Arise and Build: Lessons from Nehemiah Part 2 of 2

Introduction

Good morning to everyone. According to the book, The Unchurched Next Door by Dr. Tom Rayner, it is shocking that only 2% of church members invite an unchurched person to church within a given year. Two percent. Two out of a hundred. Which means that there are 98 out of 100 who don’t invite anybody to church within a given year. I certainly don’t think that’s the situation in this congregation. I certainly hope not. We need to actually reverse that statistic so that it’s 98% of us that are inviting people, and maybe two percent that don’t. Inviting works. According to Lifeway Research, Philip Nation says that about two-thirds of people out there are willing to receive information about church from family. Two thirds. And about 58% are willing to receive an invite from a friend or a neighbor.

So, in other words, most people that you know would be willing to receive an invite from you simply because they know you. And you’ve probably heard before, I don’t I can’t quote the source for this, but I’ve heard anyway, that the number one reason why visitors come and visit a place for the first time is because they are invited by somebody that they know. So there’s a real power to inviting people. That’s a tool that we often just take for granted. We’ve got a lot of tools for inviting people, a lot of different cards back there to hand out, and with the gospel meeting coming up with Leon Malden, we certainly have uh an opportunity there to invite people. And we’ve printed up a lot of the uh flyers to hand out, the little cards to hand out.

And so we’ve got the invitation board back in the hallway with 500 spaces waiting to be filled up with the first names of people who are not members of the church that we invite. And so let’s do that. Uh we can do that. Even if only 50% of this congregation got involved in doing that work, I I think we will have more. I hope that we would have more than than a hundred of our members. But let’s say we only had a hundred of the members that were doing inviting. To fill up five hundred spaces, I know this is difficult math, but that’s five people to invite per person. You you could smile when I said the math part. That’s okay. It’s still early. You’re you’re waking up, I understand.

Five people. Can you invite five people that are not members of the church? I heard a yes back here. Great. We can do that, can’t we? You can even get your children involved in inviting people. Um, you know, send send some uh flyers with them and let them invite some of their friends. You may say, well, you know, I’m not very comfortable talking to people face to face. Well, you can invite people by email. That’s not as effective, but it’s still better than nothing. You can invite people on Facebook. You can take the uh the flyer and you can put it on on Facebook and invite your friends in the area. You know what? Those invites count. Any invite counts. And so please, let’s get busy and invite people and let’s see if we can’t fill up that board back there with 500 invites of people who are not members of the church.

Well, that’s really a good segue, a good lead in to what I want to talk to you about today. I’m going to continue to talk to you about Arise and Build, lessons from Nehemiah. And what we’re doing in these two lessons is we are taking ten of the principles that Nehemiah used in rebuilding the walls of Jerusalem very successfully. And we are implementing those in the rebuilding, or not the rebuilding, but the building up of the Church of Jesus Christ today. And so the truth is all congregations are going to lose members. They’re going to lose members in one of four ways, or really four of four ways. Death, people will move away, dissatisfaction, and people will leave the faith. In those four ways, any church is going to lose members.

And so logically, if a church is going to even continue to exist, there is going to have to be on a consistent basis more people added to that church. But why else should a church be interested in growing? I’ll tell you why a church should be interested in growing. It’s because we are in the business of saving souls. And you’ve heard me maybe say before that we’ve given up being fishers of men and have become keepers of the aquarium. And while we need to keep the aquarium and we need to keep those who are saved saved and encouraged, there are others out there who need to get saved. And that needs to be our mission to seek and save the lost, as Jesus’ mission was. And so that’s what we’re interested in.

You know, there’s a difference between growing and swelling. You maybe have heard the term swelling used before to refer to when people who are already members of the church, people who are already Christians, just maybe move into the area or something like that and come and join the congregation. And so you grew in number, but you didn’t add any souls to Christ. And so it’s a good thing. We want to swell, that’s okay. But in some ways that can that can spoil us, where we just really think, well, I don’t really need to do a lot of inviting. I mean, I’ve come to South Bumby, and there’s always visitors. There are always, there’s lots of people, especially at the 11 o’clock hour, right? Well, you know what?

1. Work When Others Won’t

That doesn’t mean that we don’t have the personal responsibility to be doing it. And our interest should be not in swelling, but in growing. We want to be baptizing souls into Christ. And that is our that is our goal as individuals in this congregation and as a congregation as a whole. So, we looked last time at the first five of these ten principles that Nehemiah used. We should care. We must pray. We must plan. We must ignore the critics, and we need every member to be involved. So this morning we’re going to take a look at the last five of these ten, beginning with work when others won’t. In Nehemiah chapter 3, this is when we have all of the families listed who got to work on the wall.

