, Joshua Kehler: Nehemiah chapter 3 this morning, chapter 2 into 3 is
where we'll be looking at today.
we will look at the last two verses in chapter two, and then we'll look
in chapter three, the entire chapter.
So, they're grouped together in different ways, and so we'll just be
touching on verses in chapter three, but we'll go ahead and read verses,
19 and 20 in chapter two right now.
But when Sambelot, the Horonite, Tobiah, the Ammonite official, and Geshem,
the Arab, heard of it, they laughed at us and despised us and said, what
is this thing that you are doing?
Will you rebel against the king?
So I answered them and said to them, the God of heaven will prosper
us, therefore we are His servants, and we will arise and build.
But you have no heritage or right or memorial in Jerusalem.
Let's pray.
Jesus, we thank you for your word this morning.
And God, we just ask that your glory would be on display this morning in this place.
God, we long to know you.
Lord, we declare from the start that it's not the opinions of men
or the best of their ideas that come together to transform a life.
It is you, Jesus, and you alone.
And so Lord, we pray that you would be glorified in this place.
You are the answer.
In fact, you said apart from you, we can do nothing.
And we are very aware of that this morning.
Lord, we pray that you would take this vessel, that's Before you and Lord
that you would fill it for your glory, you Lord anoint the speech, on these
lips, may it be your words, Jesus.
And, Lord, we just pray for a work of your spirit in this place.
I pray, Lord, that you would call us all, that we'd all hear the
call, to the work that you've called us to do, and, so we love you.
We love you.
We thank you.
We praise you this morning.
thank you for what you're doing in Stockton.
Save it, Jesus.
Be at every church in this city that preaches your gospel, Lord.
Come in strength and fullness.
May many people come into your kingdom today.
May you refresh the multitude of your saints in this city today.
We love and we adore you.
We exist for your glory and your pleasure, Jesus.
We love you in Jesus name.
Amen.
one of my earliest memories being someone who grew up in the church, as I had the
opportunity, and there's different pros and cons to growing up within the church.
The cons being that you grow up within the church thinking that you're a
pretty good person, that you're kind of grandfathered into the whole kingdom
of God, going to heaven thing, that you, because your parents were saved,
because they had, Believed in Jesus that maybe you just kind of get in.
you grow up, familiar, with the things of the Lord.
and they're not off the bat, impactful in the sense that as someone finding
the message of grace who's coming out, of, very apparent sin in their life.
and so there's the cons to that where any of us who grow up from within
the church need to find that we're just as wretched, if not more so.
Because we think that our own righteousness, our own good deeds,
our own goodness will save us.
That we compare ourselves amongst others, and each other, and we find people who
are a little worse off than we are.
And we comfort ourselves thinking that, well, God loves us more because,
you know, we're good moral people.
Which is not the case.
in fact, the Bible clearly teaches that our Righteousness, our best
is as a filthy garment to the Lord.
And so, a con being in that sense that you have to learn that.
You have to learn that you need a Savior.
That you need the saving power of Christ to transform your life.
It's like the prodigal son and the older brother.
And those Most often who grew up from within the church
are like the older brother.
We're constantly looking down on the prodigal.
We're constantly looking at people and going, man, and then we're
wondering why God isn't blessing us because we've obeyed him so long,
why he doesn't have a feast for us.
And the whole time he's pleading with us to come in through the gate of
Jesus Christ by the way of the cross.
The pro of growing up in the cross is that you are automatically birthed into
an entirely different radical community.
I remember in my earliest memories, sitting in a pew down in Costa Mesa
and, hearing, thinking the preacher's screaming, you know, and wondering
why this bald man is, yelling, so passionately, and he's got the Bible
that we would read at night before bed.
But sitting next to me was a man, tears streaming down his face,
fully tatted up, finding out, you know, it used to be, live his life.
just abandoned to drugs and addiction and sitting over here was, you know,
someone who used to be in the occult and all of a sudden these people who you
grow up with who adopt the name Uncle and Auntie and, you know, as you grow
up around them, as you find out their histories, they're gnarly histories.
You know, fornicators and adulterers and haters of God.
People used to be thieves and, these people.
What happens is you grow up around that, you grow up in the community
of God, in the church of God, and it's an entirely different thing.
It's not like the Boy Scouts where you join because you have one thing
in common, or Weight Watchers, you join because, you have nothing else
in common with these people except you want to lose weight, and so you join
this kind of association and club.
But growing up within the church, you learn that it is an entirely new culture.
It's an entirely new, humanity if you will, where every tribe, tongue,
nation, every kind of background, every kind of person, from young to old,
come together under the name of Jesus.
And if we find our commonality in Jesus, we find our family with
one another, a family that is oftentimes thicker than blood.
and so, a beautiful picture of the community of God from an early age.
And some of us haven't experienced that radical kind of community.
sometimes if you're, been part of a smaller church, it can be
more of a club, more of a clique.
You've got, this, agenda or this kind of thing happening here, or you go maybe
to the big church and it's more like a circus where you get lost in the crowd
and, you go there and you kind of in and out and everything's super efficient.
And so some of us.
Because we were created that way, we yearn for community, and so the Bible is
constantly revealing pictures of what this community is to look like, what it looks
like to be the church, what God wants us.
