Text: Nehemiah 4:13-20
As you know I have been trying to preach from the section of the Bible that we have been reading together in our Read Through The Bible in 2004 emphasis. But I had announced last Sunday that I would not be doing that for these three weeks, while I addressed the subject of gift-oriented ministry. I want to challenge each of us to find, discover, and use our spiritual gifts.
I had assumed that I would turn to a passage in Corinthians or Romans to talk about specific spiritual gifts. But as I was reading this passage from Nehemiah and was struck by the meaning of the passage for me.
There are many ways to read the Bible. You can read it in a scholarly way. You can read it in a historical way. But one of the ways I am increasingly enjoying is to read the Bible in a devotional way, where I simply read the text several times and ask the question, "What is God saying to me in this text?" You can go to almost any part of the Bible and find a message from God.
This was one of those times that God spoke to me through this passage. We had just finished reading the book of Ezra. You will remember that the people of Israel had been taken captive by the Babylonians in about the year 587 BCE. Jerusalem had been utterly destroyed. After spending many years as slaves in Babylon, Cyrus became the ruler of Persia and overtook the Babylonians. He released the people of Israel so that they came back home.
First came Ezra and a group with him. The first thing on their minds was to rebuild the temple. Obviously, it would not have the glory of the Davidic temple because they didn't have the wealth of David. In the next wave came Nehemiah, who was to be the governor of the region. His passion was rebuilding the wall surrounding Jerusalem.
It was a huge task to rebuild the wall. In verse 15, the scripture says, "We all returned to the wall, each to his work." Here were the people with each one finding a place to work on rebuilding the wall.
That symbolizes to me the work in the church. The church is to be a place where everyone is involved using their spiritual gifts to build up the church.
Last week I suggested that the church is not so much like a school bus, where most of the people ride while the bus driver does all the work. Rather the church is like an ant hill where people are busily going about their tasks, everybody using their spiritual gifts.
The second thing I saw was that there were obstacles to building the wall. There were enemies who lived nearby and did not want see Israel become a strong, powerful nation again. When the people began coming back to Jerusalem, the neighbors were alarmed. They didn't mind when they rebuilt the temple, but when they started building the walls, they became concerned. It seemed like they were preparing to become a military threat. So the enemies were trying to undermine the work of rebuilding the wall.
As I thought about that in an analogy to our church, I realized that there are always obstacles to keep us from doing the things we want to do and ought to do. Any time we are making a commitment to the church and to using our spiritual gifts, there will always be obstacles.
But this was not a barrier to the people of Nehemiah's time. He motivated and mobilized the people to build the wall in spite of the enemies who were out there.
Notice the way he accomplished this task. Verse 17 says, "The burden bearers carried their loads in such a way that each carried their loads with one hand and with the other held a weapon." Each of the builders had a sword while building. I could see the picture of the people balancing the needs before them. They had a pressing need to build the wall and also a need to prevent the attacks of their enemies.
Then I took a little liberty to imagine our lives in the same way. Doesn't it always seem that we have more than one task at hand. We struggle the most with handling all the things we have to do. We never have the luxury of doing just one thing.
I have recently read the book Getting Things Done by David Allen. We have to read such books about how to get things done because there are so many demands on us. We may experience this in our work, but we also experience it in the balance of life.
The people in our church are tempted to be imbalanced in one way or another because we are pulled in various directions. Some people are pulled by their work to spend more and more time at work, until they find their lives out of balance and realize that they are not spending enough time with their families. Some people are so absorbed with their recreation and personal pleasure that they find themselves not spending enough time at church.
We all have to evaluate ourselves to make sure we keep all these demands in balance, and make sure our lives are going the direction we want them to go. Are we balancing the world of work, the world of our families, the world of our recreation, and the world of our spirit? We must keep all these in balance. But we are always tilting one way or the other.
What happens to us? It is very clear. We find ourselves working hard, then we get more business and we work harder. We find ourselves working longer hours, and thinking about work when we are not at work. Finally, we discover that our lives are out of balance. We have to stop and take a long look at our lives. We examine the balance of life and make a decision about what we want it to be like. If we don't make a decision, we will gradually find ourselves out of balance.
Today I want us to stop, look at our lives, and see if it is balanced right. If it is not, then we need to make some decisions.
That's what they had to do in Nehemiah's time. They could worry about the enemies to the point that they spent all their time in their armor defending themselves, but the wall would not get built. They could spend all their time working on the wall, but they would fall to their enemies. They had to do both! They had to have a balance in what they were doing.
There is one more thing that struck me in this passage. Verse 19 says the work was "great and widely spread out, and we were separated far from one another on the wall." The danger, of course, was that the enemy would attack at one point while the people were all scattered. They had a system to get everyone to rally to the point of attack. The trumpets would sound. Verse 20 says, "Rally to us whenever you hear the sound of the trumpet. Our God will fight for us."
