I suppose it is silly on Labor Day weekend to talk about a builder.  Nehemiah, found in the Old Testament, and this is the second part of a three-part series.  You might wonder if you missed some of it because today we will be talking about some versus that are found in Chapter 4.  As I said last week, there are only 13 chapters.  I won’t try to preach all 13 of them at once.  So we are selecting different versus for you to focus on.  My hope, though, is that you will read the entire book because there are just a few nuggets that I am going to pull out for you but there are many more to be found. 

            Last week we began Chapter 1 and a few versus from Chapter 2.  Today I want you to first look at Chapter 4, Verse 6.  Now I’m going to reference a little bit in Chapter 3, but don’t go there.  This comes to us by way of memoir.  Someone else may have worried did Nehemiah write this or did Ezra?  All I know is that Ezra is a chronicle type person, but these are the memoirs of Nehemiah.  So when he says “we”, he mans “me”, himself.  He wasn’t standing apart from it.  So let “us”, “we” read. “So we rebuilt the wall and all the wall was joined together to half its height for the people had a mind to work.  But Judah said, ‘The strength of the burden bearers is failing and there is too much rubbish; so that we are unable to work on the wall.’  And our enemies said, ‘They will not know or see anything before we come upon them and kill them and stop the work.’  When the Jews who lived near them came, they said to us ten times, ‘From all the places where they live, they will come up against us.’  So in the lowest parts of the space behind the wall in open places, I stationed the people according to their families with their swords, their spears, and their bows.  After I looked these things over, I stood up and said to the nobles and the officials and the rest of the people, ‘Do not be afraid of them.  Remember the Lord who is great and awesome and fight for your kin, your sons, your daughters, your wives and your homes.’  When our enemies heard that their plot was known to us and that God had frustrated it, we all returned to the wall, each to his work.  From then on, half of my servants worked on construction, half held spears, shields, bows, and body armor.  And the leaders hosted themselves behind the whole house of Judah.” 

            Sometimes I think it is helpful not only to hear the Word read, but to read the Word aloud.  And so we did that this morning as a community.  None of these people were alone.  In fact, if you looked later at Chapter 3 you would find out who were some of the people that worked on that wall--not  your normal construction folks.  My brothers, many of them, have been in construction.  And now a days it is not abnormal to have people from different backgrounds on the construction site.  In fact, I was reading just recently of a young man who is a groom, just recently married, and said that he had a degree in Art History as well as other not so construction minded items.  But he was working in construction.  And I thought, that person probably sees better than other people the artistic that is required in building.   

And we have Nehemiah here and he’s coming and he’s been a servant to the king.  He’s been one who has carried cups.  But he doesn’t come with a cup.  As far as we know this is the only construction project he’s ever been involved in.  What he comes with is leadership abilities.  They might not be seen on the outside the same way as this young man that is involved in construction, he doesn’t wear his art degree on his chest.  The world does not always see the unique gift that you might have.  God doesn’t always call the equipped to do his work, but God always equips the called.  Amen. 

Some of the people that were working on this project were first-timers.  Now if you are an experienced construction person and you’ve never worked on a house like Habitat for Humanity, it might be fun for you to sometimes watch who comes to help.  I thought I was a pretty good construction person; I could hammer.  And then I saw some real hammering!  It took me probably three times as long to drive my nail.  I got it in straight; but I watched these guys snatch this nail in three strokes.  It doesn’t mean that they needed man any less; it just means I took a little longer. 

The people that worked on Nehemiah’s wall, and remember we’re not talking a little wall, we’re talking the wall of Jerusalem, huge rocks, quarry rocks we might call them, not just a little pile of stones like you might see down in Kentucky keeping the horses in.  But stones that looked like the Wailing Wall that you might see on TV.  He had a few performers who worked on the wall—people that sniffed perfume and made perfume.  Those were some of the people that were called to work on the wall.  I don’t think they sniffed the stones for essence, but they put their mind to it.  There were those, believe this, women, daughters of one of the rules, helped on the construction project.  And we thought we were so far sighted to have women on construction crews.  Twenty-four hundred years ago—women on construction!   

