Brick by Brick: Nehemiah 3

But isn't it good to be together? Let's pray together as we open God's word. Oh God, we thank you for the chance to gather, Lord, even though we're in a different space, Lord, we thank you for the provision of this space. We thank you that there is something special as God's people come together, Lord. And we just pray that now as we come around your word, Father, that you would speak to us.

Lord, we think of the kids and of the youth as they're in their programs. God, speak to them as well. We thank youk that yout word is life giving, Father, that it it's alive, Lord, that it speaks to our hearts. And so, Lord, we just pray that yout would encourage and challenge us in equal measure. And we ask youk this in Jesus name.

Amen. Cindy and I love renovation project. I use that word kind of with a caveat, because I don't know that we love it or that we've been inflicted upon it by buying an old house and not having enough money to pay professionals to do the stuff that we want done to it. So we've been gradually working our way through our home, renovating different spaces. But I have a bit of an issue because as we've been renovating, if in a few decades time, our memories are failing a bit of this season and we go back and we look at the pictures or anybody else looks at them, what you'll see is Cindy knocking down walls and Cindy tiling and Cindy grouting and Cindy painting, Cindy moving things and carrying heavy items.

There's practically no photos of me doing any work. Now, I want to reassure you, you just have to take my word for it that there's a good reason for that, and that is that Cindy refused take pictures. And so the. The record keeping is left to me. But what we have discovered in all seriousness in our approach to renovation projects and to building is that the two of us, with some great assistance from some wonderful friends along the way, are able to accomplish far more than one of us could accomplish on our own.

And that's what we're going to see in the passage today. As we turn to the 32 verses of Nehemiah 3, we will see this picture now. It reads chapter three. If you looked ahead last week, as we were in chapter two, it reads as a list. And it's a list that often in series on Nehemiah gets skipped because it is a record of the names of the people who turned up and built the wall.

And that can come across as being Quite dry. But there's actually an incredible richness here. And I want us to see that today, that chapter three is actually far more than a list because it gives us, you and me, a model for the work that we are called to. Now, we're not physically building a wall. I mean, maybe you're building a retaining wall at your house or you have a memory of that.

But the New Testament is really clear that the Christian life is not intended or designed to be a spectator sport. You can't read the New Testament and at any point perceive that we are designed or intended to come into the family of God and to sit back and watch as the professionals build. Instead, every single one of us has a calling to be an active part of building God's kingdom. We're called to be an active part of the church in seeing God's kingdom move forward. And we're going to see a model for that in Nehemiah chapter three today.

And so to help us in our study, I have three principles for you. And that should come up hopefully on the screen. It's not going to come up on the screen just yet, so you can just take my word for it if you're making notes. Principle one is that leadership looks like serving. Principle two is that God uses ordinary people in ordinary places.

And number three is that community effort creates lasting impact. Now, hopefully, once the screen gets sorted, it'll come up later on and we'll work through those. So if you turn in your Bibles, you're going to have to look at your own Bibles today to Nehemiah 3, if you open them on your phones or in actually hard copy Bibles, Let me. Here we go. Let me remind you where we find ourselves.

So in chapter one, Nehemiah, there, he's a Jewish exile serving in the palace of King Artaxerxes in Susa. He's about 1500 kilometres from Jerusalem. Some relatives, some friends of his return to Susa and they communicate to him some news from Jerusalem. They say the city is in disgrace, the walls are in ruins, the people are vulnerable. In chapter two, we see that after months of prayer and with great courage, Nehemiah goes to King Artaxerxes and he asks him for permission and provision to rebuild the wall.

And remarkably, particularly when we know that King Artaxerxes had put a stop to the building about 15 years before, King Artaxerxes agrees. And so Nehemiah is given permission to return to Jerusalem. And he walks around the city by night. He gathers the people together and he says, to them, come, let's rebuild. And there's a great sense of enthusiasm and excitement among the people as they commit to this work.

