individual names and 42 places are mentioned, and we dread wading into this list we might call ¡§The Fellowship of the Unpronounceable!¡¨
Understand that the writing style of the day was such that lists such as these and the many genealogies of Scripture were put right into the text. Today, we would find a way to footnote, but this was not their way. At the same time, one might infer from the many lists such as these in the Bible that God indeed cares about individuals, caring enough to include individual names within His Holy Word.
This list, however, is immediately interesting to me, much moreso than many of the genealogies which consist mainly of name after tongue-tying name. I think that in between the Meshezabels and Henadads there are some pertinent spiritual truths for us to consider! Let¡¦s take a look at lessons we can learn from some ordinary heroes!
The work on the walls was accomplished because the people:
1. Committed themselves to the same goal.
Nehemiah had articulated the vision, a simple one: ¡§come, let us rebuild the walls.¡¨ There is nothing particularly ground-breaking about recognizing the simple fact that we must work together on the same team after the same goal if we are going to have success as a church! And yet I daresay that you could go to a whole lot of churches in the U. S. of A. and find that there would be no clear direction among the people, no clear purposes which people could articulate. ¡§We aim at nothing and hit it with accuracy!¡¨ To the degree that we focus on our own agendas, we will be distracted from God¡¦s agenda and the goals toward which He would have us move.
Unity is absolutely indispensable in the church. And unity ought to be centered around a shared focus¡Xwe set our hearts on God¡¦s glory and upon God¡¦s purposes for us as a church. There is tremendous power in cooperation. Someone once said that ¡§snow is a beautiful demonstration of what God can do with a bunch of flakes!¡¨ Individually, we can¡¦t accomplish a whole lot alone. An single snowflake is among the most delicate, frail things we can see. But if enough of them stick together they can paralyze a city!
We spoke in our small group this past Thursday evening about how important it is to be focused on the same objective, God¡¦s objective, and to work together as a team to accomplish God¡¦s calling for us. We¡¦ll be talking in weeks to come about building a building, but God has called us to be involved with Him in the building of His Kingdom, which is not about bricks and mortar. I told the group of a previous church I served, and how this church had gotten away from this priority. For its first twenty-five years, this church had grown and prospered, and finally built its new church building. A funny thing happened then, though; the church began a decades-long slide backward. It was as if they had set their minds on a goal, all right, and pulled together toward the building of a building, but that they had missed the point and forgotten that a building is not an end in itself, but rather a means toward the purpose of building people. This is our goal, and we will succeed by the grace of God to the degree that we keep ourselves focused on and pursuing God¡¦s goal for us.
2. Followed the same leaders.
Nehemiah was the man God had called to lead, and the people followed the lead that Nehemiah set! Now don¡¦t overreact to that statement and suggest that I am setting myself up as pastor, or our elders, as unaccountable parish potentates! That¡¦s doesn¡¦t happen here, and it certainly is not my point. But at the same time, it is Scriptural that we as believers follow the leaders that God has appointed (Hebrews 13:17). There was not mass confusion, but rather a humble submission to Nehemiah and a willingness to work at the assigned task for the completion of the work.
Further, notice the first listed in verse 1: Eliashib and his fellow priests set the example. These guys roll up their sleeves and get with the task at hand. The Sheep Gate was near the temple, the gate through which animals would be brought for sacrifice at the temple. The people saw these leaders and others mentioned in this chapter getting down and dirty in the work, and they followed the example and leadership of these men.
3. Thought little of themselves.
There was a lot of unselfishness in this project. We read of people coming from Jericho, Tekoa, Gibeon, Mizpah, Zanoah, Beth Hakkerem, Beth Zur, and Keilah, among others. What we need to understand is that these folks were folks who had nothing personally to gain from being there to work on the wall. They did not live in Jerusalem; they were from outside the city. They could have easily stayed home and said, ¡§that doesn¡¦t affect me!¡¨ Yet, they got in there and work shoulder to shoulder with the people of the city.
There were all kinds of folks on the wall working! Viggo Olsen, who helped rebuild 10,000 houses in war-torn Bangladesh in the early ¡¥70¡¦s, was greatly inspired, he said, by this chapter. He writes, ¡§I was struck that no expert builders were listed in the ¡¥Holy Land Brigade¡¦. There were priests, priests¡¦ helpers, goldsmiths, perfume makers, and women, but no expert builders or carpenters were named.¡¨ Only the nobles of Tekoa, in verse 5, are listed as having said, ¡§That¡¦s not in my job description!¡¨ Now, if it¡¦d been me, I¡¦d have looked for the big burly bruising guys, guys with muscles bulging out of sleeveless shirts, with hard hats covering pony tails, maybe a tattoo or two. But Nehemiah didn¡¦t have that; he just had a bunch of folks who said, ¡§whatever I am and have, I am available!¡¨ And that¡¦s all he needed!
In our ¡§Fellowship Focus¡¨, which you see on the bulletin every week, we say that one of the things we are about is ¡§every member a minister¡¨. Another word for ¡§minister¡¨ is the word ¡§servant¡¨. Servants are not people who concern themselves with their own self-aggrandizement or self-promotion; they are people who are most concerned with the glory of the master that they serve. I¡¦m pretty sure that these people who are named had no idea as they worked that 2500 years later we would be reading their names; I¡¦m pretty sure that none of them walked over to Nehemiah and said, ¡§Hey, Nehemiah, that book you¡¦re writing there? Would you put a plug in for me there?¡¨ It¡¦s amazing how much can be accomplished when it doesn¡¦t matter who gets the credit!
