Summary
Pastor James walks through Nehemiah chapter 3, emphasizing how God uses ordinary people to accomplish His work through cooperation and commitment. He highlights the importance of each individual taking responsibility for their section of the wall, illustrating that ministry requires both organization and teamwork. The sermon encourages listeners to find their own "section" in the church, actively participating in building the community for God's glory.
Welcome and Introduction
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Amen. I'm glad that we can come just as we are to the Lord. Children's Church is dismissed now at this time. If you have your Bibles, we're going to be in Nehemiah chapter 3. Nehemiah chapter 3. We're going to look at the entire chapter today, and we'll give some introductory remarks about this.
Scotty was talking this morning in Sunday school that it's good to know our limitations and to be meek and understand some things.
If you've been around me for any amount of time, you know that reading fun words are not the best for me, and so I've asked my English teacher wife to come. She's going to read the entire chapter, and these are some fun names and some fun words, and we'll talk about them.
But let's stand and read God's Word, Nehemiah chapter 3, and listen to my wife as she reads these words. Father, we thank you for the reading of your Word. We pray that you would have your hand on the sermon today. In your name we pray. Amen. You may be seated.
Today we're going to preach through every single one of those names and every single one of those gates, and so buckle in. Here we go. I'm just joking, but we, I'm thankful for my wife for doing that.
It would have been a butcher block. I've been practicing all week, just in case you told me no. I even had all week long. I've been listening.
I do this often. I don't know if you do this, but I listen to the Bible read to me as I read along. It helps me hear and read and pay attention.
I've got a little bit of ADHD, I'm probably sure, and so this helps me, and so I listen to the Bible a lot.
With the Bible app, you can just hit play, and they'll read it. I've got a British guy who reads the Bible to me in Britain, and that nice, fun British accent, you can do Australian, you can do different ones,
and so I have the Bible read to me in Britain with a Britain accent, and so you can do that multiple times, but I have done this all throughout the week, prepping for this, and one thing that has
stood out to me by way of introduction is as we read through this story, and we know God gave Nehemiah a burden in chapter one. Chapter two, he opened the door. He provided the way of success for him to come to Jerusalem. Now he's here.
God Uses Ordinary People
He's walked the walls, and he's commanded the people. He's rallied the people to come and build this wall. We begin to see that God uses ordinary people where they're at to work together to do their part in order for God to get the glory.
One of the phrases, I don't know if you listened to it or heard it while Allison was reading, the phrase that continually came up was, next to him. Next to him.
It was one person doing their work, and the next person beside them doing their work, and so on and so forth, and I don't know of a better passage of scripture that can be explained to church than this passage.
We see one person working next to him, another person working, using their gifts, talents, and abilities,
constantly doing the work of the Lord. And if you're like me, oftentimes in the Old Testament, you get to a passage of scripture,
and you are reading, and all of a sudden it's a bunch of names, and it's a bunch of places that we don't know.
Oftentimes, this is what you're tempted to say, well, this is where my devotion life is gonna end today because I don't know if I can understand all these names and places.
And I think oftentimes when that happens, God is using these things that are being said and these principles that we can apply to our life to help us understand how we can actually live our life a practical way. And I wanna do that this morning to you.
I wanna give us some practical advice and good things that are gonna help us. Chapter two, Nehemiah commands them on what they were going to do, but chapter three begins to walk through,
okay, let's get the work done. Let's figure out how this work is going to be done and what it's gonna look like
in our practical everyday life. One of the things, and I came across this in the commentary, was how the difference between a vision and a ministry can actually look.
A vision, I do this, I don't know if you've noticed, every year at the beginning of the year, I give up and I give a vision of what the Lord's gonna do and how the Lord's working in our church, core values, mission statement, vision and values.
A vision is one thing, it can be announced from the pulpit, but the ministry is the actual hands and feet of the church doing the ministry.
Someone has to teach the Sunday school classes. I can get up and say, we've got a vision to do these things, but if no one signs up or no one volunteers to help, then the vision just falls flat. Someone has to watch the nursery.