And in verse 5, it says, moreover, next to him, next to Zadok the son of Baana, the Tokoites made repairs. But their nobles did not support the work of their masters. So this family of the Tokoites, they got to work on the wall. Even though their nobles weren’t supporting the work. You know, we realize that we want to have every member involved. And that’s very, very important. And we’re going to do everything we can to encourage every member to get involved. But we’re not naive. We realize that not every member is going to get involved no matter what we do. And sometimes it makes you want to, you know, pull your hair out. I kind of hesitate when I say things like that. Because we think about those who aren’t working.

And we think, well, why aren’t they busy? Why can’t I get them involved? Why aren’t they coming to any of the extra studies that we have at the church? Why aren’t they even coming every time that we have assembly? And those things bother us. And you know what? They should bother us. But sometimes we get so focused on the negative that we let it drag us down. And we let it keep us from being what we really need to be. Don’t focus on the negative. We need to focus on being better ourselves. We don’t need to imitate those who are not working in this congregation. There will always be the non workers. And the Tokoites, they experienced that. There were the nobles that were not supporting the work.

We don’t know why they weren’t supporting it, but they weren’t. But look at verse 27, actually, verses 26 and 27 of that same chapter. The temple servants living in Opal made repairs as far as the front of the water gate toward the east and the projecting tower. After them, the Tokoites repaired another section in front of the great projecting tower and as far as the wall of Ofel. So not only did the Tokoites finish their section, they got busy and finished another section without their nobles. I think that’s impressive. That’s an impressive thing about the Tokoites. They weren’t going to be discouraged even by the fact that their nobles were not supporting the work of the masters. And so that’s an attitude that we all need to have.

We need not get discouraged by the non workers in the church. We need to work when others won’t. We need to have the attitude that Joshua had in Joshua 24, verse 15, when he told the Israelites, choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve. Whether the gods which your fathers served, which were beyond the river, or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you are now living. But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord. You do what you want. I’ll tell you what you should do. You should serve the Lord, but you make your choice. But I tell you what my family’s going to do if it’s the last family on earth doing it. We’re going to choose to serve the Lord.

2. Don’t Go Looking for a Fight

And so our attitude toward evangelism and toward church growth needs to be, you know what? No matter what anybody else around me is doing, I’ve made up my mind what I’m going to do for me and my family. We are going to choose to grow this church and to add souls to Christ. So work when others won’t. Number seven. Don’t go looking for a fight. In Nehemiah chapter 4, begin reading with me in verse 15. When our enemies heard that it was known to us and that God had frustrated their plan, then all of us returned to the wall, each one to his work. From that day on, half of my servants carried on the work, while half of them held the spears, the shields, the bows, and the breastplates.

And the captains were behind the whole house of Judah. So you got half of them working and half of them guarding. Verse 17, those who were rebuilding the wall and those who carried burdens took their load, with one hand doing the work and the other hand holding a weapon. So if you weren’t only guarding, if you were working, then you did have a weapon in your hand. As for the builders, each wore his sword girded at his side as he built, while the trumpeters stood near me. They weren’t looking for a fight, but they were ready for a fight. And they weren’t about to let the threat of an imminent attack slow down their work. They were going to work anyway. You know, sometimes we look for just any excuse.

Any, you know, and then the king said, Hey, you can’t do that because people went and complained about it. They could have stood up and said, No, we can do this. But they didn’t. They had a legal excuse, so they could give up and go to work on their houses. Sometimes we just look for a legal excuse. But these people weren’t doing that. They were going to work even though the enemies were ready. You know, some of you mothers know what it’s like to uh you know hold a baby in one hand and wash the dishes with the other hand, or you know, cook a meal with one hand. You know, that is not an easy task, I can imagine. I’ve never attempted that, I don’t think.

But can you imagine working on rebuilding a wall with one hand and you got a weapon in the other hand? That would make it pretty tricky, wouldn’t it? But you’re going to do it anyway. While we must be prepared to defend the truth, we shouldn’t go looking for a fight. Some brethren and some preachers feed on controversy. They’re not happy unless they can be battling something or someone. And that certainly doesn’t need to be our attitude. Now, that doesn’t mean we need to be afraid to battle error. You know, part of our responsibility, Ephesians 6 is to take on the full armor, put on the full armor of God. We need to take that sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God, and we need to go to battle against Satan and against his forces of wickedness.

