Building The Walls

Nehemiah chapter 3. A little of the background: Here we have started a series on what we call Building and Rebuilding. Building and rebuilding. And that’s what God does in people's lives.

I've often said God builds the youth and he rebuilds the adults. And so, while people are young and Moldable of times, he builds their life. But somehow, if we get off track and it's kind of all messed up, he says, I can rebuild life. It's interesting. The job that Jesus chose while he was on earth was not a shepherd. It was not a potter. It was a carpenter. And carpenters, of course, are builders.

Listen to this verse. Before we read the passage, the Bible says, “Except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it.” So, what is He saying there? He’s saying that you can have all the plans, read all the books on building a great marriage and great kids and great ministries, but except the Lord gets into that thing, it’s all in vain. You can have all the plans you want, but God has to be the One that gets into it and helps build.

Here’s another one in Proverbs 14:1. It says, “A wise woman builds her house.” So, it’s talking about a wise woman is building her husband—builds him up, builds the children up. And it says, “But a foolish woman plucketh it down with her hands.” Plucking it, of course, is a little bit at a time. If you’re an old-timer, a cruel old-timer who eats animals and kill chickens and…anyways. When someone used to pluck chickens when they were gonna fry them up on the farm, it was a little bit at a time. So, He’s saying, Sometimes we don’t even see it when we’re plucking someone down and putting them down. Words do that. Our words build or they pluck our attitude. Sometimes, they build or they pluck. The attitude of the church will help build a church or pluck it down, and an attitude of a mate and so forth. This is what it’s about.

So, here’s Nehemiah. He is he is living in in this place called Shushan, or Persia. He’s 600 miles from where God's temple used to be in Jerusalem. Here’s the story in Chapter 1: the walls had fallen down now.

What does that mean for us? The walls had fallen down. No one ever moved into a city when the walls had fallen down. It meant there was no protection. If the walls were not there, no one would move into the city. There was no safety. It would be like moving into Oakland, California, when they’ve shut down the police force. No, sheriff, there’s no law and order. Very few would say, “What a great town to move into!” Uh…we want safety. We want to know that we’re safe at night. You don't want to have to hire armed guards like some people do, and some of the third world countries do.

So, God put it on Nehemiah’s heart to move back to Jerusalem and get the wall built. The temple had been built. They were ready to have worship. Ezra had come back. He had brought the Word of God to help teach the people. But no wall. It’s been knocked down through wars and battles. It’s just sitting there, grass growing up. It’s been there for decades, and there’s no wall. Somehow, Nehemiah feels led to go back and build this wall.

So, with that in mind, let’s look at some highlights in Chapter 3 that will draw some practical conclusions. And I think it would be a big help to us tonight.

You say, Pastor, I still don’t get it. Why are these walls important? These walls also represent a spiritual warfare, and the Bible says that we need a hedge around us in the book of job. It talks about Satan trying to attack Job the great Christian. And [Satan] said, I can’t get to Job because God, You put a hedge or a wall around him. You know what praying for people does. It helps put a hedge of protection around them. And you know what? Preaching and teaching the Word of God—it helps put some walls around people.

You say, “Well, how is this important?” You’ll see right here. Well, let’s just look here. Nehemiah gets to town. And if you have a Bible, you can look at it. If not, I’ll read some of it. Look at verse 1: “Then Eliashib the high priest rose up with his brethren the priests, and they builded the sheep gate; they sanctified it…” Verse 2: “And next unto him builded the men of Jericho…”

Interesting. They didn't even live there. But they came from out of town to help build the wall. Isn’t that interesting. Keep going here. “Next unto him builded…” You keep seeing this word. They builded, they builded.

Verse 3: “But the fish gate did the sons of Hassenaah build…” Who in the world is that? Build verse 4, “Next to him….” Now it shifts the word to “repaired.” It says, repaired Meremoth the son of Urijah, the son of Koz. And next unto them repaired Meshullam…” Last phrase: “And next unto them repaired Zadok…” And now you just keep hearing the same thing all throughout. The whole chapter says, “Next to him repaired, next to him repaired…” And so, what's going on here?

God is saying He’s very interested in building and repairing lives, not destroying lives. Sin destroys. Sometimes, the wrong friends destroy, but as Christians we are to be building lives, building people up, encouraging them, saying things like, “God can use you,” and, “God can use you again,” and “It’s not over,” and, “God still has a plan for your life.” It may just be pieces, and that’s all you see. But God says, “No, that still fits in the wall somewhere, and I can still use that somewhere here.”