And that takes us through to the end of chapter three. And then chapter three we get to this list. These are the people who built. Now, just a word of warning before we start reading. There's a number of tricky Hebrew names.

Maybe you saw them there. Now, it's going to appear perhaps as we read through it today, that I've never read this passage before. I promise you I have. And it might appear that I've never read English before. And I promise you I have read English as well.

So if we stumble over them, that's okay. So verse one. Then Elias Shib, the high priest, and the other priests started to rebuild at the Sheep Gate. They dedicated it and set up its doors building the wall as far as the Tower of the Hundred, which they dedicated and the Tower of Hananel. People from the town of Jericho worked next to them and beyond them was Zakur, son of Imri.

The Fish Gate was built by the sons of Hasanar. They laid the beams, set up its doors and installed its bolts and bars. Meremoth, son of Uriah and grandson of Hakkoz, repaired the next section of wall. Beside him was Meshullam, son of Berechiah and the grandson of Meshazabel, Zadok, son of Bayan. Next were the people from Tekoa, though their leaders refused to work with the construction supervisors.

Now, it's no accident that Nehemiah begins this great long list by pointing us to Eliaship and the priests who were rebuilding at the Sheep Gate. Now, it sounds like a weird place, a weird name for a gate, but the Sheep Gate was actually a really significant spot because this was the place right beside the temple where sheep were brought in for sacrifice. Now, that can sound foreign to us. We don't practise sacrifices today. But in those days before the coming of Jesus, this was how God dealt with the sin of his people.

A spotless, pure lamb. Something valuable was offered in their place, a substitute so that they could be made right with God. Now we and we and pointed forward to the lamb that was to come. Jesus. And so this part of the wall is really important because it showed not only was this a physical work, but there was a spiritual work taking place.

As the people rebuilt, their hearts were turning back to God. So we discovered that Eliashib and the priests, they roll up their sleeves and they start building where once there was items of the temple and worship in their hands. And now they have shovels and trowels and pickaxes. As they turn their attention to the work of carrying and lifting and building, I want us to, as much as we can, particularly for those of us like me who work in desk jobs, I want us to try and connect with the physicality of this work. Over the last few weeks I've been getting part of our backyard ready for a shed.

It started like all of my projects do. I thought, maybe we'll buy a shed or just measure up. And as I went out there to measure up to see whether or not we would buy a shed, I discovered there were some branches in the way. And so I thought, oh, let me just trim a couple of these branches so I can measure. Sure enough, Cindy turns up home and trees have been cut down and I'm there carting away logs and I'm digging up roots and we are definitely buying a shed.

That was the, the commitment that was made. But it's been physical work for someone like me that's not used to that hard physical work. But it pales into insignificance in comparison with the dusty physical work of carrying, cutting and placing stones into position to make a wall. And what strikes me here is that Eliashib and the other priests would have had a great excuse to opt out. They could have said, ah, actually we're important spiritually.

Like we'll be praying for the people, we'll be nurturing the people, we'll be providing pastoral care, we'll be caring for their needs. But they didn't say we're too important or we're too clean or we're too special for the work. They didn't let pride or power get in the way. Instead they got straight to work. We have another image of leadership here, the leaders from Toccoa in verse five.

And they provide for us a very different example of leadership to the priests and it isn't a good one. Toccoa was a handful of kilometres from Jerusalem and these leaders would have been civic leaders, they would have been governors, community leaders, administrators. Now, mercifully for them, Nehemiah doesn't give us their names, but the reference is clear. They decided they were too important for the work. And so while their people worked, they did not.

Now here's the takeaway for us.

If you're a leader of any kind, maybe in your workplace, but especially if you have a leadership role here at Horizon, my encouragement would be none of us are too important or too powerful or too special to get our hands dirty here at Horizon. And in the kingdom of God, leadership looks like serving. Now my hope is that as a congregation you've seen that, that here at Horizon you see your leader being faithful in the work of ministry, faithful in serving. But the other thing I want you to notice here is that the example of the latest isn't, doesn't provide an opt out for the people. Because did you notice the people of Toccoa, they didn't use the laziness of their leaders as an excuse to not get on with the work.