But there were a few people in Chapter 3 that didn’t work.  There are always those as well.  They lose the blessing.  They are not involved in the fun of the completed project.  So Chapter 3 tells us about some of these unique characteristics.  One other thing that is in Chapter 3 is what was constructed first.  We might have slipped by it.  It was called the “sheep’s gate”.  Funny name—sheep’s gate!  Well, we have some funny names to, don’t we?  Wesley Room—that probably only means something to Methodist.  Wesley—we know why we named it that.  Why do you think they named the Sheep’s Gate the Sheep’s Gate?  There are pastors here; they probably know.  The High Priest fixed the Sheep Gate first.  The Sheep Gate was where the sheep came in.  The sheep were those that were going to be sacrificed in worship.  See, worship was the first thing.  Nehemiah called the people and they saw that the first thing was going to be worship.  What happens when they build new buildings even today for the church?  One of the first things we do is build a place for what?  Worship!  And so Nehemiah did the High Priest, not anybody else but the High Priest.   He didn’t delegate, he went and prepared the Sheep Gate so that people would understand what was going to be first in that community.   

And then, as we move more in to Chapter 4, we find that the people pull together and they had a mind to work.  You know, you can be constructive, can’t you?  We can offer criticism that can be constructive criticism.  They had a mind to work and they were of one mind.  They were committed to building the wall.  It was, at this point, only about half-way up.  Half-way up project, those may be the hardest to finish.  One more lap around the yard and you’ll be done; one more room to clean and you’ll be done; one more load of laundry to fold and you’ll be done; one more project at work and you can leave; one more year; one more; one more; one more.  We’re not like my dog.  My dog comes and says, “One more, one more, one more!”  Just one more, one more throw!  Most of us start getting tired when we know we’ve got one more.  Just a little bit further, only half way done.  That’s when these people became tired.  It says their strength failed.  So what did Nehemiah do?  Nehemiah put them where their heart, where their hand and their head were.  He said, “I will station those who are close to their home, I will station them close to their home and they will become involved in a way because they are near, there is no commute.  They will be stationed near their home building the wall behind their home, in front of their home.   

We don’t hear in Chapter 4, but even though they have gone and they have gotten tired from going to the wall and working and involving every one, we do not hear the words, “But I’ve never done that before.”  We as a church need to re-grasp that answer and re-form it to say, “I’ve never done that before!”  What a difference!   

Nehemiah, from the beginning of this project, prayed.  We know he spent four months in prayer.  Think about that—four months!  It wasn’t like a retreat; he continued to do his daily work.  But he also fasted and prayed.  Four months—120 days almost—thereabouts!  Remember that.  120 days before he even went to do his project.  And then in the midst of his project he gets these people coming up against him.  But they are not really coming against him; they are coming against the project.  Samaritans—now I know I’ve preached on the Good Samaritan to you.  Well, these guys weren’t so good.  It was 400 some years that it started festering, the feud, the exiled.   They intermarried, became Samaritans.  Nehemiah has two of them that are really thorns in his side.  Two—notice how specific I was.  Nehemiah doesn’t even talk to them.  He doesn’t reply to them.  They say things like this, “That wall is going to fall down.”  And, “If a fox jumps up on it, it’s going to crumble.”  And then it got a little worse.  Ten times, it says, they told us they were going to kill us.  They are threatening us now.  It is not just bluffs, not just sarcasm, it’s not just haunts.  They’re going to kill us!   

I want you to notice something, and it is probably because of my accounting background, but ten times.  Do you know how disheartening it can be for someone to say, “Well, there are a lot of them that are against us?  Well, there are a lot of upset people.  Well, now some people are upset.”  That’s the kind of vagueness that can destroy communication.  The precision of ten-times is important in the life of a community.  We don’t need to jump to conclusions.  We don’t need to impose additional exaggerations.  We need to be precise.  And if it is not clear we need to say, “Am I to understand that you heard ten times that they are going to kill us?”  That helps to link communication.   

