August 25, 2024: Message: Rebuilding The Building | Scripture: Nehemiah 3 | Speaker: Pastor Stephen Choy
Worship Songs: Come Thou of Every Blessing | It Was Finished on the Cross | Christ Our Wisdom
Full Manuscript
Introduction
If able, please stand as I read to you from Nehemiah 3. TWoL: 1 Then Eliashib the high priest rose up with his brothers the priests, and they built the Sheep Gate. They consecrated it and set its doors. They consecrated it as far as the Tower of the Hundred, as far as the Tower of Hananel. 2 And next to him the men of Jericho built. And next to them Zaccur the son of Imri built.
3 The sons of Hassenaah built the Fish Gate. They laid its beams and set its doors, its bolts, and its bars. 4 And next to them Meremoth the son of Uriah, son of Hakkoz repaired. And next to them Meshullam the son of Berechiah, son of Meshezabel repaired. And next to them Zadok the son of Baana repaired. 5 And next to them the Tekoites repaired, but their nobles would not stoop to serve their Lord.2
6 Joiada the son of Paseah and Meshullam the son of Besodeiah repaired the Gate of Yeshanah.They laid its beams and set its doors, its bolts, and its bars. 7 And next to them repaired Melatiah the Gibeonite and Jadon the Meronothite, the men of Gibeon and of Mizpah, the seat of the governor of the province Beyond the River. 8 Next to them Uzziel the son of Harhaiah, goldsmiths, repaired. Next to him Hananiah, one of the perfumers, repaired, and they restored Jerusalem as far as the Broad Wall. 9 Next to them Rephaiah the son of Hur, ruler of half the district of Jerusalem, repaired. 10 Next to them Jedaiah the son of Harumaph repaired opposite his house. And next to him Hattush the son of Hashabneiah repaired. 11 Malchijah the son of Harim and Hasshub the son of Pahath-moab repaired another section and the Tower of the Ovens. 12 Next to him Shallum the son of Hallohesh, ruler of half the district of Jerusalem, repaired, he and his daughters.
13 Hanun and the inhabitants of Zanoah repaired the Valley Gate. They rebuilt it and set its doors, its bolts, and its bars, and repaired a thousand cubits of the wall, as far as the Dung Gate.
14 Malchijah the son of Rechab, ruler of the district of Beth-haccherem, repaired the Dung Gate. He rebuilt it and set its doors, its bolts, and its bars.
15 And Shallum the son of Col-hozeh, ruler of the district of Mizpah, repaired the Fountain Gate. He rebuilt it and covered it and set its doors, its bolts, and its bars. And he built the wall of the Pool of Shelah of the king’s garden, as far as the stairs that go down from the city of David. 16 After him Nehemiah the son of Azbuk, ruler of half the district of Beth-zur, repaired to a point opposite the tombs of David, as far as the artificial pool, and as far as the house of the mighty men. 17 After him the Levites repaired: Rehum the son of Bani. Next to him Hashabiah, ruler of half the district of Keilah, repaired for his district. 18 After him their brothers repaired: Bavvai the son of Henadad, ruler of half the district of Keilah. 19 Next to him Ezer the son of Jeshua, ruler of Mizpah, repaired another section opposite the ascent to the armory at the buttress. 20 After him Baruch the son of Zabbai repaired another section from the buttress to the door of the house of Eliashib the high priest. 21 After him Meremoth the son of Uriah, son of Hakkoz repaired another section from the door of the house of Eliashib to the end of the house of Eliashib. 22 After him the priests, the men of the surrounding area, repaired. 23 After them Benjamin and Hasshub repaired opposite their house. After them Azariah the son of Maaseiah, son of Ananiah repaired beside his own house. 24 After him Binnui the son of Henadad repaired another section, from the house of Azariah to the buttress and to the corner. 25 Palal the son of Uzai repaired opposite the buttress and the tower projecting from the upper house of the king at the court of the guard. After him Pedaiah the son of Parosh 26 and the temple servants living on Ophel repaired to a point opposite the Water Gate on the east and the projecting tower. 27 After him the Tekoites repaired another section opposite the great projecting tower as far as the wall of Ophel.