Satan tells us it's all over, life’s not worth living. God looks down and says, “Man, you got the best years of your life ahead. Man, I can still use you. You’re not done with life.” And so you have these differences here. And so, we keep seeing this word “builded next to.” “builded next to.”

Look down here in verse 5: “And next unto them the Tekoites repaired; but their nobles put not their necks to the work of their Lord.” We’ll get back to that in a moment. Then skip down to verse 14. “But the dung gate repaired…”

Just try to imagine for a moment. So here we are in a city the size of Napa, and we’ve got all these walls that have fallen down. There’s big boulders, and they’re square pieces of quarried stone just all over. And we’re thinking, where do we want to build? They're building walls. Then, they're building gates. There’s certain gates to enter into. One gate was the fish gate, where they bring all the produce that was caught in the sea to sell. There was another gate. It was called the dung gate, and somehow the sewer system was right there. But someone had to build it. Someone had to build that gate. It wasn’t very appealing. “Where are you working?” “The fish gate.” “Where are you working?” “The sheep gate.” “Where do you work?” “In the sewer ditch gate.” But someone had to do that.

You know, sometimes there’s gonna be some jobs in a marriage and in a home that’s not real appealing. “What do you want to do the rest of your life?” “I want to change 10,000 diapers. That’s what I want to do.” I guess someone can Google it: How many diapers are changed per kid? No one looks forward to that, but it’s just kind of a part of it. Some things are messy.

Some things are not easy in a relationship, and a marriage, and child rearing, and ministry. But someone'’ got to have a vision to build that. And then we see a little further down here. Notice over here looking into verse 28: “From above the horse gate repaired the priests…” Notice this: “every one over against his house.”

So, they’re building the wall. They’re putting up gates. They’re putting up bars. They’re building pieces, the Bible says. And then it says some of them are actually rounding the corner. It just looks like a long, long task. But finally they get around the corner—and let me just encourage you right now: some of you have been building something a long time. You’ve been building a marriage a long time. You’ve been building your children a long time. You’ve been trying to rebuild your life for a long time, and it looks like I’ll never get done with this thing—Hey, you’re about to around the corner! You’re just about around the corner. You’re about done with that wall. Just kind of hang on a little while. And that’s the common word we even use today.

Well, let me just give you some practical thoughts here. Just three thoughts. Number 1, we see the workmen in Chapter 3:1: “…Eliashib the high priest rose up with his brethren the priests, and they builded…” So, who was this high priest fellow? Nehemiah was the one that would oversee the building, but the high priest was the highest Jewish office that anyone could have. We talked about it in the tent—we talked about on the Day of Atonement. He would offer the blood and go into the Holy of Holies place. No one was higher than him. And guess who the first person they mentioned starts building the wall? The high priest, the high priest.

Now what's that mean to us workmen? It always starts with leadership. There’s got to be a leader. I’ve counseled people before I've done marriage counseling where he said this and she said this. And there’s just this big argument. One time a lady was so loud you could hear her across the street. The neighbors heard her in my office across the street, and I just kinda ended up saying something like, “Okay, stop time out!” It’s bad when you call time out. I said, “Who’s the leader of this family? Just tell me and we’ll work from there.” You know, a man never likes to hear the question, “Who’s the leader, and we'll just kind of work from there.” Is it the husband? Is that the wife who leads us home? Is it the children? Is it the teenagers who run the home? They get what they want. You know, there’s got to be leadership. And leadership never deals with IQ or gender. There’s just got to be a leader in the home.

And so right here it says this guy Eliashib—he said, “Okay, I’m the high priest. I’m getting involved in this right away.” And guess what? They built the sheep gate. I wonder why they built the sheep gate first. Because those sheep will be offered for the sacrifices, the atoning sheep that would shed their blood. We’re gonna come through that wall first. And that’s where God deals with us. Salvation starts as we receive Christ as Savior. Then we’ve got a life worth building.

I was talking to Brother Bob tonight, our new man brother Bob Stevenson. He is cutting up. He said, “Pastor. So, I got saved this week. I got baptized this morning. Now I never have to come back to church, right?” I said, “That’s how some people think.”