They didn't look at their leaders and say, well, well, if they're not going to do it, then I guess we don't have to. Instead they set about doing what God had put in front of them. They were faithful to the work. Regardless. Let's turn our attention to verses 8 to 12.

And then there we have the second principle about the work of building God's kingdom is that God uses ordinary people in ordinary places. God uses ordinary people in ordinary places. Let's turn to verse eight. Next was Uzziel, son of Hannah Hahiah, a goldsmith by trade who also worked on the wall. Beyond him was Hananiah, a manufacturer of perfumes.

They left out a section of Jerusalem as they built the broad wall. Rephaiah son of Hur, the leader of the half district of Jerusalem was next to them on the wall. Next was Jedaiah son of Harahav, repaired the wall across from his own house and next to him was Hattush son of Hashabniah. Then came Malkajar son of Haram, and Hashub son of Pahathmoab, who repaired another section of the wall and the tower of the ovens. Shallum son of Halohash and his daughters repaired the next section.

He was the leader of the other half of the district of Jerusalem. This section here, verses 8 to 12, it highlights an important truth to us. The people building the wall are from different families living in different parts of the city of Jerusalem with different skills. You see, God uses ordinary people serving in ordinary places. And Nehemiah lists for us Uzziel, a goldsmith.

We have Hananiah, who makes perfumes. Jeremiah, who repairs the section in front of his house. We have Shalom, an important district leader who's out working on the wall with his daughters. What struck me as I was reading through the 32 verses of this chapter is that not a single builder is mentioned. Not one.

None of them are stonemasons, labourers, carpenters, the kind of people that I would be getting to work on the wall. There's not a single one of them mentioned. Instead, we have administrators and goldsmiths and perfume makers and priests. These are people that are not accustomed to building. It's probably not their natural inclination.

I bet if we sat them down and did a thing on giftings, they would probably say, building a wall is not in my set of giftings. But this is a project that's led by ordinary people doing the work that God has put in front of them together. Now Nehemiah mentions a man named Shallum. He turns up to build with his family. I'd say to you this morning, there is something special about serving together as a family.

Many, many years ago, you would know that my parents are. Greg and Margo are gifted church planters. And many, many years ago, they planted a church on the northern beaches of Sydney. And I still remember, I was probably 4 years old, maybe 5 years old when they planted this new congregation. And I still remember as a little kid rolling out carpets that were bigger, much bigger than me.

I remember as soon as I could do it, carrying chairs. I remember one time dressing up. Dad used to, you know, this is back in the early 90s, pastors wore suits to church. I'm glad that we're not in the early 90s, but I remember one, one day getting ready in a shirt and a tie as a very little child, so I could stand and greet people at the door as they came in to church. My parents made something important really clear to us.

They said that the church, the work of ministry, that the kingdom of God, that the family of Christ is a family ministry. They made it really clear that ministry wasn't something that parents do while kids sit there bored, thinking, when do we get to go home? It was something that we all did together, that it was a family ministry. But I want to point something else out. Not only does Shalom bring his family, Nehemiah specifically mentions that he brings his daughters.

Now it continues an incredible pattern that we see across the Old Testament and the New Testament of women being included in the work that God is doing now. We might look at that and we might say in our culture, well, of course, like, why would you even mention that? But we've got to remember that back then is incredibly different culturally to our society today. In this time, women were second class citizens. They didn't have a voice, they didn't have a say.

And yet we see Nehemiah saying women were involved in this important practical and spiritual ministry. It continues a pattern across Scripture where God consistently raises up women. You think back to the exile Esther saves the Jews. We have Miriam, we've got Deborah, we have Holder, we have Ruth, just to name a few. These incredible leaders who were women in the Old Testament.

