Nehemiah’s Fellow Laborers

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But we’re going to continue where we left off a few weeks ago in our study of Nehemiah. We’re going to be in chapter 3. We read through chapter 1 where Nehemiah prayed.

We read through chapter 2 where Nehemiah prepared. And we’re going to look at chapter 3 where the work actually gets started. And I’m just going to let you know right off the bat that we are not going to go verse by verse through chapter 3.

I looked at this every which way to see how I might do that. And honestly, this is one of the more challenging passages of Scripture that I’ve ever dealt with just from a standpoint of how to teach it. Because I believe that every word in this book is inspired by God.

I believe it’s inerrant. I believe it’s authoritative. At the same time, not every verse is equally applicable in the sense that we can look at it and say, okay, I can use that.

I want to be very careful what I’m saying here. You take each verse here, and each individual verse on its own of Nehemiah 3 is not necessarily going to tell you a lot that you can use and apply to your life as you try to obey God. The chapter as a whole does.

But reading all the way through this, I worry that I will lose you, or trying to go verse by verse, I worry that I will lose you because it’s essentially just a very long list of everybody that was involved in the work and the parts that they did. Again, it’s important that it’s in there. God inspired it for a reason.

The history is important. The lineage is important. Knowing the history is important.

But for our purposes tonight, we’re not going to go through every verse. I want to hit some highlights here with you. And for starters, I want to take you through and hit some of these verses that talk about where they started in the work.

And let me ask you this. As somebody who has this week or last week, the time’s running together. But in the last little bit, I’ve been working on getting the house alarmed, getting the alarm components set up.

Some of you all were there when I started working on that. And you’re kind of oohing and awing over the fact that I could do it. But they make it very easy.

They give you videos and everything. The worst part is when the alarm components fall off on a really windy night like Sunday night, and you’re getting calls that somebody’s breaking into your garage while you’re trying to get home from dinner. That happens Sunday night.

So I slap that thing back up there and put some tape on the outside, too. But if you’re going to try to alarm your house, you’re going to try to put alarm sensors, what part of the house are you going to start with? Front door, okay.

What else? Windows? I heard somebody else just say doors, exactly doors and windows.

And I realized I had a very short amount of time to at least that first night to get some alarm components going. So I went with the downstairs doors and windows. And then the next night before, before everybody was living there, I went and did the upstairs bedrooms and then I got to the garage and eventually I got to the, the outbuilding, but you start with the most vulnerable parts first, right?

And ultimately, what you alarm, what you take care of with the alarm system is the most vulnerable entry points. You take care of what’s weakest. That’s why we put alarms on our doors and our windows. That’s why I have glass break sensors.

I don’t have wires running through the walls telling me if somebody punches in through a wall, because odds are that’s not the way, right? Most of the time, that’s not the way a burglar is going to come in. And I kind of figure if they work that hard to get into the house, God bless you.

You deserve whatever’s in there. You’ve worked for it. But no, we start with the windows and the doors.

We start with the areas that are going to be vulnerable to attack. When Nehemiah finished his prayer and when he finished his preparation and he and his men went to begin work on the wall, what we see is they began with the areas of the greatest vulnerability. And we see this in verse 1.

I’m just going to go through and point out some of these places to you in these verses. Verse 1, it says they built the sheep gate. Verse 3 says they worked on the fish gate.

Verse 6 says they worked on the old gate. I would assume they were all old, but that one was just called the old gate. Okay, they worked in verse 13, they worked on the valley gate.

In verses 13 and 14, they worked on the refuse gate. In verse 15, they worked on the fountain gate. In verse 26, the water gate, which has nothing to do with Nixon.

That was an actual gate that they went through to bring water into the city. Verse 28, they worked on the horse gate. Verse 29, they worked on the east gate, which I’m sure you could guess which side of the city that was located on.

Verse 31, they worked on the Mifkad gate. And they started from these gates, and we see in the overview too that they worked on some of the towers, which were where they would go up to spot the weaknesses, to spot the attacks and the vulnerabilities. But they really focused on those gates, because the gate was the weak point.