We were created for community back in Genesis.
It's very interesting because all through, as God was creating, He gave
His benediction over His creating.
He created the seas.
He said it was very good.
He created, plants and animals.
He said it is very good.
He created man.
He said it is very good.
But then in Genesis, we hit the spot where we get the first malediction, that
negative, that something was not good.
And what was not good was that man was alone.
That man was alone and even in his perfect relationship with God and his
times with God, God had created man because God himself is a community.
God, the father, God, the son and God, the Holy Spirit, each one giving their, all.
To the other.
And so God exists in community, and so he created man in his image.
That's what it means to be created in his image and in his likeness.
And so we were created, as God even has commentary on, for community.
For one another.
To be in a place where we could, under one head and one banner,
give our lives away to each other.
And then finding.
Life and finding joy and strength and victory and all the benefits
that come when we function like God intends a church to be now often as
we exist in this Western culture.
It's a very individualistic culture.
It's all about me.
It's all about my it's all about what what I can get.
And so we are common often come with a consumer mindset.
To church, we look at the bullet points and say, what can I get from church?
What do they offer?
What about the singles group or what about this and what about that?
And it's a more of a mindset is what I can get from it.
And oftentimes we carry into church the same mindset we
do with other things in life.
For instance, how many of us go have this war on inside of us?
I want to be thin, but I want ice cream or I want a pizza
at Dante's with extra cheese.
And I want those, I want the sausage that's like a fist, you know, so amazing.
It's amazing.
Marriage supper of a lamb right there!
No, lamb sausage, of course, but there's, this war that goes on.
We say, I want this, but I also want this, and it's a total contradiction.
And either one is gonna win out, or the other, but often we come into
the church and we say, I want to be radically loved by everyone here, but I
do not want to be accountable to anyone.
I want to be radically loved and cared for.
I want people to know when I'm gone, but I never ever want anybody to know my name.
And there's this contradiction that we bring inside the church that
where we think we can have both, but only one is going to win out.
And either that idea of individualism is going to win out, where I
remain autonomous, where I'm not held accountable for my actions.
I'm not a part of the community, but I want all the benefits of the community.
And it can only happen when we open ourselves up and are
vulnerable in that kind of state.
And so, here is a passage, Nehemiah chapter 3, the bulk of it is a
beautiful picture of the church functioning together, working together,
serving alongside one another.
in, the work of God for the glory of God, and it's an amazing picture.
And along with John chapter 17, Ephesians chapter 2, Ephesians chapter
4, first Corinthians 12 and 14, and revelation two and three, some of
the best chapters of the Bible and, places in scripture, on the church.
the Bible teaches.
That the church exists for the saints and it does, in fact, in Ephesians,
it says that some have been given as pastors and teachers and apostles
and prophets for the equipping of the saints for the work of the ministry.
Again, I mentioned this on Wednesday, two weeks ago, but it's necessary that that
idea is that you are the ministers, not.
The pastors here.
We're all ministers.
You are ministers.
And now what church exists for is to come in and to be equipped.
And that word equipped in the Greek, again, it means to mend
the net, or to set the bone.
It was a medical term.
So often fishermen, what they would do is they'd come in, they'd be fishing.
And, through The labor through the catch, through the toil,
they would, rip their net.
And a ripped fishing net isn't good for anything.
In the same way as if you labored with your hands, you swing at a
hammer, if you dislocated your arm, you wouldn't be able to function.
So you'd go to the doctor, he would equip you.
He would set it.
he would write that brokenness.
you'd go somewhere and have that netmen did it.
So it is a picture of what the church is to be as you guys are
the ministers of the gospel.
You are proclaiming the gospel out there in your jobs, neighborhoods, and
your families, all over wherever you set your feet, you're to be doing that.
And we get battered, we get bashed, we get discouraged.
we, experience joy.
And we need that opportunity to come together and to realign and
get our eyes back on Jesus to get relocated, to get re equipped.
And so that is why we come together.
That is why we worship Jesus in this place.
That is why we teach scripture and the word to equip us that we might examine
ourselves, that we might look in the light of scripture as scripture is the standard
and say, Jesus, am I moving towards you?
Am I becoming more like you as we are reconnected and we are equipped.
So church is to exist for the equipping and the edifying, for teaching and
reproof, for loving one another, for the serving of one another, as Jesus
left us example, for praying together and giving to one another, to worship
together and to praise his name shoulder to shoulder next to one another.
But the church also, as much as it exists for the saint,
it also exists for the world.
in John 13, 35 it says by this all will know that you are my disciples
if you have love, not just for the world, but for one another.
And so when there is, it happens, church as God designed it and as he
desires it, where people are loving one another, are vulnerable to one another.
they're not just individualistic consumers, but they're coming and
they're saying, What can I give to this place, to, every person here?
Then what happens is that love that is only of God, that only can happen.
And the world looks at that, and the world testifies and stands back
and goes, Something's different.
Something's different.
This isn't a club.
This isn't just religion based on us earning, our way to heaven.
But this is a radically different thing.
These are lives that have no business hanging out with one another.
If you consider backgrounds, and you consider likes and dislikes,
we would not match up on Match.
com.