3. Growth Takes Hard Work

Yes, we need to be ready to battle. But that’s not all that we’re about. You see, we all are also builders, and we don’t need to give up building. Our goal is to build up this church. And if we have to stop and we have to battle error, then so be it. But we we need not give up building. We can do both. We can do both. So keep our priorities straight on what our goals are. Number eight, growth takes hard work. It takes hard work. In Nehemiah 4 and verse 21. So we carried on the work with half of them holding spears from dawn until the stars appeared. At that time I also said to the people, let each man with his servants spend the night within Jerusalem, so that they may be a guard for us by night and a laborer by day.

So neither I, my brothers, my servants, nor the men of the guard who followed me, none of us removed our clothes. Each took his weapon even to the water. They work hard. That’s the only way they could finish this work. You know, if we’re going to grow as a congregation, it’s not going to be easy. It’s not going to happen automatically. Why do you think most churches don’t grow? I think it’s because a lot of churches simply are not committed to toil and labor. Some churches simply don’t think it’s worth the effort. Do we think it’s worth the effort? Do you, brethren, think it’s worth the effort to go out there and to sweat and toil in order to add souls to Christ? I think it’s worth every ounce of effort that we can make.

Amen. But it’s not going to be easy. Baptizing souls into Christ, that is not easy. You’ve got a lot of isms out there that you’ve got to unteach. You got a lot of false doctrine that has to be unlearned. You got a lot of righteous living that’s got to be taught and learned. You teach somebody who has never learned about God in the first place. They’ve got all this baggage of the world on them, and you’ve got to help them unload all that baggage. It is a process. It doesn’t happen easily. And once you get somebody baptized, the work’s not over. Sometimes we get them baptized and give up. Like, well, they’re done. No, they just started. It takes continual work and encouragement and teaching to keep somebody going in the early stages of their Christian life.

It is not going to be easy. You know, opportunities disguise themselves as hard work. And that’s why we miss so many of them. We look at it and see hard work and we turn away. No, we must have a mind to work. In Nehemiah 4 and verse 6, perhaps the most famous verse in the book, or one of the most famous. So we built the wall, and the whole wall was joined together to half its height. For the people had a mind to work. And they kept that up till the wall was built up to its full height. Let me ask you a question. If you are going on a vacation, the day before the vacation, do you work harder to get things done than you did the day before that?

Or the day before that, or maybe two or three days combined, you didn’t get as much done as you got done in that 24-hour period right before you got on the plane or the boat or the car and left out for your vacation. Can anybody relate to that? Why did you get more done on that day? I’ll tell you why. It’s because you had a mind to work. You could have got that much done on any day, but you decided on that day because you were under pressure, I’m going to get things done. If you got a test coming up, do you get more studying done the day before the test than you did the day before that? Absolutely. Why? You have a mind to work.

If you’re a preacher, you probably get more studying done on your sermon on Saturday and Saturday night than you did on any other day of the week. And that’s just the way that it happens. When we make our mind up to work, then we work. And so what do we need to do? We need to make our mind up to work. And we need to decide in our heart and our mind, no matter what we’ve been doing before, and no matter how easy, we’ve been taking it on ourselves, we’re going to decide that from now on we’re going to work towards growing this church. And it’s not going to be easy, it’s not going to be convenient, but we can do it if we set our heart and mind to it, and if God is behind us.

4. Solve Internal Problems

Growth takes hard work. Number nine, solve internal problems. We need to solve internal problems if we expect to grow as a congregation. In Nehemiah 5, beginning in verse 1. Now there was a great outcry, the people and of their wives against the Jewish brothers. Now this is an internal conflict, you see. For there were those who said, We are sons and our daughters are many. Therefore let us get grain that we may eat and live. There were others who said, We are mortgaging our fields, our vineyards, and our houses that we might get grain because of the famine. Also there were those who said, We have borrowed money for the king’s tax on our fields and our vineyards. Now our flesh is like the flesh of our brothers and our children like their children.

Behold, we are forcing our sons and our daughters to be slaves, and some of our daughters are forced into bondage already, and we are helpless because our fields and vineyards belong to others. Then I was angry when I heard their outcry in these words. I consulted with myself and contended with the nobles and the rulers, and said to them, You are exacting usury, each from his brother. Therefore I held a great assembly against them. I said to them, We according to our ability have redeemed our Jewish brothers who were sold to the nations. Now would you even sell your brothers that they may be sold to us? Then they were silent and could not find a word to say. And I said, The thing which you are doing is not good.