So here I was, I met a pastor in town years ago. I don’t even remember his name. But he came to me. I’d been here just a few weeks, and he walked over to the church and he said, “So do you all do that thing? Soul winning? I mean, do you all, like, go out and pass out gospel tracts and tell people how to get saved?” I said, “Actually, we do.” He said, “How is that working?” I said, “We work at it all the time. We announce it. I go out a lot. We work at it.” Here’s what he said: He said, “We tried that once.” He said, “I announced to the church, ‘Whoever wants to tell people about Jesus, meet Tuesday night and we'll go.’” He said, “No one showed up,” and then he said this remarkable leadership trait: “If they're not going to do it, I'm not going to do it.” And in my heart, I felt like saying, “What a leader!” Hey, that’s why you're there to lead. They need a leader. It’s got to be someone lead—lead the home, lead the company, lead the wife, lead the children, lead a ministry. And so that’s where it starts. Rebuilding always starts when someone says, “All right, I'm supposed to take the lead. I’m not good at it, but I work at it and I’m gonna get busy about it.”

I still remember when my dad reentered the picture in our home. He had been missing so many years and just hardly ever home. It was tense when he was in the house. He’d walk in the room, and I want to walk out. I didn’t feel comfortable around him. I remember after he accepted Christ as his Savior, we were doing what all good Baptists do—we were watching, I think, Gilligan’s Island that afternoon on television. My dad walked in the room. He said, “Shut the TV off. We'’e gonna read the Bible.” And I remember we sat down. My dad played football and didn’t get a great education during the harvest season. Dad would miss school to pick watermelons, picked cotton, all that kind of stuff. So, he didn’t get a great education. And I remember he mispronounced a lot of the words in the Bible. I remember, we read that verse, “You can’t serve God and Mammon.” He said, “I wonder what that is?” I said, “Dad, that’s one of those dinosaurs with that long thing that looks like an elephant with those big tusks. And it talks about making friends with mammoths.” We’d see that and we never could figure that out. But you know what he did? He tried. He tried. And let me encourage you: You may have a leader in the home, and he may not be a refined leader, but just keep trying and let God encourage you as you encourage the leader. Don’t correct when they don’t say the right words. “Well, we missed family devotions again.” “Hey, we had it one time this week. Praise God!” Encourage the leader.

There was a chapel service. I was in Bible college years ago, and someone was going to have a ministry of preaching on the street corners in Chicago and in the ghetto neighborhoods where a lot of people just hung out—drug dealers, gang members, whoever they were. And late at night, there would be a whole bunch of people hanging out. And so, one of the students said, We’re going to set up a service and every Saturday night have people every 15 minutes stand on the corner and preach about Jesus. Well, #1: Most of those people are not really interested right there. #2: A lot of them are just passing through. #3 If they’re in a car, they don’t hear you. But do what you want to. I have preached on the street corner before. So anyway, he said, we need to sign people up. “We got 8:00 PM open, 8:15 open, 8:30 open. Who wants it?” And he’s pitching it from the pulpit. No, one's taking it. No one wants to preach on the street corner in Chicago, and the whole chapel service was kind of quiet. About that time, the president of the college sitting over here, Dr. Evans said, “I 8:00 PM open?” “Yes, sir.” “Then 8:00 PM,” he says, “Sign me up for 8:00 PM.” When the president said that, all over the chapel, “I’ll take 8:15, I’ll take 8:30, put me down for 8:45.” What happened? Because the leader said, “Plug me in. Let me build part of that wall.” It just takes a leader. You don’t have to know everything. But someone’s got to take the lead. Someone’s got to take the lead.

Leadership is not a title. It is not a position. It’s just something God puts in your heart. You’re gonna do something for God. And as you do it, pretty soon as you’re building, you look around and some other people are right there next to you helping you.

So, we see Leadership. And then #2, we see the Workmen. Now we see the Work. Notice all these texts: “Beside them, they repaired…” What does all this mean? Just some practical things here. Here it is. They repaired; they didn't destroy.

Let me encourage you. We live in a day where you can post, where you can text, where you can blog, and destroy anonymously. “Well, here’s what I think of so-and-so, here’s what I think of them. Here’s my thought. Here is this.” You know someone ought to get in the ministry of building and not just destroying. Let me encourage you on that.

Next, the work unifies and makes you close to people. It makes you close to people. Brother Chris, can you help me? Just for a second? So, he’s kind of doing his own thing. I’m kind of doing my own thing. Now, look, all of a sudden we get involved building the same wall. You know what that does? That kind of makes us close. You say, “Pastor, how do you get close to people?” Here It is. Work with them. It’s amazing: I am closer to people in our church than I am to my own brother. You know why? Because I’ve never liked him! No, no, no, no. Because we never do anything together. He lives in Louisiana; I live here. I’ve worked on projects with you. I’ve dug sewer ditches with Brother Schulte. I’ve built garages with Brother Fowler. I work here and there with so many of you. And pretty soon now we kind of feel close. How come work makes you close to people? It just does. Jesus said, “Take my yoke upon you. Learn of me.” When you get yoked together with a yoke, it brings you close to another worker. It just does.