Someone has to set up the chairs in the different rooms and someone has to vacuum and someone has to run the sound so you can hear my awesome voice as I speak. Someone has to visit the sick. Someone has to knock on the door. Someone has to disciple the teenagers.
Someone has to take the mission trip. Someone has to clean the bathrooms and someone has to pray for the ministry of the Lord to be done. And today, as we walk through this passage, God's work gets done when God's people decide to work.
When God's people decide to step up and say, I'm going to do the ministry and help alongside to reach the community that you put me in. And Nehemiah chapter three, we have Hebrews chapter 11 that we go to often.
I go to it often in my Bible reading, the hall of fame of the heroes of the faith, the ones that sacrificed and did all the things in the Old Testament and even into the New Testament.
The Roll Call of Builders
But Nehemiah three is sort of the roll call of the people in this Jerusalem church, in this Jerusalem time. I want to relay this as the church mindset of the people who did the work. None of them we know.
We can't specifically go to this person and say, you know what? Malachajai, the son of Rechab, I know that guy. Like he was in that district of Beth-Sharan. And I want to go and I want to just talk about that guy today.
Like we couldn't do that this morning, but what we have is a group of people who decided that they were going to come together and they were going to do the work of the ministry for the glory of God.
And that's what I want us to look at today is God's wall builders then and now and how that looks. And so let's very practically look at number one,
wall builders in Nehemiah's days. Wall builders in Nehemiah's days. What did it look like in Nehemiah's time? What did these wall builders do?
What were the attributes that they had to them? How did they get this job accomplished in such a short amount of time? And what did they do in order for this to happen? The first thing they did was this. They were coordinated. They were organized.
Nehemiah came in and he didn't say, okay, everybody go build the wall. Go figure out what you're going to do. Nehemiah came in with this massive project and he said, you know what we're going to do? We're going to divide this into manageable sections.
And if you read through and you calculate all this up, it's about 40 different groups of people that were involved in working on this city walls. No one person had to do the entire project himself.
Each person had a section. Each person had a piece of the puzzle that they were looking at.
And they understood that when we begin to look at this and what needs to be done, oftentimes in your life and in my life, we can look at our life and we can look at our schedules and we can say, oh my goodness, Lord, this is so overwhelming. I can't handle all this.
But when we break it down into short little manageable sections, we can begin to process and work through this. And this is what Nehemiah did. Nehemiah said, hey, we're going to break this into each and individual little sections that can be done. I'm a list guy.
I make lists of things that need to be done, goals that I want to do. And when we begin to check off those lists, we begin to see the little manageable projects can be done.
Vicki and Vicki, they like to come in and they like to find my lists and they like to add things to my lists. And so all of a sudden, when I think my list is almost done, it's like, oh, well, something else came up. Yes, we're going to do this.
And I love it because this is how I organize my life. We go through these things.
I love how one commentator put it. He said, the work was carefully divided so that everyone knew exactly what they were responsible for and they were producing cooperation rather than confusion.
You've been to the board meetings or to the general assembly or some type of conference or you've sat in a room where you got up and you began to realize no one really knows what the purpose of this meeting is for.
Like everyone's got their own agenda and it seems chaotic and crazy where when you've been to the other ones where everything is in order, there's things that are set up right and everything is flowing the right way, there
is a difference in those meetings. I want to sort of illustrate it for you like this. My family at Christmastime, we like to do puzzles. We get some extended time out of school.
We're just sitting around the house and so my wife will break out all the different puzzles and I'm not a puzzle guy. Puzzles frustrate me and they aggravate me and I have to do a little bit at a time and I walk away.
Me and Jade did one and it was really good because it was one with squish melons.
There were like eight squish melons, four on top and four on the bottom and I really liked it because I could sort of designate, I'm going to do this specific one. It was a color.
I pulled out all those colors. I put them together and we build it by sections and this is often what happens in our life, in our church life is it's really easy when you take a massive project and you're going to build the outside.