We just wouldn't.
but, here we are, and we're together.
and so the world testifies to the fact, and they go, They
must be disciples of Jesus.
Again, remember as we talked about two weeks ago, I believe, they have to hear
the gospel to make sense of our lives.
Our love for one another is so radical.
They have to hear the gospel to make sense of our lives.
Romans 10, 13 says, For whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.
How then shall they call on him whom they have not believed?
And how shall they believe on him whom they have not heard?
And how shall they hear without a preacher?
And how shall they preach unless they are sent?
As it is written, how beautiful are the Feet of those who preach
the gospel of peace, who bring glad tidings of good things.
The Lord Jesus cares for the world.
John three 16.
For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that
whosoever, believes in him, would not perish but have everlasting life.
2 Peter 3, 9 says the Lord is not slack concerning his promises, as some count
slackness, but is longsuffering toward us, not willing that any should perish,
but that all should come to repentance.
Matthew 28, 19 20, again the Great Commission, Jesus says go and
make disciples of all nations.
Baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit.
Teaching them to observe all the things that I have commanded you.
And lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.
So the church's inward focus is to be so that it has an
effective outward expression.
The church's inward focus as we come together, as we learn, is
to be such that we are effective.
Outwardly, outside these walls.
So we come, and what is the important thing is we'll see in
our passage, notice that as soon as even talk of building starts to
happen in Nehemiah, what happens?
notice with me in verse 17, chapter 2, he says, Then I said to them,
You see the distress that we are in, how Jerusalem lies in waste,
and its gates are burned with fire.
Come, let us build the wall of Jerusalem, that we may no longer be a reproach.
And I told them of the hand of my God, which has been good
upon me, and also of the king's words, that he has spoken to me.
So they said, Let us rise up and build, then they set their hands
As soon as the people get the vision, not as the vision is going forth,
but as soon as the people decide, they hear the plan, they say, okay,
God wants these walls restored.
This is something that God has ordained.
As soon as the people hear, Nehemiah, share his heart.
The vision and the plan.
As soon as just that goes forth, what happens?
What takes place?
What is the immediate action?
There's not a brick been laid on another brick yet.
there's just the people said, we agree, let's go and let's do this work.
That's all they say.
It's all in theory right now.
It's all saying, let's just go and let's do it.
Yes, we agree.
We are going to give our hands to it.
Notice what happens in verse 19.
But when Sanballat the Horonite, Tobiah the Ammonite official,
Sanballat was the governor of Samaria.
And so, he had the authority in the region.
That is until Nehemiah showed up with his letters from the king.
Because Nehemiah was appointed as governor to that region.
So here is a man who loved having This Jewish people who he despised in a place
where he had them under his control.
He despised them, and he loved seeing them desolate, and he
loved seeing their city in ruins.
And here he is, Sambalat and Tobiah, who is an Ammonite, who is a
natural enemy of the Jewish people.
here he is, and, and he ends up having some ties.
And so he's kind of like, Sambalat controls the armies, and, and Tobias,
the guy who gets the inside information.
He's gonna, have an alliance with the high priest.
he's gonna have his daughter Mary's, into some of the Jewish families there.
And so he's got his foot in the door.
And then Gershom, the Arab, heard of it.
They laughed at us and despised us and said, What is this
thing that you're doing?
Will you rebel against us?
The king,
and as soon as they say, we're going to go to work, the enemy rises up
and begins to mock them, begins to ridicule them and begins to accuse them.
And you look at this and you go, as we're removed from its historical context.
And often we look at a passage like this, you know, 2, 500 years
ago and we go, okay, so they get up and they start to ridicule.
What, where is the power in that?
The power in that is that they did the very same thing in Ezra
chapter 4 and it stopped the work.
The enemy had been victorious before they were rebuilding the temple.
They were rebuilding and and they were making it new.
And all of a sudden the enemy came with the same accusation.
Are you going to rebel against the king?
They sent letters to the king and the king said, yes, this work must cease.
And so here they come and where the enemy has been successful in
the past to take a work of God and to stop it dead in its tracks.
They come that with that kind of pride and arrogance and swagger.
And they say to the people as they just get done saying, yes, we're going to work.
And they come in and they speak into that situation and say, how dare
you rebel against It's the king.
How dare you think that this work will happen?
It's never worked.
It's never happened.
It will always be desolate.
Nothing will ever change.
Don't think that it will be any different.
Just because some cup bearer comes down from the king with some piece of
paper, you think that it's going to be any different than it's always been.
You're ridiculous.
You will waste yourselves in such a task.
Stockton
is a crown jewel to the enemy.
He loves misery.
He loves a city that's desolate.
It's inhabitants in bondage, despair, thinking that this is life,
that this is all that there is.
And oftentimes, other works have come in, and they've come with the
authority of the King of Kings, and yet they've succumbed to the ridicule,
they've succumbed to the accusation, and they've folded under the pressure.
And they've caved in and said, I guess this is the way it's gonna be.
I guess you're right, it won't change.
We don't have a glorious start and a beginning like Jerusalem.
The beginning of Stockton being rooted in the fundamentals of sin and depravity.
You know why Sodom and Gomorrah was destroyed?
Oh, it was the sin, right?
It was the sin, right?
The sin was so grievous and so crazy.