Should you not walk in the fear of our God because of the reproach of the nations, our enemies? And likewise I, my brothers and my servants are lending them money and grain. Please let us leave off this usury. Please give back to them this very day their fields, their vineyards, their olive groves, and their houses, also the hundredth part of the money and of the grain, the new wine and the oil that you are exacting from them. Then they said, We will give it back, and we will require nothing from them. We will do exactly as you say. So I called the priests and took an oath from them that they would do according to this promise. I also shook out the front of my garment and said, Thus may God shake out every man from his house and from his possessions, who does not fulfill this promise.

Even thus he may be shaken and be emptied. And all the assembly said, Amen. And they praised the Lord. Then the people did according to this promise. Nehemiah saw this issue. What did he do? Did he sweep it under the rug? Did he say, Well, let’s just wait till get the walls finished, then we’ll get to work on it. No, he dealt with it right then and there head on. You see, this conflict was halting the progress. If this conflict had kept going, they might not have been able to finish the walls. It had to get resolved. And the church today must resolve internal conflicts. You know, we’re going to have problems that arise in any church that has any people in it. You know why?

Because people cause people problems. There are going to be personality differences. There are going to be things that are said that offend one another. There are going to be times when people ought to forgive and they don’t forgive. There might be false accusations made. There might be doctrinal issues that are going on. There might be sin issues that are going on. This is going to happen in any congregation of God’s people, sadly, it’s going to happen. And so what do we do when those things happen? Do we just sweep those problems under the rug and pretend like they’re not there? Because that’s not going to make it go away. You might think it’s noble. If for me to ignore the issue and just treat my brother just the same.

Well, we need to treat him the same, but if there is a problem that is causing your attitude to be different toward your brother or his to you, then you need to deal with the issue. You need to deal with it. Right then and there, deal with it in a spirit of love and gentleness. In Acts chapter 6, you remember that the church had grown. You remember in Acts 3 that it was 3,000 souls baptized in that of the Lord. In Acts chapter 5, 5,000 souls. And when we get to Acts chapter 6, we see, uh oh, there’s an internal problem. There’s a conflict between the Jews who have a Greek background and the Jews who are Jews native Hebrews. And so there’s this conflict there that had the potential to cause some damage and some harm, even to the growth of the church.

But the apostles dealt with that matter. They appointed seven men to handle this matter and to fix the problem. And then we read in Acts 6 and in verse 7, the word of God kept on spreading, and the number of disciples continued to increase greatly in Jerusalem, and a great many of the priests were becoming obedient to the faith. You see the point of that? This internal problem did not impede the growth of the church because it was fixed. That’s why in the very next verse we see the church continue to grow exponentially. The only way that we are going to grow as God’s people is if we resolve internal conflicts. That is a necessity. I’ve seen it before when you try to bring an outsider into a congregation that has all these undercurrents of bitterness going on and all these historical problems that have never been resolved, and people don’t talk about them.

5. Keep Your Focus

They pretend like they don’t exist, but everybody knows they exist. You know a visitor can smell that from a mile away. They can tell things are not right. And how can we worship together and pretend like everything’s fine and dandy and expect to go to heaven when we have problems with each other that need to be resolved? They need to be resolved, and that’s what we need to do. Nip it in the bud, so to speak. Solve internal problems. Tenth and finally, keep your focus. Keep your focus. In Nehemiah 6. Now, when it was reported to send Balat to Biah to Geshem the Arab and to the rest of our enemies that I had rebuilt the wall and that no breach remained in it, although at that time I had not set up the doors or the gates.

Then Sandballat and Geshem sent a message to me saying, Come, let us meet together at Cheferun in the plain of Onoh. But they were planning to harm me. So I sent messengers to them saying, I am doing a great work and cannot come down. Why should the work stop while I leave it and come down to you? Then they sent messages to me four times in this manner, and I answered them in the same way. And then finally a letter is sent by Senballat. Nehemiah was not going to get distracted from building up those walls. No matter what his enemy tried to do.

And to make us stop building. Oh the distractions. You remember in the parable of the sower, the seed that was sown among the thorns? And Jesus said, These are the distractions. These are the ones who are distracted with the worries of this world and the pleasures of this world and the riches. Anything wrong with those things in and of themselves? No, but it’s when those things cause us to bear no fruit to maturity that they become sinful. And these distractions may be fine things in and of themselves. Electronics. I’ve loved electronics since I was little. I spent hundreds on video games growing up. Oh, I know what it’s like to love your little iPhone and iPad and all that. But you know what? Sometimes those things can get in the way of God and even in the way of our family.