4. Paid the price to accomplish the task.
Notice this as well: this wasn¡¦t easy work! It cost them something! For nearly two months these folks dropped completely what they were doing in order to daily climb on a wall and work. This wasn¡¦t glorious work from an earthly standpoint; it was sweaty, back-breaking hard labor. Let¡¦s not spiritualize this: these were real people with real muscles that hurt really badly like ours do when we do this kind of thing! This work tested their physical resources to the breaking point! And it goes without saying as well that they did not have all of the sophisticated tools and apparatus at their disposal that we do! This was tough work done in a hot sun with much opposition, which we will talk about in weeks to come. They paid the price to get it done!
Some even went on to work on a second section of the wall after finishing their assigned work. You¡¦ll see the name of Meremoth in verse 4 and again in verse 21; of Meshullam in verse 4 and again in verse 30; you¡¦ll see the men of Tekoa in verse 5 and again in verse 27. These guys didn¡¦t just do what they were assigned to do; their hearts were such that they found work to do until the work was done, paying the price to accomplish the task.
And this is what the church does, folks! I know that it is a popular thing in America to paint this picture of Christianity as a group of people who live at ease on our way to our heavenly reward. You know, if you have enough faith, you can have all of the goodies! Baloney! A better picture of what the church is all about is the doing of the will of God amid the ugliness of this world; it is the picking up daily of a cross. It is the clothing the naked and visiting those in prison and bearing one another¡¦s burdens. It is doing the difficult and inglorious work that must be done which will likely not benefit us, nor be rewarded with earthly acclaim or financial benefit.
It is Jim Elliot leading a team of five missionary men into a jungle in Ecuador to reach a head-hunting tribe of primitive Indians, and in return winding up corpses on a sandbar with spears sticking out of their backs. But it is that same Jim Elliot proclaiming that ¡§he is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.¡¨
It is a group of Christians walking miles through thick forests with their backs laden down with Bibles they smuggle in to carry to people in China who desperately need God¡¦s Word.
It is people who minister to AIDS patients and pregnant teenagers and convicts and people with broken lives and broken homes. That¡¦s what the church is and does; the normal picture of God¡¦s people is of a people who are willing to pay whatever the price in order to be obedient to their God. These people on the wall paid a significant price!
Hey, let me ask you a question: what part of the wall are you building here at FCC?
5. Accepted the approval of God as their reward.
This was bigger than they were; this was the work of God, and when we do the work of God, sometimes the only reward is the smile of God. I was speaking with a church member this week, and he said to me, ¡§sometimes, I just get frustrated working with people. You try your best to help them, and they just reject what you say and what you are trying to do, and I just get discouraged and wonder, ¡§what¡¦s the use!¡¨ Yep, try pastoring sometime! There was opposition to this project; some of the people, as we said earlier, stood to benefit little from the wall¡¦s completion. But they took their reward from knowing that they were obeying God, working to His glory. Their names stand as testament to their commitment and effort, and the wall stood as evidence of their labor of love.
And as we seek to cooperate with God in the building of this church, we need to remind ourselves that the greatest reward is to hear ¡§well done, good and faithful servant¡¨ from our Lord. This matters most! Sometimes this is what we have to cling to in serving God¡Xbut it is enough! He calls us not to fame or comfort or self-promotion, but rather to join in the greatest work¡XHis work. And be sure of this: God knows. You might think, ¡§Oh, what I¡¦m doing isn¡¦t particularly significant. I just do this little thing. Nobody notices or cares.¡¨ Listen, God cares and knows! Others may not see what you do to serve God; I may not always notice; God does!
During WWII, Winston Churchill seized many opportunities to rally not only the troops and the Parliament, but the common English folk as well. On one occasion, he was speaking to a group of miners to urge them to work hard to provide the coal to fuel Great Britain¡¦s desperate fight against the tyranny of Adolf Hitler. He used the imagery of a parade, painting the picture of a great victory march at the end of a successful war against the Nazis. He described how the foot soldiers would march down the main streets receiving hero¡¦s welcomes. Behind them would come the flyboys of the RAF who had beaten back the attacks of the Luftwaffe. Then there would come the legions from the Royal Navy who had fought on the high seas. And then, at the end of the line would march hundreds and thousands of sweat-streaked coal miners, common laborers falling into ranks behind the fighting men. And as Churchill told the story, someone would call out from the crowd, asking where these men were while their brothers and sons were out on the frontlines fighting the Nazis. Churchill said to these miners that, when that day comes and that question is asked, make this your response: ¡§we were deep in the earth with our faces to the coal!¡¨
The story of Fellowship Community Church is in the process of being written. We are ready to celebrate our 10th anniversary. Someday folks will look back at the 110th anniversary of this church, if Jesus tarries. They may or may not have a list of our names, but I hope that when that story is told, it will be one not of superstars and celebrities, but of ordinary heroes. People who committed themselves to the purpose God had given them, who followed the leaders God had brought them, who thought little of themselves but much of the glory of God, who were willing to sacrifice and bleed and sweat and pray. People who had gone on to that reward toward which they had pressed, to that treasure that they had laid up in heaven instead of on earth. Not all Nehemiahs; some just Uzziels and Baruchs and Jehoiadas and Eliashibs¡Kand Joes and Jans and Pams and Chucks and Steves and Daves and Vickis and Kellys and Dons¡Kand you! Just¡Kordinary heroes!
Some Application Questions:
„h Our Elders and pastoral staff have delineated some goals for our church regarding future ministry. Are you willing to follow, in the sense of joining together in the accomplishing of those goals?
„h How concerned are you that you receive recognition for what you do In service to God?
„h Would you characterize your commitment to Christ and his church as sacrificial, as judged by your actions?
„h If one of our chief values as a church is that every member be a minister, can you define what ministry role you are currently playing?