28 Above the Horse Gate the priests repaired, each one opposite his own house. 29 After them Zadok the son of Immer repaired opposite his own house. After him Shemaiah the son of Shecaniah, the keeper of the East Gate, repaired. 30 After him Hananiah the son of Shelemiah and Hanun the sixth son of Zalaph repaired another section. After him Meshullam the son of Berechiah repaired opposite his chamber. 31 After him Malchijah, one of the goldsmiths, repaired as far as the house of the temple servants and of the merchants, opposite the Muster Gate, and to the upper chamber of the corner. 32 And between the upper chamber of the corner and the Sheep Gate the goldsmiths and the merchants repaired.
A lot of commentators come to this section of Nehemiah, and they don’t see anything particularly remarkable with its words. It’s a list of names with a lot of fixing and building being done to the walls of Jerusalem. Fairly straight forward, you’d think. But when we look closer, there’s quite a lot to unpack, and for the sake of time, I want to jump straight into it by telling you that what it reveals to us—what it commands of us—is that we build the kingdom that we were made to build.
Kingdom building is what we are made and saved for—one commentator puts it this way: the mission of God wasn’t made for the church, and it wasn’t given to the church after the fact. No, the church was created for mission. Just like Jesus took on flesh to fulfill the Father’s mission to save sinners, we have been called the people of God to do for the world what Christ did for us. Jesus came on mission. He came to make us citizens, heirs, kings and queens of the ultimate City, and we’re to be the continued means of building that city.
This is what our text tells us this morning: build the kingdom you were made to build, and do this starting by …
1) Build Accountably
I don’t have time in our hour to go line by line through the text, but what I do want to draw your attention to is the incremental details scattered throughout the passage that tell us why these words are so important. The first detail to notice is that Nehemiah records the reestablishment of the wall starting with the northern most point of the city in the Sheep Gate. Here, we see the priests, including the high priest, himself, Eliashib, help with the building and consecration of this gate. He declares it holy. It’s the gate from which sacrifices were brought in as the closest entrance to the temple.
And it’s necessary to see this work being done by men who are often thought as mere dogmatists or theologians or as people who hide behind their pulpits yet don’t put their hand to the plough. It’s necessary because it’s one thing for leaders like me or your deacons or your council to ask you to do things, but unless we are doing those things ourselves—unless we are labouring for your sake, seeking to disciple, seeking to proclaim the gospel, seeking to help others in their holiness—we can pontificate and yell wonderful things from our high places all we want, but we, and our message, would be worthless.
We are meant to lead in the project not just because we want you to follow and emulate us but because this project is a God-ordained work. What we do is meant to show all of you how we might turn the reproach of our own brokenness, ugliness, and sinfulness into the glory of God. How God turns our foolishness into his wisdom.
Where we fall short in this, church, you are meant to call us out both by word and deed. Recognize, the text doesn’t tell us who started building first. It just says Eliashib rose with his brothers to build. When we see work being done, it ought to compel us to get to work ourselves. Our calling as your leaders in no way puts us over you. If anything, it reminds us that we belong to God, and because you are God’s people, we belong to you. We serve you. We labour for your joy, and we do this by setting the gospel of grace ever before us.
It’s when we become unable to sacrifice and to display grace towards you that we need to be removed from the task. Why? Because it means we’ve forgotten the place of Christ and his life, death, and resurrection in our own lives. It means we’ve forgotten that this isn’t about ourselves.
We see this most notably illustrated in the contrasting images of verses 5b and 14. In verse 14, we read about the repair of the Dung Gate. It’s likely where the priests took the unholy and unclean portions of an animal to be destroyed outside the camp. It was on the complete opposite end of the city from the Sheep Gate because that’s where the temple was, and yet look at who’s working on the Dung Gate: Malchijah, ruler of the district of Beth-haccherem. He’s a Jewish nobleman. A leader. A provider. Someone to be looked up to, but here he is working on the part of the city that everyone else would have thought to be too lowly, too physically and spiritually set apart from the holy places for a ruler or nobleman to work.