They can serve as a distraction. Work. Work is a good thing. We need to work. We need to support our families. But you know that work can be a distraction that pulls you away from God. And one of the things we do in America is we work a lot of hours, and that’s necessary sometimes, but sometimes we work so many hours because we have racked up a lot of irresponsible debt to buy things that we couldn’t afford to impress people we don’t know. Now, some debt may not be irresponsible, but some debt is irresponsible. And now we’ve got to pay all this debt off in addition to all of our regular stuff, and so we’ve got to earn more money, which means we have to work more, which means we can’t come to the gospel meeting, and we can’t go to the extra classes that are being held, and there’s no way we can even think about doing evangelism.

All we’re thinking about is earning money.

A lot of our problems are rich people problems. My dishwasher is broken. What am I going to do? The whole house, you know, everything’s got to stop, and my life stops when the dishwasher breaks. Because we’ve got to fix that dishwasher. You know what that is? That is a rich people problem. Because the majority of people in this world don’t have a dishwasher. And therefore they don’t have dishwasher problems. They don’t have a lot of the problems we have because they don’t have all the things that we being rich in this country have. And so if we let rich people problems distract us from the faith, then that might just well come down to materialism. It might come down to having our priorities backwards. Sometimes we have become Martha.

You remember that Martha invited Jesus to come over to feed him? Luke chapter 10. And she was in there working feverishly in the kitchen to prepare this meal. And Mary was sitting at Jesus’ feet listening to his every word. Where would you have been? So Martha got a little annoyed that Mary was not helping. This was her sister. So she came in and she didn’t get on to Mary, she got on to Jesus because he was the one doing all the talking. Lord, don’t you know that I’m the only one in here working? Tell Mary to help me. Jesus said, Martha, Martha, you are distracted with so many things. But only one thing is necessary. And Mary has chosen that good part which will not be taken from her.

How many things are necessary in this life? Really, ultimately? One thing. And that is serving God. And I used to, when I put my boys to bed, I wish I still did this. I need to start this back up, but I would say, what’s the number one goal? Go to heaven. What’s the number two goal? Help as many people get to heaven as we can. We say that every night. Brethren, that’s what it comes down to. We need to go to heaven and bring as many people with us as we come. And anything that distracts us from that goal is hampering the work of the Lord. That’s what it’s hampering.

Only by maintaining focused intensity will we be able to finish the work of building up this church. A laser is only light. Powerful light concentrated in one very small minute area. Focus. But if you take that same light and spread it everywhere, it won’t have the cutting effect and the piercing effect that it can have. But when you take that light and hone it into one area, it’ll cut through just about anything. Well, we need to have, brethren, is we need to have laser focus on what’s important. And we get distracted with all the distractions of life, then we can no longer be effective and bear fruit to maturity. We need to keep our focus on growing this church and adding people to the Lord. This sermon was originally preached by a man named Ken Leach in Phoenix, Arizona at the 40th and Monte Vista Church of Christ.

Conclusion

He has passed since. But he gave it to a preacher that now preaches in Akron, Ohio by the name of Don Wright, and told him, preach this lesson. And now I’ve heard the lesson online. A visitor came here and said, you need to preach these lessons and told me to listen to them, and I’ve reworked them. But that original preacher that preached this, Ken Leach, preached it every year. And that church in Phoenix, Arizona, grew from 90 members to 190 in three years. It doubled in size. There wasn’t anything fantastic or unique about those people except for the fact that they saw that these principles work. And instead of just hearing a sermon, they decided to change their actions on a consistent long-term basis. And they implemented these principles that God has given us in His Word, which will work to build up this church.

And it worked. And it’ll work for us as well. And if we do what they did, if we do what Nehemiah and the Jews did, then we will indeed arise and build. Would you bow your head with me in prayer? Our Father God, we praise you and thank you so much for your word. We thank you for the encouragement that we get and the motivation that we get when we look at Nehemiah and the Jews who got to work there and they had a mind to work and they finished the work on the walls. Father, we pray that we may also set our mind, that we will work and sweat and toil. We pray, Father, that we will work when others won’t. We pray, Father, that we will work even if there is a fight on the horizon.

Pray that we will realize that growth takes hard work. Pray that we will solve internal problems, and we pray that we will maintain our focus. Be with us, Lord, and help this church to grow to your glory so that we may add souls to your kingdom, that you may add souls to your kingdom, and that we may do the work of planting and of watering. It is through your Son that we pray. Amen. At this time we’re going to be dismissed to our Bible classes, and then we will come back at 11 for another period of worship.