That's why Sodom and Gomorrah was destroyed.
It was their pride and their arrogance.
it was the depravity that they held up as a banner over the city.
That's why it was destroyed, right?
That's why Sodom and Gomorrah was destroyed.
Sodom and Gomorrah was destroyed because the people of God
became invisible in the city.
They lost their influence because God said, If there is ten righteous that
will not bow to the idols, If there's ten people, ten, then I'll save the city.
Because ten is all I need.
And God wants to do a work.
And God doesn't need a huge amount.
people who love Him and adore Him.
We need men.
We don't need boys.
Go play.
Go live your life.
Do whatever you want.
But here we want men.
We want men who have steel in their spine and who bleed the gospel.
Who love their wives.
Or who love their Savior and their singleness.
We need women
who have eternity stamped on their eyes.
And with everything they do, whatever job they're at, whatever
place they are praying and they are raising up the next generation.
It's not a time to be invisible, and it's not a time to succumb to the accusation.
It's not a time to succumb as the enemy puts forth, and the enemy has, and
one of the things that happens is, for those who come to a church that says,
we're tired of the way things are, and we're going to not stand for it.
We're going to move against the enemy, as if the enemy takes note.
That once a church decides and says we are going to rebuild this city for the
praise and the glory of Jesus that his name might be lifted up and no longer
be a reproach, the enemy takes note.
And the enemy all of a sudden comes and he comes in strength like some
of us have never known before.
And I remember being a kid and I remember thinking, you kind of go through this
weird stage where your dad's always catching you every time, right?
And then there's that transition to where, he doesn't.
and I remember being at a pool and I remember thinking, deep in, no problem.
Don't know how to swim, that's okay.
You know, and you jump into it, and thinking, you know, what?
You know, they're all swimming.
And all of a sudden, start drowning.
And you begin to flail and you begin to kick, and I remember pushing up
and seeing, and you know, there my dad was, he's getting a drink out
of the water fountain, I'm like, bleh, you know, kind of a thing.
and, you know, another time up and, and, and, you know, people are just going,
going around, Hey, you know, here I am.
I'll let Jesus know you said hey.
I remember my dad jumping in and catching me and, putting me
on the side and me being okay.
But I think sometimes we hit warfare and it's like jumping into the deep end.
All of a sudden we begin to flail, we begin to go, and we think it's too thick,
it's too crazy, it's too gnarly, and we begin to feel like we're drowning in it.
But what happens is, if this is what we signed up for, if we really put our hand
to it and say we want to see the city transformed and we will labor in prayer,
we will labor in work, we will labor in doing and carrying the gospel out,
we will not stop until it is completed.
Then what happens is that can overwhelm us and we can be hit and we can
go like, oh man this is too crazy,
But what happens is you just gotta learn to rest in it.
Jesus has already had victory over the enemy on the cross.
One of the amazing things about this passage in Nehemiah is the enemy, you're
going to see every tactic that the enemy employs in the Nehemiah's response to it.
In chapters 4 to 7.
And what's amazing about it is the enemy, he comes and he comes with
his horses and his chariots and they say, we're going to kill you.
But they can't touch him because he's got the letter by the king.
He's there.
He has every right to be there.
It's all fear and intimidation.
It's all trickery.
It's all lies and accusation.
It's all deception.
But he can never put his hand on the people of God.
He does not have access.
And so we come as a church who says, We're gonna move forward into the city.
We're gonna take the gospel into the city.
And we need to learn to rest.
Because this is what we've signed up for.
God calls us to be soldiers, I mean, he's called us into a war and into a battle.
And it's gonna be a battle.
And it's gonna be hard, and it's gonna be rough.
But we take up our cross daily, and we follow the one who went before us.
Because we love and we adore him, and there was nowhere else.
As Peter said, Where else do we go?
You alone have the words of eternal life.
There's nowhere else to go, and so we follow Him hard, we will not fall
asleep, we will not rest, we will not give in to the accusation, we will not
give in to the mockery, we will not listen to the fact that, oh, this has
happened before, it's not gonna happen, but we will Walk forward as His people
taking up our cross daily and following Him because we adore and we love Him.
And because He's put His love on us, we love people and the
people in this city as well.
And so, we will not listen to those things.
We begin to rest in it.
We begin to rest that this is the way it is.
That this is what we've signed up for and some of us just aren't aware of that.
We go, oh no, something's wrong with me.
All of a sudden I'm tempted and I'm this and I'm that.
And it's like, yeah, you're on the front lines.
Take up your shield.
Get more time with Jesus.
and so we need.
To move on his response in verse 20.
He says so I answered them and said to them the God of heaven himself will
prosper us He didn't argue with them.
He didn't debate He didn't spend and waste time saying well, this is
my claim and we need to work this out He didn't try to barter peace.
He didn't say well, just let us give us this time.
He didn't pay him tribute He simply said the God of heaven will prosper us.
Therefore.
We are his servants not your servants We will arise and build,
but you have no heritage or right or memorial in Jerusalem.
You have no place here, so your words have no authority.
And he looks to heaven, he looks to God of heaven, and in essence what he
says is, he says this is God's work.
This isn't our work, sure it would fail, if it was us doing it.
God's working.
He's the one who's going to do it.