And this stands in stark contrast to verse 5b where the Tekoites are working on the Fish Gate, but their nobles—their leaders—they will not stoop, or as stated in the Hebrew, they would not bring or bend their necks to serve their Lord. They were, literally, stiff-necked before God—men who looked down upon the labouring. This is made worse when we discover that the Tekoites were descendants of one of the noblest and mightiest men of David. They were distinguished—magisterial people, and yet, in their distinguishment, these noblemen clearly believed the work to be beneath them. They were more concerned with keeping their own, clean image, hiding behind their lineage, than in rebuilding the people and the city to image their God. The irony is that in their high esteem of themselves, they forget that God esteems those who lay themselves low.
I wanted to draw this out because the joy of a true Christian leader’s life—really the joy of the Christian—isn’t in promoting your own individual image. Rather, it’s recognizing that our image and our worth corresponds to the health and safety of our people. This is why the glory of Christ is unparalleled—why he is exalted above every other name. It’s because his blood and his righteousness are so efficient and effective that it covers the sins of all his beloved so that they are always his people, always safe, always under the gracious hand of God. He put his hand to the heaviest plough by becoming like us and bearing our cross. He was brought outside the walls that he orchestrated and sovereignly built to suffer our destruction. And he was crucified, so that we might be brought in through faith in him.
Malchijah knew that for the city to function properly, while all the other gates were likely more venerated than this one, the entire system could not work unless there was a place for the refuse—unless someone cared for that which was the least in the kingdom. And he, the ruler of his district, took it upon himself to care for it. So, it goes for us who lead and for, really, all of us who call ourselves Christian—that we see our own great ruler in Jesus who took it upon himself to care for the least of us so that we, ourselves, might respond by going out, doing the work, building the kingdom, even for the least amongst us.
2) Build Entirely
Remember and keep us accountable in our building. Then, remember and keep yourselves accountable to glorify God by giving yourselves entirely, wonderfully, and sacrificially to the task—in your living for one another and not just for those you like—sometimes pushing yourself to that which you may not want to do.
Notice who it is that works on the wall next to the high priest and next to the rulers. There are whole families helping—men AND women, officials, merchants, perfumers, goldsmiths—people who have no working knowledge as to how one builds a wall, yet they are actively building, applying both their gifts and not-gifts as best they can. Verse two even tells us there are men of Jericho who are building next to Eliashib and the priests.
Now, these aren’t Jerichites from Joshua’s day. They’re people who lived in Jericho in Nehemiah’s day who’ve joined the Israelites as they build the wall. Yet, their mention is significant because their predecessors were once the enemies of God and his people, and yet, look at who they are and what they’re doing now: building and contenting themselves as friends of God and his people. The church and the people of God are meant to be characterized like this—something that seems completely extraordinary to the world. A place where enemies are made friends; rivals made brothers and sisters; the hostile brought to peace because this is where peace between sinful man and a holy God is meant to dwell.
We’ve hinted at this in sermons past, but Nehemiah clearly believed that his time was a new, distinct age from all those that had come before. The day of Jeremiah and the promised new covenant—he expected it. He hoped for it. And here, we’re starting to see a glimpse of it—where people of different backgrounds, orders, and even ethnicities are coming from all over to build the kingdom of God, and not just isolated parts of the kingdom—not just the glamourous bits, but every part of it.
We see this illustrated in the very way that Nehemiah details the rebuilding of the wall. He starts up north with the sheep gate, then the fish gate, then the old gate, then the valley gate, then the refuse—or dung—gate, then the fountain gate, then the water gate, then the horse gate, then the inspection gate. If you looked at a map of Jerusalem in Nehemiah’s day, these are literally all the gates in counterclockwise order.
Every gate is accounted for. Every gate is repaired simultaneously, quickly, sacrificially regardless of how much damage had been done to it. And everyone is meant to do the work. In fact, in Nehemiah 6, we learn that because everyone gave of themselves in such sacrificial ways, they finished the wall in 52 days, which means these men AND women worked almost without rest. They were so excited in the promise—so zealous for the prospect of restoration, that they laboured without compunction—doing so with the greatest hope, reverence, and tenacity.