That's Brody's favorite. And you're going to take this section and you're going to build this animal that's on this part of the puzzle and you're going to take this section and you're going to do this and all of a sudden when
each and every person has done their own little section, it all comes together and you're like,
oh my goodness, we just put together a 500 piece puzzle because we were all working together. We weren't fighting over, well, I wanted to do that section and I wanted to do this. We begin to get to the point where we are working together and the massive picture
becomes manageable in the life of what we're doing. And ministry is the same way. If I decide that I'm going to be the person that builds the whole wall and no one else is going to help, well, this is going to take forever for that to happen.
And God is looking at us and he's saying, listen, I've put something right in front of you, something that your gifts and your talents and your abilities are designed specifically for you and I want you to get to work on that project.
And what is it that God is putting right in front of you today that you can begin to step out and say, I want to be organized. I want to be the one that coordinates this specific job. Number two, we see they are cooperation. They are unified together in this ordeal.
This is one of the biggest lessons of this chapter because as I mentioned at the beginning, the repetition of next to him continues to come up. Someone repaired this section and next to him, someone repaired this section and next to him, another section was taken care of.
These are different people with different backgrounds,
different histories, different skill sets and they are coming together with one mindset, cooperating together in unity to build one specific wall.
I want you to think about and listen to some of the people that were mentioned in this passage. There were priests, there were rulers,
there were goldsmiths and craftsmen, there were merchants, there were people from even surrounding towns that were coming in and they were helping rebuild this wall. The Asbury Commentary said this, that it was the, that this group represented virtually every level of society.
People that would not normally work together came together because they had a common care for the same thing, the protection of their city and they said, this is, this is the idea, we have to come together, we have
to be unified in this because we are doing something that is greater than each and every one individually can do
and this is the picture of the church. We are coming together, we do not have the same personalities,
we do not have the same gifts, we do not have the same backgrounds. Some of us in here like Arkansas and they like the Razorbacks that lose to Georgia by like 40 points.
Some people in here, they are in this room today like that and we all come together and we love each other, we love the same Savior,
we love the same gospel, we love the same mission and we have the same Lord and we are working together in unity for God to work in our life. No one laughed at my Arkansas joke when I was preaching there. Someone did, someone was there to say an amen.
We all have different personalities. If everyone in here looked and talked exactly like me, my wife would get very frustrated.
Okay? We would, if everyone in here was all the, had the exact same gifts and the exact same talents, we would be like, why is this like some weird cult going on? Okay?
But we're coming together and I've got one background and you've got another background and your personality is different than my personality and we come together and we say, what can I do to help build this wall for Jesus? How can I not make life harder for people?
How can I come together and say, what can I do to help your ease out? I'm going to work on my little bit of wall and all of a sudden I see my neighbor working on theirs and hey, what do you need? Oh, you need some more mortar? Hey, I've got some extra.
You need three more bricks? Yeah, I've got three more bricks. Oh, you need another hoe?
I've got this little hoe you can use it to deal the ground up. I've got these things for you to use and I want to share what I've got with one another. How are we helping build the ministry of what Christ has called us to do? We see they're coordinated.
We see there's cooperation. Number three, we see they were committed. They were personally invested in what was going on.
As I read through this chapter and as I've studied all week long, this is probably one of my favorite portions of this chapter. Several people were beginning to build the walls right next to their houses.
The Bible says that they were in this region, they were in this area by this gate and they walked outside and they saw the walls that Nehemiah was talking about in front of their own house was torn down.
And I want you to understand why this is so important because when you start building what's right in front of your house, what's right in front of where you're at, you begin to be personally invested because this is
Ownership and Responsibility
representing the safety of your family. This is representing the safety of your community.
It's what you're looking at. Your family is the most vulnerable thing that we have and all of a sudden you take ownership of this section of the wall from this point to this point and you start building and you start repairing and you start doing the work in this specific area
and all of a sudden this is the thing that you can take pride in because it's easy for you to look out the window and say, you know what, somebody over there ought to clean up that part of the street.
But when it's right in front of your street, in front of your house, right in front where you have, all of a sudden it makes things just a little bit different. It's the idea of are you going to be a servant or are you going to be a spectator?
Are you going to be the participant, the one that's doing the ministry, that's doing the work or are you going to sit on the outside and say, you know what, they're not doing the things that I would do or how I would do it and
they just begin to critique everything or do we step into the picture and say, hey, I want to help you right next to where you're at and I'm going to stand right beside you and we're going to work together.