And so remind yourself this morning, that as we carry the
gospel forth, it is God's work.
It's God's intention to build the church.
He's the one who adds daily those who will be saved.
He's the one, as we lift up His name on high, He draws all men unto Himself.
It is God's work.
And God's work goes forward and will go forward by many or by few.
But count the cost, please.
so, we get to chapter 3, and first of all, the reason for the work,
it's all throughout Nehemiah.
Nehemiah was concerned about only one thing, and that was the glory of God.
In chapter 2, verse 17, he says, He said to them and we just read this,
you see the distress that we are in, how Jerusalem lies in waste and
its gates are burned with fire, come let us build the wall of Jerusalem
that we may no longer be a reproach.
And Nehemiah 1.
3, he said, and they said to me, the survivors who are from the
captivity and the providence are there in great distress and reproach.
The wall of Jerusalem is also broken down and its gates burned with fire.
And Nehemiah 4.
4, in response to one of the attacks of the enemy, he says,
hear, O God, for we are despised.
Churn.
Their reproach on their own heads and give them as plunder to a land of
captivity in chapter five, verse nine.
Then I said, what you're doing is he's speaking to the nobles is not good.
Should you not walk in the fear of our God because of the reproach
of the nations of our enemies.
And so over and over the driving force behind Nehemiah isn't that he
gets a nice place to be governor.
It isn't that he builds the walls and that people go, wow.
You are a master builder.
You are a master planner.
We need to hire you as a consultant, you know, to help lead, and the rebuilding
of our city, his chief and his only driving concern is the glory of God.
Too long has the glory of God been something that people laughed at,
been something that people mocked.
It's been a reproach.
His name's been a reproach, as the city, the capital, where
the temple was, lies in ruins.
And his driving concern, his thing that kept him pushing and moving forward,
that kept the workers working on the wall in discouragement, in fear, in
trial, in tribulation, when it was hard, was the concern for the glory of God.
God.
Because Nehemiah knew who God was.
Nehemiah, as he prayed, great and awesome God.
He knew God personally and intimately.
And so he looked out at the world.
He looked at how the world viewed God.
And he said, that is wrong.
That's not who my God is.
And he was concerned that people might know who God was.
That God was a loving God, full of compassion, full and longing to
bring people back to himself, to rebuild lives and to change them.
So his concern was the glory of God, that his name would
not be reproached any longer.
And as we move forward in Stockton, we must make it our aim not to be successful.
We must not make it our aim to grow our church.
We must not make it our aim to add notches to our belt or buildings
to the city, Our chief and only concern is the glory of God.
And we will stand shoulder to shoulder with other churches who preach the gospel.
We will stand with one another, many or few, and our concern will be that Jesus
is worshipped, that people meet Him, that they might know that there is a Savior
who does not task them to work and to earn His love, but that has given His
life freely, who has given His love.
That is our chief.
Concern in the city, the glory of God that no longer will Stockton
be a reproach that will look like a place where God has abandoned it,
but that it will be the place where God has chosen to enthrone himself.
And so that is the reason for the work.
That's gotta be our reason, Our reason in this city.
We must act and function as a body.
We function as a plurality of leaders.
We don't have one who gives an assignment down and then the others do.
We function as a body here.
We need your prayers.
We covet them.
We need your accountability.
We covet them.
we need you guys.
And so, The people of Jesus.
God uses all kinds of people.
In verse 1 of chapter 3, and verse 12 to 19, you see that
He uses rulers and priests.
In verse 12, He uses men and women.
In fact, He uses whole families.
in verse 8 and 32, he uses professional craftsmen.
In verses 7, even people from outside the city.
There was a place for everyone and a job for everyone to work.
First of all, leaders must set the example.
In Nehemiah 3, 1, notice.
Then Elishab, the high priest, rose up with his brethren, the
priests, and built the Sheep Gate.
They consecrated it and hung its doors.
They built as far as the Tower of the Hundred, and consecrated it,
then as far as the Tower of Hananel.
And, God.
uses everyone and leaders need to lead.
If anybody in the city should have been busy in the work, it was
the priest, for the glory of the Lord was involved in the project.
That the priest used his consecrated hands to do manual labor shows
that he considered the work on the wall to be a ministry to the Lord.
He did not say, I should be over here, I should be doing this, I need to do this,
or, you know, I need to Make sure the temple's all ready when you guys do, but
he worked, the priest worked on the wall.
Therefore, in 31, it says, Therefore, whether you eat or drink or whatever
you do, do all to the glory of God.
All to the glory of God.
Whether it's raising your family, whether that's working at your job, do it that
God may be seen through you and in you.
Do it all to the glory.
Notice that God used the out of towners.
look at verse 5, it says, next to them the Tekoaites made repairs, but their
nobles did not work, and did not put their shoulders to the work of the Lord.
Tekoa was a town 11 miles away from Jerusalem, and many would
travel to Jerusalem Two work on the walls of Jerusalem.
And so again, 11 miles in that day is like, I don't know, Turlock , no.
but it was a long ways away.
But the fact is, is that God used people from, without, remember Jerusalem, was
not a place that many people inhabited.
And at the end of the book, Nehemiah's gonna ask for a tithe, but not, of money.
But of people.