And though the city did not blaze with the radiant glory of God, what they received and witnessed in the completion of their city was a different kind of glory—a full glory in its own right because the emphasis, now, had changed. God wasn’t shining in a structure or in a city but in the concern and in the dedication of his people—in their devotedness—in their faithfulness together to do what they were brought to Israel to do. They were witnesses to a new kind of glory—a new age of experiencing the goodness of God as one.
This, then, is what this passage teaches us and challenges us on explicitly—that every gate, every stone, every person in our midst must be accounted for with zeal. We have souls in here that need shepherding, feeding, praying, caring, encouraging, and mourning. And when we think we’re finished with the job in here, which we never will be, we must also remember the job that we have out there—the shepherding, the feeding, the praying, the caring, the encouraging, and the mourning that the world desperately needs.
And this may be a daunting command for us—this non-stop work, but we can commit ourselves entirely to it because we have a promise and a prospect of restoration that is far greater than the promises and prospects of Nehemiah’s Israel. We were saved—we were made by the blood and authority of an infinitely worthy Christ—so that we might fight for the health of our church with an unfading resolve and bring the gospel to our community for his glory. He brought us to himself entirely so that we might give of ourselves entirely to each other. Build the Kingdom you were made to build in the fullness of Christ because he fully sustains you for it. And as you build the entire kingdom, don’t forget to also build corporately.
3) Build Corporately
We must not forget the context of our passage. Nehemiah has commissioned Israel to build this wall to serve as a sign of God’s covenant faithfulness and protection over them. Yet, as we end chapter 2 and begin chapter 4, we see the enemies of God’s people unified in anger and in want of destroying Israel. Chapter 3 is given in between as a marvelous picture of how we’re meant to deal with overwhelming opposition: “Eliashib rose up, unquestioningly, humbly, with his brothers and built … and next to him the men of Jericho built … and next to them Zaccur built … and next to them the sons of Hassenaah built … and next to them Meremoth built … and next to them Meshullam built … etc.
This constant refrain of “next to them,” or “after them” is intentional on Nehemiah’s part because what we find out is that unless they do this together—unless they build the kingdom together in faith that God, alone, shall sustain them, it will not last. And notice it’s not just everyone working beside each other on their own things, it’s everyone doing something towards one common thing, namely, the reformation of the city of God and his people.
For clarity, it’s not that everyone is working towards the same thing in the same ways. There’s an obvious sense of individuality in the work being done. We see individual names here with individual gifts, but there’s also a sense, in this text, as to how these people take joy in a kind of anonymity that’s found in their service. Individual names are included here, but no single name is elevated above the others. We’ve already seen this with Eliashib and Malchijah. They are both mentioned here as one working alongside others.
So, we need to ask: why is it so important to have this deep sense of unity and commonality? Well, in the civil war, soldiers would march into battle shoulder to shoulder, and they would do this for two reasons: the first was so that when they fired their rifles, it concentrated their fire to provide the greatest effect against the enemy, and second, when they worked together—next to each other—it prevented them from taking on too much themselves—having to shoot too many enemies or feeling too isolated in the task. It gave them security.
See, this kind of unity isn’t meant to force you to lose your identity. In fact, it’s the exact opposite. It’s so that your identity might be kept—your identity in your specific contribution to the kingdom where others can see your reliability and dedication and respond both in gratitude and desire to do better themselves. Nehemiah was very intentional to include that there were merchants, perfumers, goldsmiths helping in the effort so that we might know and be challenged by their individual sacrifices and contributions.
But there’s the other side of the coin where one’s identity is maintained and guarded by those who you’re working with, upholding you, keeping you accountable, loving you, catching you when you fall. This is unity. Unity is not strict uniformity or conformity; it’s the embrace of our diversity working and bound towards a common goal despite disagreement.
Yes, there will be times of struggle and difficulty. I don’t imagine that all these people in Israel were in perfect agreement every day. Yet it’s clear from the text that they worked hard not only to build the wall, physically, but to build their identity as the people of God, first, before pushing their individual preferences and opinions upon one another so that God might be glorified—so that God might prosper and magnify his work through them!