What is He saying about this wall that’s been built quickly? It silences the murmuring. When people are busy working, they’re not complaining. Idle people complain. And that’s why in our nation, a lot of people who are idle and have nothing to do have mischief to get into. Get people busy. Get your kids busy. Give your teenagers jobs to do. Let them do chores. (Tomorrow is a holiday. I understand!) Everyone needs a break, but it ought not be 14 hours of television. And it ought not be 12 hours of video games. Give them something according to their interest. It said that they built the wall. It said “everyone over against his house” (verse 28). What's that mean? Okay, now you think for a second if your house is right here and the wall is falling down, where are you most interested that the wall be built? Here’s your little family living right here in this house. The walls knocked down, enemies can come and capture and kill your family. Where do you think you want the wall built first? I’ll tell you right in front of your house. So, in ministry and in the family, God is saying this: start where your interests are. Start building.

You say, Pastor, I’m a new Christian. Here’s Bob and Lisa just getting involved here. So, where do we get involved? Get involved where your interest is and where your heart is. What do you mean by that? Wally BB—he was a drunkard, ended up living on the streets, an alcoholic, if you will—He ended up accepting Christ as his Savior. Guess what ministry he started and made it worldwide? The bus ministry. Because that was his heart. Jim Vineyard had a little child pass away who had a tonsillectomy and died on the operating table. Guess what he had a heart for? Children. It was Lee Robertson—his daughter, Joy, passed away. He had a heart for young Children. He started a free church camp named “Camp Joy” in Chattanooga, Tennessee. It’s where his heart was.

Okay, let’s bring it down a little bit here. So here is Brother Berto, who got saved out of a life of drugs. Many of you dealt drugs to him. That's how he got on it. And I don't know if you did or not, but he came out of that lifestyle. Guess why he’s interested in reaching the addicted? Because that’s the wall right in front of him. That’s his interest. And that’s what he's been involved in. You speak a foreign language like Spanish? Build that wall. Help reach those that speak Spanish. You speak to Tagalog or Cebuano or one of the Filipino dialects? Reach those people because I can’t speak that language.

So, we see the Workmen, we see the Work according to their interest. And then quickly here, God used just Ordinary People. You know, you can read all the names you want to in Chapter 3: I don't recognize one of these names! I don't recognize any. None of them are famous. None of them wrote books of the Bible. None of them are prophets. They’re just ordinary people. Guess who God uses to build walls? Just ordinary people. God said in the book of 1 Corinthians, “Not many mighty, not many noble are called”… so that God would receive all the glory. You know, there’s some good-looking Christians. I mean, there’s some very handsome men that are Christians. There’s not many of us! And then there’s some beautiful, beautiful movie star-looking women that are Christians. But how come somehow, God’s put most people kind of in-between? They’re not ugly as dirt. They’re not beauty queens. There's just kinda in-between. God uses ordinary people. How come? So that someone looks and says, “How in the world are they doing this great work? And then they pause and say, ‘It must be God. It must be God.’”

You say, “Well, Pastor, how do you know what you’re good at?” You just get busy building. And pretty soon you’ll find out what you're good at. D. L. Moody started a college. They ended up calling it the Moody Institute. D. L. Moody had an eighth-grade education, but he was a go-getter, a soul winner. He had 1,000 children in Sunday School when he was just a young man, age 28, just a dynamic worker. He said, “You enroll in my Christian college, and in six months you’ll know what you’re good at—whether it’s outside services, or visiting the sick, or hospital visiting, or visiting the dying, or door-to-door.” He said, “Give it six months and you'll know what you’re good at.” So how do you know? You just get busy serving the Lord and pretty soon you’re gonna say, “Boy, I really like doing this. I really like doing this.” I’ve had people say, Pastor, I’ll pay you not to have me teach a class. I mean, I will do anything but not teach a class.” Okay. If you’re not good at that, do something else. There’s something you can do on the wall. Set up the timber. Put up the post. Put up the wall. Repair. Build. Do some of the pieces. Rebuild. There’s something along the line that you can do.

What else? We cannot be a noble. The Bible says in verse 5:35 “…but their nobles put not their necks to the work of their Lord.” Pastor, what is a noble? A noble is someone that is too good to do the work. That’s the noble.