He wants people to live in Jerusalem.
from the surrounding areas.
And they give a tithe of people.
That they would come into the city.
That they would begin to inhabit the neighborhoods.
That they begin to live there.
And live is that counterculture, for the Lord.
And, in that city, representing Him.
And so, God used people from out of town.
The people from out of town we see in verses, verse 7, or
actually verse 5 and 27, that they build at two places on the wall.
So it wasn't that they just kind of came in and did their thing.
But they were invested.
In fact, they did more than some of the other people who lived in the town.
And so, The people from Jericho, we see that in verse 2.
Gibeon and Mizpah in verse 7.
And so, all throughout the area, people got the vision and they said, We are gonna
come, we are gonna, give our time and our resources to this work in this city.
It's important.
God has put, a vision there and He wants people to do it.
And so, just Again, thank you, for those and we love you
as our focus is on Stockton.
We thank you for coming and for participating and laboring with
us in the work of the city.
All you who are from, without this church probably would not exist if it
wasn't from people from without a town.
in the beginning it was almost exclusively people who supported
this work from different parts from Modesto and Turlock and Lodi
and, Manteca and all these places.
And so, we love and we adore you guys.
And, moved to Stockton already.
Um, just kidding.
But as the Lord expands the work, so he'll bring works to those cities as well.
and, and as that people would benefit as Jerusalem was established.
and so, some people, they did more work than other people.
In Nehemiah 3.
11, verse 19, 21, 24, 27, and 30.
Most of the workers are glad to lay down their tools when their job is finished.
But these people asked for additional assignments.
They did not, they had this vision.
We need to get this done.
We want to carry it.
They didn't just say, okay, this is what's been given me.
So I'm just gonna see to this, to this being done.
But they said, what else can we do?
How else can we help?
We've got, you know, resource.
We've got this.
Let us all work together.
Let us all do it together.
Some did their work at their home.
chapter 3, verse 10, 23.
28 to 30.
You have at least six different workers, plus an unknown number of
priests, repair the portions of the wall that were nearest to their houses.
And so they worked in their neighborhoods.
They worked exactly where they lived.
That's where they built the wall, the places that mattered.
And so God calls us all to begin to rebuild in our neighborhoods.
That we would begin to pray and labor in prayer to get people who are believers
as well together in that neighborhood and say, let's begin to pray that God work in
this neighborhood, that you for a year or two years, labor consistently in prayer.
And then what happens is you look for opportunities.
Let's go help this family.
Let's go get the church to rebuild this house, or let's go help.
them fix their car here And what happens is as you begin to be missional
in that sense, you begin to get this vision for that neighborhood and then
you build bridges for the gospel.
And so, some people work harder than others.
In Nehemiah 3.
20, it says, Notice verse 20, it says, And after him, Barak, the son of Zabal,
carefully repaired the other section from the buttress of the door to the
house of Elisha of the high priest.
That word carefully there, in, in the Hebrew, is actually zealously.
It means to burn.
To be hot with.
And so here's one who saw this labor in this work, and they burned and they said,
this is from the Lord building this wall.
And so he did, he spent himself on it and he burned out on it
in a good way, burn out, on it.
And so, it means earnestly, to burn or to glow.
Ecclesiastes nine 10 says, whatever your hand finds to do,
do it with all of your mind.
Because ultimately, we're doing it for Jesus.
We should be doing it for Jesus.
And so our work, you know, Christians have a bad rap for being pretty lame at work.
And you know,
we need to work hard because we're not working ultimately
for a paycheck as believers.
We're not working for the weekend as believers.
We're not just getting by.
We're not just doing these things.
We are serving Jesus through our work and praying and praising and,
and asking that people see Jesus and how we move and how we do things.
I really had a hard time thinking that one through practically until I used
to work as an electrician and it was a couple of us guys who were believers.
And there was a guy there, really hard, to the things of the Lord.
Really, really pretty standoffish.
Until he hit rock bottom.
And, I remember my boss getting a call, and he got a call from this
guy, and he's like, I'm saved!
I got saved!
and, you know, as he kind of found out, well, what was it?
Did you, go to a church?
Did somebody witness to you?
He said, all I could think about was your guys.
And they always did everything with a smile.
There was something different about their lives.
They worked hard.
they stayed after to get it done.
When I was in trouble, they helped me, you know, to bail me out kind of a thing.
There was something different in their lives and it drove them to Jesus.
All we did was put pipe together.
But when you do it as worship to Jesus, again, people take note.
In verse 5 it talks about the nobles, and I love, because this chapter, chapter 3
is full of names, and you can read it, and it's name after complicated name,
after I would never name my baby that name, and it's, name, and name, and
name, and you think about scripture.
That scripture has been built on the blood of martyrs to have
what we have in our laps today.
You think about how many times it's been tried to be taken out.
How many people have stood against it.
How many people have criticized it.
You think about just scripture being God's word.
He says, heaven and earth will pass away, but my word will by no means pass away.
Scripture, amazing, perfect, infallible, you know, and here's this thing.
And there's a list full of names.
There's a list full of names.
I mean, don't you have better ways to use room than just listing names?
But it's amazing because there's such a contrast because here are people who
went to work and they did the work.
They said, I will do my part in this city and I will rebuild.