It's easy for us to ride around a town and see people's neighborhoods that have trash everywhere on their neighborhood and yards that aren't mowed but when you drive home and you realize, man, I haven't mowed in a week
and someone has thrown a bag of garbage in my yard, it's easy for us to get out of our car, go grab a trash bag and start cleaning up our own yard because we have pride in what we
have and all of a sudden God is saying, what is it that you are involved in and what can you be involved in in the ministry so that you can work with others and begin to reach other people?
What is the ministry that's right in front of you that God has put right in front of you to say, this is what I have called you to do and we get to step into this and say, God,
I want to work and I want to be committed and I want to be personally invested in what you have for me. Verse five is probably one of the saddest verses in this entire chapter. I'm going to read it again. It says, it says that
beside of them the Tequitites began, made repairs but their nobles did not lift a finger to help their supervisors.
There were people that were part of this building project, they were part of this rebuilding of the walls of Jerusalem that were contrary to what was going on.
We're not willing to invest and work for the ministry. The nobles of Tekeah are remembered for one unfortunate reason. They were remembered in this passage of people who selflessly gave of each other themselves. They were people in this group that said, we're not going to do anything.
We're going to do our own thing and we're going to be remembered for what we did not do.
And I want this to be a sobering thought for each and every one of us today by beginning to ask ourselves when it comes to the end of our life, when it comes to the end of what we're doing, what will we be remembered for?
Are we going to be remembered for the things we did, the things that we never do?
Are we going to be remembered for the people that we reached for the gospel or are we going to be remembered for the people that didn't go across the street and witness to our neighbors and say, hey, do
you know about this man named Jesus? He changed my life forever. He made a difference in my life.
Can I invite you to church? Can I tell you about this man named Jesus? Are we going to be the people that do the things or are we going to be the people that are remembered for not doing what God has called us to do? Many took their share.
Some even took additional sections, the scripture says, but yet the nobles here refused to participate.
And all of a sudden we begin to say to ourselves, what is our greatest contribution for what God is doing in our ministry and in our work?
The common people from Tekeah, the common people that were there, they worked and they did what they were supposed to do but the people that were over them refused to work. I love this one statement that came to me.
sometimes the people who have the least authority have the greatest willingness and impact that we'll ever see.
Well, sometimes we'll never know the impact that we have on other people just by simply stepping up and investing our time, our talents, our treasures with one another and saying, God, use me in this way to help the person that I'm going to be around.
And this is what these common people that were there began to do. So we see the wallbillers in Nehemiah's day but I want to bring this over to the wallbillers in our day. How can we apply this scripture in a personal way to say, God, how can this be my life?
How can this work in my life? The wall of Jerusalem was a physical wall. You can go to Jerusalem today.
I'll be going in December of next year. I'm hopefully taking a group with us and you can go and you can see the exact wall that Nehemiah built that these people built and they built upon this wall and is still standing today.
Building People, Not Walls
It was a physical wall but today we are not rebuilding the walls of Jerusalem church.
Today we are under a new covenant and God is working in our life and God is, He has not only an earthly city, He has a physical people who are working for Him and the New Testament describes these people as the building or the dwelling place of God.
So what does wall building look like today? How would you take your life and say, God, give me the principles of Nehemiah, how can I apply it to my life today? Three simple ways. First is inward. First is inward, strengthening God's people,
allowing yourself to strengthen the people that are around you. The wall that we look at here protected the people inside of Jerusalem. The stronger the walls, the safer the city. The stronger the protection that was there, the safer the people were inside the city.
And so we have to look at ourselves and say, how does this apply to us? We are building people. We are building the next generation. We teach them. We disciple them. We encourage them. We pray for them. We counsel them.
We bear one another's burdens. We believe in young Christians. We want to help them grow in their faith. We want to strengthen families. We want to encourage those who are discouraged. Paul says it like this in 1 Thessalonians 5, verse 11. Therefore, encourage one another and build each other up.
Church, we are here inwardly to build one another up, to work as so that we can give God the glory in everything we do.