I got this picture of them busily working on the wall with a burden in one hand, a sword in the other. Suddenly the enemy attacks far down the wall. The trumpet blares, and everyone runs to the rescue. They rally together, they fight off the enemy and solve the problem at hand. Then they go back to building the wall.
There again is the picture of the church. The church is scattered during the week. We come together for worship, but as soon as the service is over, we scatter again. It is easy to go and stay gone. Periodically we have to come back together, to worship, to fight together against the spiritual battles that come our way. The call is to rally to the trumpets.
I want to apply this in two simple ways today. The first thing is that I want to suggest that we make a commitment about coming to church. I have seldom talked about the importance of simply being here. And any time a pastor preaches about coming to church he is always preaching to the choir. It's the people who are not here who need to hear the message. But all of us have to make decisions.
I had an interesting conversation recently with a man who is a Gideon. I called him to talk about coming to our church to make a presentation for the Gideons. As you know, my father was converted because of a Gideon Bible and I always say, "If it wasn't for a Gideon Bible, I would not be a minister today." So I have always supported their work. So I asked this gentleman if he could come to our church on a particular day. He looked at his calendar and said, "No, I'm sorry I can't come on that day because I have made a commitment to my church that I would be there for the next seven Sundays."
I thought, "What a wonderful thing." He made a decision. He decided not to let anything distract him from being in church for that particular time. All of us need to evaluate the importance of simply showing up, of being in God's house. The Bible makes it very clear. Hebrews says, "not neglecting the assembling of ourselves together." One of the Ten Commandments is, "Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy." How can we get away these Scriptures that are like the trumpet that says, "Come! Rally together!" We need to be together to hear God's message so that we can then scatter and do the work of ministry again.
All of us need to look at our commitments. It happens little by little. We go on vacation, and we come back and take a weekend trip. Then the next weekend we may not feel quite right. And before we know it, our lives are out of balance. We find ourselves not going to church. It is easy to let that happen because we have not made a decision.
The same people who can't make it to church make it to school and work every weekday. Often parents with children can't get their kids together and to church on time, but we can get them to school on time. What is the difference?
The difference is that we have already made the decision about going to work and going to school. We didn't get up on Wednesday morning and say, "Let's see, kids, do you want to go to school today or not?" That decision was made a long time ago. We do it because the decision has been made.
It is no small thing to make a commitment that we will go to church because God calls us to be there, to remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. I encourage you to make that kind of decision.
Most of us think we come more than we really do. We think we are here so regularly, but when we really look at our calendar we find that we have missed more than we realized. Our lives are out of balance. We need to make the decision to get it back in balance.
The second thing I want to talk about is using your spiritual gifts. God gives to us talents and abilities and spiritual gifts. Next Sunday I hope to look more closely at the specific kinds of spiritual gifts that God gives.
But have we stopped to ask, "What does God want me to do? What is God calling me to do?" I would suggest that most of have not asked that question. That question is at the root of the whole matter of spiritual gifts. What is God calling me to do?
God, first of all, wants you to come, to be in God's house. Secondly, God wants you to be involved in God's work.
There are many ways to do this. For many of us, our work is a ministry. I suggested last week that Troy Price is a minister to families of sexually abused children. Howard Roberts is a minister on the college camps in his role as a professor there. I looked in the newspaper and saw our own Cindy Smith's picture and the article that described how she goes to the elementary school to provide dental service to children who cannot afford to go to a dentist. Hers is a ministry. Even if our job is just pushing paper, we can push it with such a Christian attitude that we are a witness for Christ through our work. We are all called to do our vocation as a ministry.
But I want to also suggest that God is calling us to do something in the church. Not often enough do we ask what God is calling us to do. God is calling some to be ministers. God is calling some to be missionaries. God is calling some to be elders. God is calling some to be teachers in Sunday School and Vacation Bible School. God is calling some to help on work day. There are so many tasks to be done. We don't have to do everything, but we are all called to do something. It's a matter of balance. Do we have something at the church that we like to do, that makes a significant contribution to God's church?
Volunteering is an important thing for every citizen. There are so many opportunities, from working at the chamber of commerce to helping pick up litter on the streets. We have to decide what we like to do, how much time we are willing to spend, and make a commitment to do it.
The same thing is true in the church. The church is not a bus, but an ant hill with everyone finding their joy and their spiritual gift, and exercising their spiritual gift in making the church what it can be.
We are not building a wall, but we are building a church. Those bricks may not be mortar and mud, but teaching and caring for the sick and visiting the elderly. Some of our members have a ministry of sending cards that simply say, "I'm thinking of you." There is such a wide variety, but those are the things that make such a difference in making our church the kind of loving, grace-filled, redemptive place that God wants it to be.
Examine your life. Are you carrying the burden in one hand and the sword in the other? Do you have balance to your life? Or have you slowly gotten out of balance? Today, examine your life? Have I got the proper commitment to being in the church and serving in the church? Do I have my work, family, recreation, and spiritual life balanced in a way that is pleasing to God?