And God throughout all of history takes note of it.
God takes note of it in scripture, and he says this person, and this person
worked, this person worked hard.
He takes note of the work of building a wall in 52 days.
He takes note of just putting rocks on top of one another so
that his glory might be seen.
He takes note of that.
But there's something that he did not name.
There are peoples, in this story whose names don't get in there.
And that's the people who refuse to work.
He just calls them nobles in almost an ironic mocking way.
Oh, the nobles.
Because they're not noble to God.
Because God doesn't take note of who they were.
Yes, they rise, and yes, they had power, and yes, they had influence
in their time, and in their sphere, and yes, they had comfort and luxury.
But God didn't take note of their names.
God took note of the perfumers, and the goldsmiths, and the ironsmiths,
and the families who were impoverished, and the people who came from all walks.
It was the people who put their hand to the plow, counting
the cost, not looking back.
But He didn't take note of the nobles.
He just said, they didn't work,
they didn't work.
And so to God, that's not nobility, because God judges differently.
So some people, they refused to work.
They were too important in their own eyes, or perhaps they had already
succumbed to the enemy's tactic.
Perhaps they talked together and said, hey, this has happened before, do
you really think it can happen again?
And they began, and in chapter 5 we'll see, they became the mixed multitude.
I mean to say, the Did God really want us to do this?
This is hard.
This is difficult.
Wouldn't it be better if we just went back to peace and security and safety?
Let's not rock the boat.
It's too hard to go into Stockton, really plant that many churches.
Are you kidding?
That's, that's kind of rough and, and, and, and, and this kind of this
way and, and, you know, Stockton's always going to be Stockton.
It's always going to be in this situation in this state.
It's always going to be in this case.
and I find that the people who talk the most and criticize the churches the most.
are the people who never lift a finger to do anything to help out.
It's just the way it is, I guess.
It's the people who talk and say, look at the gaps, and they never
lift a stone to fill in the gap.
And people come and they say, you know, oh, this should be this
way, or this should be this way, or this, this, this, and this.
You know, we constantly invite people to our staff meetings on Friday nights.
It's called prayer.
We meet with the senior pastor to find out what he wants to do.
Come to a staff meeting.
Think about it.
It's going to be hard.
It's going to be difficult.
It's going to mean laying down your life.
It's going to mean giving up when you could have comfort.
It's going to mean inviting people in when you want solitude.
Think about it.
But God takes note.
Well done now, good and faithful servant.
Will anything else matter on that day?
Will anything?
I mean, will all our success and financial status and Our prestige
level 10, what will matter?
Standing face to face with the Savior,
who bore those wounds for you and for me.
I want to read you scripture in Ephesians.
The great thing about the Lord is He's never, He's never condemning.
you know, Lord, I haven't worked, I haven't lived my life for eternity.
He doesn't say, yeah, you.
He says, I know it's okay.
Here, take your place on the wall.
Work.
And He's gifted you all, young and old, in this room.
And you all have a place.
One of the beautiful things is to see the perfumers next to the goldsmiths, and
to see every walk of life in every shape coming together as the community of God,
and laboring for the sake of His glory.
It's beautiful.
In Ephesians chapter 2 verse 19, it says, Now therefore you are no longer
strangers and foreigners, but you are fellow citizens with the saints
and members of the household of God.
So no longer strangers, but now we are made the family of God.
Each member having a place, having been built on the foundation of the
apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief cornerstone.
Speaking of scripture as being the foundation, that's how we know.
what we should believe about this and that, ultimately
scripture being about Jesus.
And that's why we're here, to be hearing about Him, to be gathered in
His name, to be falling in love, with Him, for Jesus to become more and more.
Beautiful in whom the whole building being fitted together grows into a
holy temple in the Lord in whom you also are being built together for a
dwelling place of God in the spirit.
And so what the Lord wants to do in first Peter chapter two, verse
five, he calls us living stones.
And he says, here we are, we're stones, and he talks about the temple, being
fitted together, and what would happen is in the quarry, when they were building
the temple, they would not allow hammers or chisels or anything that made noise
to happen on the temple grounds because the place was sacred, and so they would
carefully hew out the stones, these huge, gigantic stones, and that's about it.
Carefully to precision where you could not slide a piece of paper in between them.
They were so perfectly cut out.
And so they would cut out these stones, which speaks to our conversion.
That from out of, chaos, God has hewn out for himself a people and he's each
given us and he's made us as living stones to fit together into a community.
And we are not that by ourselves.
We are only that with one another.
We only find our identity as the church and as Christians when we
stand together, when we become the building that God fills, the
people in which He works through.
Again, as God will use an individual, He longs to use and He desires to
use, and the normality of His use is using a group of people, using a
community who love Him and adore Him.
And it's to be fit together.
Have you ever seen a keystone when you build an arch?
And you've got this arch And there's this special fit, for this one stone.
And this stone can't stand by itself because of the way it's shaped.
You know, it's built specially for one thing.
And that's to take the arches that would fall, without it.
And to put that in so that all the pressure fits Perfectly in there is
then put on that keystone, and then it's strong and nothing could take that down.
And so you have been designed, and you have been shaped, and you have been
gifted specifically to be put in the building of God and in the church of God.