True unity is rising above ourselves for the love of God and for the love of his children, and this is perhaps why we get into so many conflicts within the church. It’s because we forget that these men and women sitting beside us—they’re the children of God. They aren’t objects for us to overcome. Rather, they’re stores of treasure from which we get to see the love of God displayed for sinners like us.
I’ve said it before, but you cannot be a Christian—you cannot survive in the kingdom of God—by yourself. There is no such thing in the Bible—Old Testament or New—as an isolated saint. But so too, the Christian and the Church cannot survive if it does not fight to be inseparable and united in its resolve for God and his glory.
Christ, himself, never did anything by himself. He was always with the Father and the Holy Spirit. Even on the cross, the Son was never alone, because as he died and suffered, the Father was ensuring that the wrath of God—the wrath that belonged to all three persons of the Godhead—was satisfied in the Son. And the Spirit was applying that satisfaction to all those who the Father had set aside for the Son to inherit.
And yet, the grander truth of the cross isn’t just the inseparability of the three persons of God in the face of the greatest evil, but that through the death of Jesus, the veil was torn in two so that we might be made one together with him—united to God through Jesus, made sufficient in him, satisfied by him, proclaimed righteous through him, joined in our destiny, inheritance, and rights with him. When Christ died for your sin upon that cross, you and your sin were crucified with him. When Christ was raised from the grave, you became alive in him, and he in you. He fought and died so that you might never have to face the enemy by yourself again—so that you might know that you’re right there next to him.
Let me put it this way, I read a story once of a young child who grew up always wanting to feel accepted. She believed that if she did good things, she’d be accepted, and if she did bad, she’d be rejected. Overtime, she realized, she did a lot more bad than good, and she felt a lot more rejected than accepted. So, she applied for a job, which not only promised to pay her well, but the job itself involved putting on the mask of the most beloved character in cinema history—the character of Mickey Mouse. And she wrote that every day, when she was dressed inside that Mickey costume, she experienced the attention and affirmation that she’d always longed to receive. Through Mickey, she was able to be happy, secure, tender, humble, confident, ambitious, content all at once.
Now, that story is a little sad, but only because Mickey isn’t a real person that we can grasp and find security in. He’s a hollow adaptation of what we wish we had or could be. But Jesus—Jesus is a real person, and he has done the most significant thing for us so that when we are united with him, he truly becomes ours, and we can truly be all that we were meant to be in him.
And not just him but all who are united with him—they become ours as well. He is our head, and we, his body. He is our groom, and we, his bride, which means that when you become a Christian—when Christ becomes your life, you’re made to be a Christian first—and everything else comes second because all those things that used to identify you—all those selfish, sinful ways of living—all those things that separated you from others who you’d normally hate—they’re gone. And the love of Christ for his bride and the care that he takes for his body, they become your love and your care.
I love family-oriented shows. One show that I watch clips of all the time is called Young Sheldon. It’s about a genius boy who grows up with his Texan family all of whom are very average in their intelligence. And in one of these episodes, Sheldon’s mom develops a crisis of faith who is known throughout the series as a devout Christian. But when she begins struggling with her faith, Sheldon becomes unsettled. Why? Because he likes the constancy of things—the order of things—if his mother couldn’t be his mother, then he struggled to be and understand himself.
So, he goes out to her one night and asks if he can help, to which she expresses her doubt. But he sits beside her anyway, looks up at the stars, and says, “did you know that if gravity and the electromagnetic pull of the universe was slightly stronger or weaker the entire cosmos would cease to exist?” “What are you getting at Sheldon?” “It’s that the precision of that measurement points us to one very logical conclusion: that a Creator must exist.”
And yet, despite his mother not knowing this, she responds by saying that her problem wasn’t what she knew up here (in her head); it what was going on down here (in her heart). Considering this new information, Sheldon adjusts himself, and he looks at his mom and says, “Did you know, there are about 6 billion people on the planet, yet somehow God knew that you were the perfect mom for me?”