And then we get to the New Testament and we see this continuation in again Roman and Greek culture, which was very male led. But instead in the New Testament we have Junia, who is spoken about as being outstanding among the apostles. We have the daughters of Philip, who are all prophets. We have Priscilla, who was a teacher in the church. We have Phoebe, who Scripture tells us was a deacon.

We have Lydia, who has her own house church. We could go on, but what we see is that the Bible and God's kingdom is hugely countercultural. In a male dominated society, women were consistently raised up as not just important but essential to the work of ministry. And we see that in this story as well. And then our last point together is that the character, community effort creates lasting impact.

If we turn our attention to verse 13. The Valley Gate was repaired by the people from Zenoah, led by Hanun. They set up its doors and installed its bolts and bars. They also repaired the 1500ft of wall to the Dung Gate. The Dung Gate was repaired by Malkajah, son of Recab, the leader of the Beth Hakaram district.

He rebuilt it, set up its doors and installed its bolts and bars. Let's skip down to verse 28. Above the horse Gate, the priests repaired the wall. Each one repaired the section immediately across from his own house. Next, Zadok, son of Imma, also rebuilt the wall across from his own house.

And beyond him was Shemliah, son of Shekoniah, the gatekeeper of the east gate. Next, Hananiah, son of Shelemiah, and Hanan, the sixth son of Zalaph, repaired another section while Meshalayim son of Berekiah, rebuilt the wall across from where he lived. Malkajar, one of the goldsmiths, repaired the wall as far as the housing for the temple servants and merchants across from the inspection gate. Then he continued as far as the upper room at the corner. The other goldsmiths and merchants repaired the wall from that corner to the Sheep Gate.

If you read the 32 verses, which you can do in your own time, you'll notice there's a repeated phrase 20 times. Nehemiah says, next to them or beside them, or the next section was built by. There's symmetry here. If we could picture these kilometer long stretches of wall, what we would see is people building side by side. A couple of weeks ago I was out raking leaves and I had our three Kids helping, helping.

Me and our youngest, Isaiah is a kid who loves words of affirmation. And so as we were working, he'd periodically say to me, dad, are we doing a great job? And as leaves were going everywhere and not where they were supposed to go, I'd say, yes, Matty, this is going great. They were having a good time, the leaves were moving. But as we were finishing and as we got the job done, he said, dad, did we do this super fast?

Because there was four of us working on it together. And what he was noticing through the eyes of a child was the value of working together on the same project. Across this chapter, there are 40 sections over 40 sections, the 40 something sections of the wall that were useless on their own. I mean, what good is a gate if it doesn't have wall to support it? What good is a beautiful, the most pristine, beautiful section of wall if there are gaps on either side?

But instead what we have is this organized effort of many individuals pulling in the same direction. Now you can't spend five minutes in God's word and not be struck by the fact that God's design and his intention was for us to work together, to serve, to build together in community. It is all through God's word. But it's often not the reality of the Christian church. In the Western world.

In the Western church. And again, this is probably different in different contexts, but there's a commonly accepted sentiment. I go to pastors meetings all the time and you hear this sentiment expressed all the time. The sentiment is that 20% of the church does 80% of the ministry work. That is what is accepted as being the norm in Australia.

But that was never God's plan. It was never God's plan for 20% of the body of Christ to do 80% of the ministry. If you look over at Paul writing to the church Of Corinth in 1 Corinthians 12, he writes, we each one of us are the body of Christ and every single one of us has a part to play. Paul's point is clear. If you aren't playing your part, the whole body is suffering.

Now that's kind of heavy this morning. And I'm not saying that to condemn you. I hope instead that it stirs within you an invitation that you are valuable here, that whatever you bring, however special or ordinary you might think that is, there is a place for you here to contribute to the work of ministry. And so this is our takeaway. Let's never think that the work of building God's kingdom is a Work for a select few, or it's a work for those who are talented.

Each one of us is called to turn up, ready, to build, to be part of building God's promise to his people. I hear Christians say from time to time, well, I'd love to get involved, but I don't have any skills or talents. Like, I see Elise up here playing the keys and that's amazing. I could never do that. Or I see Jono, you know, making things move on that iPad.