We had a couple came here years ago. They wanted to make an appointment. And they said, “Pastor, you know we’ve been in a lot of churches” (and they’re trying to tell me where they fit) And they said, “We’re real good at making decisions.” I said, “What?” “We’re real good at making the decisions.” In other words, we’re not gonna do any of the work, but we’re real good at telling the people what to do.” I said, “You know, we have plenty of those right now. We have plenty of those.” What’s that called? A noble?. That’s the one too good to tie the little child’s shoe that’s about to trip them. That’s the one too good to let an elderly person lean on you and help them into their car. That’s the one too good when there’s trash thrown on the ground to lean over and pick it up. Too good to do the little things that are not in the spotlight.

I think it was Jesus that touched the lepers, and He's the one that anointed those who were blind and healed them. He’s the one that took a little lad’s lunch and made him famous. It’s the little things that make people notice the big things.

And then I’m done with this: So, first we’ve seen the Workmen. Second, we have seen the Work. And then last I want to talk just a little bit about the Wise. The wise. So, what are you talking about here? There's gonna come a time when the energy is a little bit less, and you might say, “Pastor, I don't know if I can build the wall anymore. I've been building the wall for so many years now. I can’t even find the bricks anymore!” And some of you are starting to get there a little bit. Some of your best years were spent. Man, you poured your heart into a bus route. You poured your heart into a class and you taught 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 years. And now you do good to make it from the car to the pew to the restroom and back to the car and home. And then you’re worn out. You know there’s gonna come times like that. So what’s that mean? You’re unneeded? No, that means you do different building. You do different building. How do you do that? You take your knowledge and your wisdom God has given you through your lifetime, and you share it with others. And you use your words to encourage and build them up. By just the words, “Come here. Come here. Come here. I've been noticing you.” “You have? I'm sorry. What have I been doing?” “You’re doing great. I’ve seen you with your kids. You’re doing a great job. I’m so proud of you. Just keep it.” You know, sometimes just a few words to a weary person and thatss all they need. And so you can still build people.

I got a letter years ago from the famous preacher, Leonard Ravenhill. He wrote a famous book called Why Revival Tarries. Ancient. Real old. I wrote him a letter when he was living down in Lynnewood, Texas. I just wrote and said, “Thank you so much for the book.” I wrote, “I don’t even know if you’ll get this letter.” He wrote me back by hand, and on the envelope it said, “Are the things you’re living for worth Jesus dying for?” I've never forgotten that. Just about two lines. I’ve still got that letter somewhere. What did he do in his older years? He said I can’t build the church. I can’t hold a tent revival. Can’t hold a crusade. But there’s some young ministers out there I can encourage and I can help, and I can assist just with words. Maybe that’s why the Bible says, “And you older women teach the younger women.” When we finally have some sense, share it. It is strange—when we’re young, we don’t have any sense. When we get older, we finally figured it out. That’s when you need kids. People ought to start having kids when they’re 60 and 70…but then you don’t have energy to raise them. I wish we could get the best of both worlds.

Anybody know the name, (and I'm coming down to the conclusion here) Author Stace Not out of space author States How about Australia? Sydney. He was a guy that could not read or write. He was not really bright, did not have any schooling. He received Jesus Christ as his Savior when he was an older man. He said, “I can’t preach and I can’t explain things real good. But I know one day we will each face God in eternity.” He took a yellow waterproof crayon and every day he would go out and on the sidewalks of Sydney, Australia and he’d write the word “eternity.” Eternity. They believe he wrote it 500,000 times in 37 years. He never preached. He never taught a Sunday school lesson. He just wrote “eternity.” Someone said, “Why are you doing that?” Mr. Stacey says. “It’s the least I could do. Someone’s going to read it and think, ‘Where am I spending eternity?’” He did what he could. He didn’t fill a whole wall by himself. But he did fill a piece. He did something.

You say, “Well, Pastor, what about Jesus and walls? Where does all that fit in?” Well, He said, “In my father’s house are many mansions. I go to prepare a place for you.” For 2,000 years, Jesus has been building the city of Heaven. Guess what is around the city of Heaven? Walls. Walls. And so, He’s building the walls as well. Maybe you’re here tonight, and maybe you’ve kind of set down the trowel and kind of stopped building. Start building right in front of you. Start building what interests you—your family, your relationships, your walk with the Lord. Let’s get that built. And once ours is built, run down the wall and help someone build there’s and encourage them as they build it. You’ll be glad that you did

Father. Would you bless now this time that we have. Thank you for the Bible and for this little story.