And to remove yourself from that as a believer is to cause the found, is
to cause that to weaken, to cause the building to be not as strong as it is, or
to not be entirely what it was made to be.
So God calls you.
And he's the one who fits you in.
And let me tell you, do you think a perfumer swinging a hammer, do
you think it was just perfection?
No.
He's like, Oh, I, I ruined it again.
Spray some cologne on it.
I don't know, you know.
What do you, I mean, It was messy, they were taking rubble
and trash, it wasn't like a kit you get and you build a wall kit.
I mean it was gnarly and people were making mistakes and they're falling
over one another and stuff, but they worked and they kept it going and when
they got discouraged they were there for one another and they held and
they said keep working, keep going, keep carrying the gospel out, be not
weary and well doing for in due season you shall reap if you faint not.
Go, go, go, keep going.
Keep going.
And he fit them together.
The enemy has many jewels here,
but they're not glorious jewels.
They're like coal and they're, they're like charcoal and, and he holds them
up as testimonies and as a testament to his strength and his power.
And like Sambalat and Tobiah and Geshem, they laugh and they mock at
the idea of God changing the city.
And they put on display, they say, look at my strongholds, look at my
places, I have ruled this place, do you think that it will be any different?
And they hold up person, after person, after person, after person.
Like some stain on, in the central valley is, is his testimony and
is his things as he holds up.
He uses them as proof in Malachi
chapter 3, verse 17.
I just believe this verse is for Stockton.
He says, They shall be mine, says the Lord of hosts, on
the day that I make them mine.
My jewels, my jewels, and I will spare them as a man spares
his own son who serves him.
As the enemy holds up his idea and his, proof, God would long to hold you up as
a beautiful jewel that he's made you.
A jewel of his grace, a jewel of his mercy, a jewel of a life
that has been given to him and transformed and changed by him.
So where the enemy says, look it, we stand together.
And we look at one another, and we say yes.
Look at what God can do.
Look at what God can do in a life.
He can take people addicted, slaves to that addiction, and He can transform them.
and change them.
He can take witches and people who worship the devil and the occult
and he can make them his jewels.
He can take the gnarliest.
He can take the most religious and he puts them on display of his grace and
he says, yes, but this is what I do and this is what I'll do in this city.
And so we remember our God, great and awesome, great and awesome.
But in verse 17 it says, And I will spare them as a man spares
his own son who serves him.
But to make you a jewel, and that's just common sense, isn't it?
It's common sense that we would spare a son, we would reward a son.
Somebody who was obedient, somebody who did nothing to, rebel, or none of that.
We would reward them.
openly, because, man, they bring us joy in their obedience.
But if you're here today and you don't know Jesus, the truth of the gospel is
that God, he did, not spare his son.
Even though Jesus was obedient.
Obedient in every way, shape, or form.
He obeyed the law.
He did not sin.
And what Jesus did because of his great love, and God did because of his great
love, is he gave his son up a ransom.
You need to know that today.
That for you to be made a jewel, it cost innocent blood, but
He made the way for you, and He made the way for me, by going to
the cross and by bearing our sin.
If you don't know Jesus in this place, He adores you, and He loves you, and
He longs to take what the enemy means, and the enemy holds up, and the enemy
applauds, and the enemy says, look it.
This is the reason why it won't happen, and Jesus longs to, because of what He did
at the cross, take you, and to wash you, and make you clean, and to hold you up as
a jewel and a testament of His grace and mercy and say, yes, but this is what I do.
And this is why I came, and this is why I laid down my life.
No one takes my life, but I give it freely, so that many would come to me.
What a beautiful thing.
When God's people recognize what he's done, recognize their absolute, absolute
putrid state in sin, and yet Jesus desired to press them, and to hold them, and to
wash them, and to make them his treasure.
All by his grace, all by his mercy.
And what that does is it causes us to worship him together
and to say, isn't he good?
Isn't he great and awesome?
And no amount of accusation, no amount of lie, no amount of proof that the
enemy holds can touch a candle to that.
I mean, it's a revolution
as he takes life and he changes them.
So let's be the church today.
If some of us maybe we need to repent just for listening to the
lie because of the sin of unbelief.
Some of us need to repent because we haven't worked.
We've been critical and we've just looked and we've been consumers in an
individual society asking to be loved radically but never being vulnerable.
And again, some of us need to repent just for the fact that
we've held back our gifts because we've been hurt by the church.
And I'm not telling you it's going to be perfect, but I'm telling you, as we
worship and look and keep our eyes on Jesus, we'll keep building the wall.
Some of us just need to renew our love for Jesus as we take communion
and just say, You are amazing.
You are great.
You are awesome.
You are magnificent.
I've lost sight of that.
And I've made other things magnificent.
I've made other things this.
But I'd ask you all to count the cost.
There will be warfare in this church.
It will not be easy.
But we will move forward and by God's grace, because it's his work,
we're gonna see this city changed.
We love you.
Thank you that it's your work Lord.
So Lord, I pray that
You do a work in us that you'd knit our hearts together, that
you'd bind us together, Jesus, Lord, that we would be your people.
That, Lord, the world would see because of our love for one another.
God, I pray, Lord, that you would be the cornerstone in our lives
upon which we build everything.
Jesus, we love you.