You know, most of the time, if somebody was going to lay siege to a walled city, they weren’t going to go first and try to poke a hole through the wall. Because some of these walls on some of these cities would be 8, 10, 12 feet thick, if not more. So what you were going to do was, now it could be done.

They could tunnel under the walls. They could throw heavy stones at the walls. But the easiest point of entry was to go to these gates that just by their very nature, something you can open and close were going to be thinner.

They were going to be more vulnerable to attack because you’re going to have wooden beams, which weren’t going to be light, but it’s not 15 feet of stone, where you could hammer through those wooden beams and get through there. So when they started working on the city, they knew the most vulnerable part was going to be the gates. And so they needed to make those gates as strong as they could.

They needed to make the gatehouses that were out of the stone strong. They needed to use the best timber for the gates and put it together just the right way. they needed locks and bolts that were strong enough to hold them in place.

They wanted to make sure that the most vulnerable spots were taken care of. And then they worked out from there. It doesn’t say that they did only the gates, but everything that they did just about that’s described through here is done in reference to the gates.

Somebody would start at the gates and work out on sections of the wall. But they started with those most vulnerable areas first, because if they wanted the walls to be strong to protect God’s people, they needed strong gates. They needed to make sure that the vulnerable areas were strong too.

And so we see as we read through here, and I would encourage you to go back at some point on your own and read through chapter three. I hope that you didn’t take from anything what I said, that it’s not important or that it’s boring or any of that, but just standing here listening to me read it is not going to be that edifying to you. But I would encourage you to go back and read it yourself, but you’ll see all throughout there, they’re working on the gates.

They’re starting there and working out from that way. But something else that I picked up on in this chapter is that everyone’s participation mattered. There are people mentioned in Nehemiah chapter 3 who are not mentioned anywhere else in Scripture, and whose names and identities and everything else they did in life is basically lost to history except for their contribution to this wall around the city of Jerusalem.

And one set of notes that I looked at in one of my Bibles says that there were 45 sections of the wall listed in chapter 3. And I apologize, I forgot to go back and count and double-check their math. But I’m assuming, maybe I’m wrong in this, but I’m assuming somebody else did that.

Some high-paid Bible editor in Nashville checked that. If it’s not exactly 45, I know it’s a lot. But there were, according to these notes, 45 sections of wall listed in the chapter, 45 areas of work listed in the chapter.

And with each of these, God listed the names of the groups and the individuals who worked on each of them. History might have forgotten these people. Look at some of these names.

Some of these names are difficult for us to even pronounce. Malkijah in verse 11. I mean, I don’t know anybody that has pictures of Malkijah hanging up in their dining room.

like the Last Supper painting. Ezer, verse 19. You know, we don’t put up a display of him at Christmas time out in the front yard.

We don’t know these people. History has forgotten these people, except that God remembered their contribution. Even if they just were.

. . Some of these people, it records, he worked on the section of wall in front of his house.

Some of these guys weren’t master builders who could go out and reconstruct entire sections of the wall, lasting city blocks upon city blocks. They went out and they just made sure the area in front of their house was taken care of. They took care of the little part they could handle.

And you know what? God records those contributions. God remembers their obedience.

God remembers their faithfulness. It means something to God. And He records their names, not only for the history, but I think also because God said what they did matter.

What they did mattered in my service. Each one did his own little section, but it mattered to God. And I think there’s something we can take and apply to our lives in that.

That sometimes we think that the things we do for God aren’t noticed. They’re thankless. Nobody’s ever going to pay attention.

Nobody’s ever going to notice this. Nobody’s ever going to remember this. And we can kind of get down on ourselves.

We don’t want to think that our work goes unnoticed. I was telling somebody just a minute ago, Charla came to a lady’s Bible study last night, and I kept all the children alive. And it was a struggle.

I let some of them live, but the way they behaved. And I don’t call it babysitting when you’re the dad. But I kept the children alive, and she was on her way home, and she said, did the kids clean up the playroom?