What this helps me realize about being at church—at this church—is that there are so many other churches I could be at—thousands, if not millions, in this country. But if God has ordained the cosmos in such a precise way, and if God has ordered the circumstances of my life to be as they are in my home with my wife and my kids, then my being here at TCCBC must also be a divinely exact thing. I can’t predict my future here. I can’t change my not being here in the past. But what I can affect and challenge myself in is that as long as I am here—because I am here exactly and precisely as God intended—I dare not fix my gaze, my hope, my effort anywhere else. No, he’s placed me here—he’s placed each of us here exactly—to build this place and to love these people—our people—at this time.
God has made no mistake in this—he makes no mistakes for while we were still weak, at the right time, Christ died for us, so that we might build and serve him together. He makes us so that we who belong to Jesus might display his perfect wisdom as the one people of our one God. So, don’t make your being here a mistake. If you are here, give yourself to what this place is, to whom the people of this place are, and to the God who has caused and made this place to be through the blood of his most beloved Son.
[4) Build Expectantly
Build the kingdom that God made and saved you to build. Build it entirely. Build it corporately. And, lastly, build it expectantly knowing that what you do here is not the finished product, for all of this—even what we see here in Nehemiah 3—it’s pointing to something greater.
I’ve already alluded to this, but what you actually see in the Bible is this progression for how God reveals his holiness and his glory to us. He begins by revealing his glory through individual people: Adam, Abraham, Moses, David. Yet, over time, the glory shown to those people begins to fade, and instead, God starts to reveal his holiness in a broader sense by filling the tabernacle and the temple with his presence so that more might be brought in. It’s the temple that must be pleasing and acceptable to him—pristine in its cleanliness, lined with valuable objects to display his surpassing worth.
But then, in Isaiah 4 and Zechariah 14, we read that a day is coming when the words “Holy to the Lord” will no longer be inscribed in the pots and utensils of the temple but on every pot and utensil throughout Jerusalem and Judah. And what Isaiah and Zechariah are getting at is that a day is coming when the holiness of God won’t be in one, special person or in one, special building, rather, his glory—his holiness—shall become manifest throughout all his land, in every home, and in every person who belongs to him. Upon the hearts of normal people shall be inscribed his law, says Jeremiah—upon normal hearts of people shall be inscribed, “Holy to the Lord.”
And in Nehemiah 3 we witness a shift towards that. Holiness doesn’t come through Adam or in the face of Moses. We don’t see holiness fall upon the limited location of the temple. Rather, what we read in verse 1 is that Eliashib consecrates the building of the wall—he calls the wall holy—he calls what the people are doing, in unified effort, holy. You see the holiness of God break out of the temple towards something bigger and more inclusive.
And yet, the beauty of the gospel is that because of Christ’s work upon that cross—as his satisfaction is poured out—he tears the curtain of the temple in two—that dividing wall between us and God. No longer is the holiness of God found in special, individual people, or in the temple, or even in the walls of the broader city of Jerusalem. No, now the holiness of God, is spread throughout the earth, and it is found in ordinary people like us.
We’re told in places like Ephesians 2 and 1 Peter 2 that we become the living stones of the temple. We become the New Jerusalem. We inherit the name Israel, and Christ is our perfect, eternal, and immovable cornerstone. Our diversity and unity supersede that of the people in Nehemiah because we’re his not because of what’s external to us, but on who dwells inside of us.
And still we know, this is not all that is meant to be. The Bible tells us—more of his holiness, more of his wonder, more of his joy are yet to come. For now, we see in a mirror dimly, but on that day, face-to-face. We know in part now, but then I shall know fully, because in Christ, I have been fully known.
Christ shall return to finish what Adam, Abraham, Moses, David, and Nehemiah began. His kingdom shall come. His will shall be done in the new heavens and in the new earth. But until that day, let us labour to build and revel in the kingdom that we were made to build now—a kingdom not made with human hands, but one that is eternal and secured in our Saviour God—our Creator, our Perfector, our Friend who is always there at work for us and next to us.]
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