I want you to think about for a moment if I were to take one of the bricks off of the wall on the outside of this church and I were to put it up here, that one single brick
would not be very effective. But if I were to take that brick and I were to put it into a wall of other bricks, because it's supported and surrounded with other bricks, it is stronger than if it were just by itself.
And church, we need to be a people who are looking and saying, how can I work and build with someone else? How can I encourage someone else?
How can I see someone else is struggling and come alongside them? And the Bible says,
be next to them as they're building their wall and say, I want to be next to you. I want to help you. I want to encourage you as you're going through your ministry.
You may be sitting here thinking, well, Pastor James, I'm only teaching five kids on Wednesday night. That's five young Christians that you're building for the sake of the gospel.
Pastor James, I'm only discipling one teenager one-on-one and what am I going to do with this one person that doesn't listen to me and I think they're not even paying attention to what I'm saying. That's one future teenager that you're building their life.
You may say, Pastor James, I'm just praying for people. I don't have the strength to go out and to do what I used to do, but I can pray in my house and I'm just, that's all I'm able to do. You are being the people who are building the wall.
And I want to ask you this question. I want you to meditate on this question today. Who is stronger in Christ today because you encouraged and you built their life?
Who is someone that you can look to to say this person is stronger in Christ because I invested and I involved my life with their life?
It's a good thing for us to do to begin to think about how we can inwardly strengthen other people. But number two, we can be the outward example.
Outwardly, we can be the example that God has called us to do. This morning in Sunday school, this was what our biggest thought was, was the outward life that we live. And if we are bearing the gospel, the light of Christ in our life, are we outwardly being the example?
Jerusalem was supposed to represent the people of God. God had a specific people in the Old Testament that he had his hand of blessing and protection on. And all of a sudden, this land and this people was completely destroyed. The walls were torn down and it was dangerous to even be near this city. And God is saying,
in this way, and in this mindset that the condition of the city was communicated to everyone looking into this city, the condition of God's people.
And we must be the same way. Church, we are being watched. The community watches how we treat one another.
The community watches how we treat our neighbors, how we love one another, how we talk with one another, how we encourage one another, how we conduct ourselves, how we handle conflict, how we respond to hardships, and how we serve, and how we love, and how we forgive, and how we handle our life.
But Jesus said it like this in John chapter 13, verse 35. By this, everyone will know you're my disciple if you love one another.
Jesus is telling us, people are going to know you're one of my disciples, not by the actions that you take, not by the words that come out of your mouth, not by how you treat your family, but by how you love one another. He's telling his disciples they're watching you.
Living as Disciples
They're watching how you live your life. They're watching what you do with your life, and how you live, and how you walk, is how they're going to know you're one of my disciples. The gospel we preach out of our mouths should match the gospel that people see in our lives.
The way we live and the walk that we walk should match the talk that we talk.
And we should be a people who are saying, I am so committed to Christ, I am so committed to what he has for me, that the things I do outside of my house are the same things that I do inside of my house.
And when people outside of these walls of Pleasant Grove, when they see us, hopefully they don't say, that's a really impressive building. Hopefully they say, this is people who love Jesus, who are investing in other people, and are growing the kingdom of Christ.
Number three, we see the inward, we see the outward, but we see the Godward side of this. Are we reflecting the glory of God? The ultimate purpose was very simple.
Nehemiah did not come into the city and say, everything's broken down, look at how horrible you guys have kept the city, we've got to rebuild this so that we can look better. His ultimate goal was this, in everything we do, we're going to honor God. And let's honor God by building this brick.
Let's honor God by putting this gate up. Let's honor God by taking your ability to work with metal and make the bolts and make the gates and you bring them over here and the priests come in and the priests set the gates up and the priests
bless the gates and they work together because all of a sudden, he said, everything we're going to do, we're going to honor God.
Chapter 3 begins with one of the most fascinating things that Allison read this. It says that the priest built the sheep gate and they sanctified it. They laid the stones and after they were done, it says that they dedicated the gate to the Lord. The work itself became a form of worship.
The work that they were doing was their way of saying, God, I am worshiping you through building this gate. I am worshiping you through what I am doing today. It tells us something important. It tells us that there is nothing insignificant in the work of Christ.