And I said, yes. Actually, I started to type out yes in the text message, Because she was going to say, if not, I’ll clean it up when I get back there. I started to type out yes, but instead I wrote playroom clean, check.

Dishes clean, check. Dining room vacuum, check. I listed all the things I had done while she was gone.

And you know why? Because I’m a little petty and I wanted to make sure she noticed and remembered. All right.

Because sometimes I think, you know, you just walk in. Oh, it’s all done. The fairies have shown up and done the work.

No, I wanted to. That may be a little petty, but I wanted to, not even looking for a thank you, I just, if something was wrong, I wanted her to realize, oh, look at all the things he did right. I wanted the work I did to be remembered.

I think we’re all that way. We want to feel like somebody notices what we do, whether it’s in the church, whether it’s outside the church, we want to think that somebody notices and appreciates our service for God. And sometimes God calls us to do things that we think, nobody’s ever going to notice that I did this.

Nobody’s ever going to know or care. The only way they’d notice is if it didn’t get done. Let me tell you, God notices.

The things that we do out of obedience to God, the things that we do in gratefulness for His faithfulness to us, the things that we do for Him, God notices and God remembers. And I know that because He remembers the names of each of these people who worked on sections of his wall. Now that’s going to bring us back to verse 1.

That’s going to bring us back to verse 1, which for me was the most meaningful verse of the whole chapter. Let me read it to you here. It says, Then Eliashib 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.

Now, I’ve not been to Jerusalem. I’m not an expert on the archaeology of Jerusalem. So these names for these towers and these gates don’t mean a whole lot to me.

I don’t mean they’re not important. I mean, I couldn’t take you by the hand and show you where the Sheep Gate is or the Tower of Hananel. I can find it on the maps in the back of my Bible sometimes.

But I can’t just take you there and show you this landmark. But what I do notice is who it says got involved and what they did. We see just from this verse that those who built in the city viewed it as a spiritual service more than just physical labor.

Now this is important because I told you the first week we were studying this book that we missed the point if we make this whole book about the wall. And if we make this whole book about what Nehemiah did, this is really the story of what God did, what God accomplished through Nehemiah. If you go back to chapter 2, when we talk about the preparation, there was stuff in there that happened that Nehemiah couldn’t have orchestrated if he tried.

No man could have orchestrated all that to happen. It was God. God’s fingerprints were all over chapter 2.

And it’s all over the whole book. This is the story of what God accomplished through Nehemiah, through somebody who was obedient, through somebody who was willing to serve him, through somebody who loved him. And as far as the wall is concerned, the wall really was in ruins and really did need to be rebuilt.

But the wall also reflected the spiritual condition of Israel. And the wall was broken. We know that because the whole reason why the city of Jerusalem was destroyed was because of the idolatry of the people.

God sent in the Babylonians to punish them. And for them to come back and need the wall to be rebuilt, they needed to be spiritually rebuilt as well. And that was something God only could do.

that only God could do. It’s important that we remember that because these people who worked saw this not just as manual labor, they saw it as spiritual service. And I think about some of the men, several of whom are in this room, who came and helped move me once or twice over the last couple weeks.

Some of them have been there twice. I’ve been joking about how Rick has started his own moving service because he has not only moved me twice in the last three weeks or so, But there was one week recently where he was out moving somebody every day. I hate moving.

I hate moving myself. I hate moving other people. I’ll come do it.

But it’s not something I’m ever going to do as a relaxing pastime. And if I were Rick or if I were Jeff, if I were Bob, if I were some of the others that have been helped multiple times to move somebody, I’d be getting kind of cranky about it right now. Yet I’m there in the office and I hear, well, we got another call.

we’re headed out to move so-and-so. Never a bit of complaint. And you think, how can you be so joyful?

How can you. . .

Moving is miserable. How can you be so joyful about going out and moving yet again? And if you talk to them, it’s because they view it as a spiritual service.