Nehemiah met their threats by talking to God.  He didn’t react out of anger except to God.  He didn’t say, “I’m going to teach you a thing or two.”  He said, “God, you might want to do something here.  These people are slandering your project.”  He knew it was God’s project.  You see, sometimes we get ourselves so invested that we forget the big purpose.  That was what Nehemiah all through the Book of Nehemiah got.  He got perspective by prayer.  What if that was our first reaction?  Lord, I don’t see this the way they see it.  Lord I’m angry because they seem to be coming against, those two, coming against your project.  Lord, you know their motives.  The motives of the Samaritans were that they were the big traders.  The routes, since Jerusalem was in rubbish, people were going the trade route that was close to Samaria.  So, greed was one of their motives. 

Speaking of rubbish, isn’t that like an English word?  Rubbish!  To find it in the language of the Hebrews—rubbish!  Do you have rubbish in your life?  I guess not, I didn’t see one head nod out there.  We all have rubbish, don’t we?  We don’t even need to nod.  Some of us have emotional rubbish.  What happened was, the workers on the wall came to Nehemiah and maybe you have had this happen.  They felt overwhelmed.  There is just so much rubbish before we can build.  There is just so much in the present circumstances that we can’t see our way to the future.  Have you ever been there?  Some of us have moved regularly and the process of moving is not much fun.  We moved my mother off of a farm and a house like many of us in-between folks out there.  Some of you have experienced it first-hand, the moving without any help.  But we had to go and get rid of a lot of stuff; we wouldn’t have ever called it “rubbish”.  We might have called it “rummage”.  We had to rummage through a lot of rubbish to get to what was worthy to sell because seven children had lived in that house and my Dad, who was a school teacher and my mother, who did craft projects and sewing. So in the attic when we got ready to move her, there was a lot of stuff that we had to let go of.  It was sad!  It was healing, but it was very sad.  We had to let go of the past to move in to the future.  But trusting that it was good and now it will be good again.  But sometimes we can’t take the past with us or we will be too loaded down to see any future.  And just as God did the good work before, it says he is still at work.  And He also says that I am about to do a new thing.  For so many years the walls of Jerusalem had been down.  There was rubbish that needed to be cleared away.  They couldn’t let the past determine the future.  The past nine years people had been telling them it couldn’t be done.  That kind of stuff wears on you, doesn’t it?  And so they were tired mentally and physically.  And Nehemiah prayed.  He said, “Remember, this is God’s project, this is God’s purpose.  Remember the link; remember that you are not in this alone.  We’re one.  And when you are one with God’s purposes you can take on any project.”  Nobody came up and said, “We need to leave the rubbish.”  They needed to see their way clear and part of stepping forward was to clear the rubbish. 

Now as we live in community, as a congregation, sometimes we collect rubbish with one another.  We lose perspective.  Our priorities get shifted and worship isn’t first.  Communication suffers.  There is no clear signal.  One thing that Nehemiah did besides pray and get perspective and communicate and lead the people in cooperation with folks they never have cooperated with before, he commended them.  He said, “Remember, I commend to your remembrance that it is God’s work.  I commend to your remembrance that we are members of one body, one people.”  See, remembering who we are pulls us together.  It means that the bumps and the bruises that we might give one another along the way will have to be destroyed.  We can be constructive and build new and good things but there is times, as it says in Ecclesiastics, to take things down and away.  Burdens, trespasses, lies, gossip, excuses, conflict, some little things, some big things—only you know as we join together this morning to commune in common and remember one thing—we are all sinners saved by the grace of God through Christ Jesus and this is the table that remembers that sacrifice, that giving so that we likewise might give.

E-mail Comments to: Pastor Nancy Blevins

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