I want to read through a couple of things that came to my mind as I was praying and working through this as we work for the Lord. Changing a diaper in the nursery can be worship. Setting up chairs in a classroom or a fellowship hall can be worship.
Running the sound in the back can be worship. Cleaning up the nursery after a little kid makes a mess can be worship. Taking a meal to someone who is a shut-in can be worship. Teaching a child can be worship. Visiting someone in the hospital can be worship.
Making coffee or tea for an event can be worship. Giving money to the offering plate can be worship. And praying in your living room can be worship this morning, church.
The significance is not found in what you were doing, but the significance is found in who you were doing it for. And oftentimes we do the work of the ministry and we say,
hey, hey, what am I going to get out of this? Who's going to put my name up in lights? Who's going to give me an award? Who's going to do these things for me? And what it should be doing is saying, God, I'm going to do this work for you.
I don't care if I never get recognized. I don't care if I ever get my name spelled in lights.
I just want your name to be lifted high and I want other people to be glorified and I want other people to come to know you through the work that I'm doing.
And Paul is telling us in Colossians chapter 3, he says, whatever you do, do from the heart as if something done for the Lord and not for people. I think oftentimes,
and I'm guilty of this as well, we do what we do so that people will pat us on the back and say, good job. Man, I'm proud of you.
When in reality, that's all we're living for and Christ is telling us, no, work as if everything that you're doing is all about God's glory and all about what God has done for us.
This is why this long list of names matters. No one in this list did the work expecting their name to ever be written down. But yet, the names that I couldn't pronounce, that my wife struggled to pronounce, that I'm sure you struggled to pronounce, God said, these names are important to me.
He recorded them in his word. He recorded them in this instance of history and he says, this is the hall of service.
This is the names that were recorded to honor the people who said, I'm going to work so much for God and I'm going to do all these things so that his place can be glorified, so that his presence
will be known, so that the work that I do will glorify God in everything that I do. I want to end with one simple question as I end the sermon today. I want to end by saying this,
what section are you building this morning? What section have you said, Lord, this is what I'm going to do. There's three possibilities here.
There's the possibility that you're building. You're part of the people who are saying, God, I'm going to serve. I'm going to be involved. I'm going to invest. I'm going to do my part. Praise God, I'm going to keep building.
I don't care if anyone else ever comes behind me. I don't ever care if anyone else comes beside me. I'm going to keep doing what you have called me to do.
There's some people that are sitting there and they're just the people on the outside. The Tekkenites who are sitting on the outside and they're watching.
They're sitting, they're criticizing, they're saying, you know, if I were building that wall, I would have put that brick there instead of that brick.
I would have done it this way instead of doing it that way, but yet they are walking on the outside and they are only giving criticism instead of actually stepping up and saying, this is what I want to
do. I want to help you. You can't ever say that you want to build the whole wall while refusing to take responsibility for any particular section. We must be a people who are saying,
I want to be a part of the building or you're the person, not only are you the person that's, you're part of the building, maybe you're not watching, but maybe you're the person that's withholding. Maybe this is the warning to us today where you are so,
so enamored about what's going on, you're withholding because you're afraid and you're just sitting back and saying, well, I'm going to just see what happens for the next year. I'm just going to see what happens when this project fails and then I can come back and see, I told you so.
And you begin to withhold from what is going on and you begin to be in this dangerous place where these people were withholding a certain thing.
So we walk through the book of Nehemiah and we continue walking through this. Nehemiah chapter three is not ultimately about bricks and building.
It's about people who are willing to give themselves to something bigger than themselves. It was about people who are willing to say, I believe in the work of this ministry. I believe in what's going on.
I'm going to give more than I've ever given. I'm going to personally be invested in what's going on because I believe in what's going on. They sacrificed their time. They sacrificed their energy. These people got dirty.
These people worked in difficult places and they worked next to people that they had never worked beside in their entire life. And they said, I'm going to do it.
It's not because it's going to be glamorous. It's not because I'm going to get an award one day, but I'm going to do it because it is what God has called us to do.
Jesus as the Ultimate Builder
As Terry comes, these people begin to build. And this morning, church, Jesus is the ultimate builder.