They are ministering to other people because they love Jesus, and Jesus loves those people. And when you look at something that way, it changes the whole calculation. Suddenly it’s a little less of a drudgery when we look at it as we’re doing this to serve God.

We’re not out here just getting sweaty and moving boxes, moving heavy stuff. We’re out here serving God. And that’s what these people did.

Because it says in verse 1, Eliashib the high priest rose up with his brethren the priests and built the sheep gate and consecrated it and hung its doors. They built it as far as the Tower of the Hundred and consecrated it, then as far as the Tower of Hananel. Look at this in contrast with what it says in verse 5.

where it’s talking about the people from Tekoa. It says, Next to them the Tekoites made repairs, but their nobles did not put their shoulders to the work of the Lord. The nobles from Tekoa, they thought they were too good.

They wouldn’t stoop to get their hands dirty with manual labor, like cleaning out the rubble of the wall and rebuilding it with new stones. They wouldn’t sacrifice their dignity or their time. But the high priest, in verse 1, led the way in the work, and he got the other priests to join in.

And we’ve got to understand, these were some of the most prominent, important people in their society. I mean, it’s the high priest. It’s the one man who’s able to go into the Holy of Holies one day a year and commune with God there before his ark. It’s the one man in Israel who’s able to do that.

And he’s out there getting his hands dirty. They were willing to do that. They didn’t think of themselves as too good because they were viewing it as a spiritual service.

It was service to the Lord. And verse 1 says they consecrated the gates and the doors that they worked on. They weren’t just hanging doors.

They weren’t just putting up gates. They were doing manual labor, but they were dedicating it to the Lord. That word consecrated means to set apart.

What they were doing, they said this is more than just the gate. This is more than just the door. This is special. This is God’s door.

my office in Seminole. I never did find out why it was there or who had done it. But before I ever came there, somebody had marked on the back of one of the doors coming out of the office with Sharpie and it said God’s door.

Okay, question mark. I thought there had to been some interesting argument there that led to that. I never did get an answer about who did that.

But somebody, somebody decided that was God’s door. And they were going to make sure you knew about it. These priests did the same thing.

We’re not just hanging gates. We’re not just hanging doors. This is God’s door.

This is God’s gate. And every screw we turn, every bolt we install, it’s God’s screw and God’s bolt. And every drop of sweat we spill here, every drop of blood.

You can’t do construction without hurting yourself, right? Every drop of blood we spill, it’s for God. So even the priests were willing to go out and do these things because they viewed it as a spiritual service.

So what we can learn from this tonight, from this chapter, this chapter teaches us the importance of dedication to the Lord’s service. I know, I said this chapter, this book is all about what God did, but this chapter deals with what God did through people who were willing and eager to be used by God because they were dedicated to what God was trying to accomplish. They were dedicated to the Lord’s service because they knew their work was going to be noticed by God.

They knew that even if nobody else ever remembered them, that God remembered. They were dedicated enough to take on the parts that needed the most work. Sometimes we want to work on our strengths.

You know, I’m really good at this, so I want to do this. We’re all that way. I’m not good at sports, so guess what?

I never spent time on sports. I spent time on things I was good at. If I couldn’t win, I didn’t want to participate.

That’s our human nature for a lot of us. Some people are saying, no, I can’t stand being bad at anything, so I’m going to go work on that. But they said, these are the areas that need the most work.

These are the areas where we’re weakest and most vulnerable. That’s what we’re going to focus on. And so they were dedicated enough to take on the tough jobs, the ones that needed the most work.

And they were dedicated because they viewed it, they viewed what they were doing through the lens of its actual spiritual importance. They didn’t see it just as a job. They saw it as service to the Lord.

And so we just need to remember tonight that ultimately it’s God who does the work, but He chooses to work through those who are dedicated enough to serve Him, dedicated enough to take on the hard jobs when He calls, dedicated enough to see it as a spiritual service, even if it’s hard for us, and dedicated enough to follow through, trusting that He’s faithful to us and He remembers even if we never get any other glory from it.

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