Like, doesn't make any sense to me. Or I see people greeting and they're so friendly and welcoming and I'm not an outgoing person like that.

But God, the scripture is clear. There is a part for you to play. You also hear, and I've heard this over years of church ministry. Well, I'd love to get involved, but I have specific gifts. And those gifts are not putting out chairs.

Those gifts are not plugging in cables. It's not putting up signs. That's not my gifting. I'm not gifted to serve coffee, but I want you to imagine for a moment that the perfume makers and the goldsmiths turned up to Nehemiah and said, building a wall. No, that's outside of our gifting.

Or if the administrators had have come and they had have said, we're going to serve. Don't worry, Nehemiah, we'll serve. But we're going to make some really great spreadsheets. Like, spreadsheets better than you've ever seen. I think Nehemiah would have looked at them and said, build.

Or if the guy in verse 14, the poor guy who turns up and they say, you've been allocated the dung gate. Imagine if he had said, well, I don't want to repair the dung gate. Like, can't you give me the sheep gate? At least give me something that sounds important. But if that's how they had have responded, the wall wouldn't have been built.

And this is the key here, that the work that needs to be done is the work that is worth doing. Let me say that again for you. The work that needs to be done is the work that is worth doing. Doing. These people didn't make excuses.

They saw the need. They knew that it was God's plan for his people. And so they got to work cutting, carrying and placing stone. As we finish this morning, let me share one last story with you. The story goes that after the great fire of 1666 that destroyed much of London, that the famous architect Christopher Wren was commissioned to rebuild St. Paul's Cathedral a few years later, while the work is underway, Wren goes and he visits the site.

And there at the site, he sees three bricklayers on a scaffold. And he works his way along the line. And he says to each one, what are you doing? And the first one says to him, I'm a bricklayer. I'm working hard laying bricks to feed my family.

The second bricklayer, when Ren says, what are you doing? He says, I'm a builder. I'm building a wall. The third bricklayer, when Ren says to him, what are you doing? He says, I'm a cathedral builder.

I'm building a great cathedral to the Almighty. Now, I'm not sure that that story is necessarily true. There's a thousand versions of it online. But even if it isn't, the point remains, and it's a powerful point. Perspective matters.

One person saw bricks. Another saw a wall. The third person saw the bigger picture, a cathedral that was being built for the glory of God. And that's exactly what Nehemiah 3 is showing us. Each of these groups, these ordinary people in ordinary places only were repairing their little section of wall.

Physically, they couldn't even see the whole wall. They couldn't see the whole picture. But they knew that together, side by side, they was part of something bigger. They were part of the restoration of God's city. They were part of bringing about this sign of God's promise to his people.

They were about building a foundation for generations to come. And you and me, we're invited into the same work to take our place, to build our little section of God's kingdom and to trust in God's plan for the fullness of it. What you do and how you serve might feel small. It might be as simple as setting out chairs or welcoming someone at the door, praying with a friend, or serving in kids, or leading a small group, or giving faithfully week by week. But in God's hands, that little act is part of bringing about God's promises.

And so my encouragement to you as we continue to work through Nehemiah and we see this incredible work come to fruition, remember that this work was done by ordinary people serving in ordinary places, doing the work that God had put in front of them. And hopefully that stands as a call to us to do the same. Let's pray. God, we thank you for your word. Lord, we thank you for this section of Nehemiah.

Oh, God. We're challenged by it. We're challenged by knowing how to, in the midst of life's juggle, in the midst of all the business and all the things that would pull in our time, how best we we can serve you, how best we can be a part of what you're doing and of the promises that you have for your people. And so God, would you stir in our hearts this desire to continue to serve, to play our little part, to do the work that you've put in front of us so that we can see your kingdom move forward, so that we can see people come to a life giving, life saving faith in you and that we would be a small part of that bigger story of your faithfulness, your goodness and your promises. And so we ask you these things in Jesus name, Amen.