He is the one that's working in and through our life. Nehemiah was repairing a broken wall, a physical wall that they could see.
Jesus has come in and he is saying, I want to build the church and I want to build my church for my glory so that people will come to know Christ. Nehemiah's builder, they laid stones and they laid bricks and they built this wall that's still standing today.
Jesus says, I'm going to take sinners and I'm going to apply a living stone upon their life.
I'm going to die in their place so that I can become the spiritual house where I can come in and work for you. And Jesus says, I'm not going to ask you to make the first sacrifice. He said, I have come in this world and I made the sacrifice for you.
I lived and I breathed and I lived a perfect life and I am going to set the example for what Christian living is like.
And I'm going to go to Calvary and I'm going to go to a cross and I'm going to lay down my life for you so that when you sacrifice later,
you can look to Christ and say, Christ, I'm just trying to be like you. The name Christian is simply Christ-like and if we're going to claim the title of Christian, are we sacrificing the way that Christ sacrificed for us?
The ultimate sacrifice for each and every one of us is that Jesus gave his life for us and one day when our work will be finished, when our spiritual wall will be done, will we look back on our life and say that everything I have done withstood because I stood for Christ?
Or are we simply trying to say, you know what, look how impressive my life is. You'll either ask yourself one of two questions, two simple questions. The first is this, did you trust in Jesus?
Did you this morning, did you, have you come to the moment of realization of saying,
God, I knew that I was a sinner, I knew that I have done wrong and I confessed my sins and I have accepted you into my life to build my life the way you have called me to do it?
The second question we'll have to ask ourselves when we stand before Christ is this, have you been faithful? Have you been faithful to be a believer that has stood firm in what God has called us to do? It's easy to get sidetracked.
It's easy to be driving down the road and to see a billboard or to see something off to the side and get distracted and the next thing you know you're running off the road because you got distracted.
A message like this is there not to to bow breed us but it's there to get our eyes back on Jesus and say, what are we doing for the cause of Christ? And where are our eyes at and are we faithful for what God has called us to do?
Church, as much as I want to get up here and say we need 500 volunteers to do these things, the church doesn't need the volunteers, the church needs someone who believes that Jesus is worthy enough to volunteer for him.
The church needs people to say, God, you're worthy for me to sacrifice my time. You're worthy for me to sacrifice my finances. You're worthy for me to sacrifice for you because you sacrificed for me.
This morning, church, we give because we get to give the glory back to God. We teach because we are giving the glory back to God and everything we do, we do because God gave it to us first and we're simply giving a portion back to him.
God, I want to give the glory of this teaching moment back to you. I want to give the moment of worship where we worship through our words, where we worship through our action, we give it back to him. The first part we have to ask ourself is,
are you part of the building of the wall? Are you part of the building of the body of Christ where we say, I want to build the people that are around me. I want to look to the person next to me and say, can I help you? I'm going to struggle in three months.
I don't know that I'm going to struggle in three months but I'm going to help you so that when I struggle the people beside me will begin to help me. And are we a people that are working and building for the sake of Christ?
Finding Your Section
My final statement, my final question is before we close in prayer is this, find your section.
Find the place that God has called you to work. Find the place that God has called you to begin to work as if everything depends on God and pray as if it all depends on God and say, God, give me the desire for this section and then get to work.
Get to the point where you can say, God, I'm going to motivate so many. Nehemiah only motivated for so long. The Bible says that he spent half of a chapter of chapter two motivating the people and then he said there's work to be done. And the very next chapter,
40 different groups of people said, we got work to do. Let's get to work. Let's stop talking about it. Let's start doing it. What is the section that God has called you to this morning
and how are you going to get to work? Father, we love you. We thank you for what you've done.
Help us to be so encouraged this morning by these people who did so much with so little
where the people on the outside as we're going to look at next week began to mock them and say that even the little foxes of the field would come in and destroy this land and would destroy this wall but yet they continued to work even though they were ridiculed on the outside.
God, help us to find our section. Help us to find the place that you've called us to do and help us to get to work for your honor and for your glory. In your name we pray. Amen.
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