Please turn in your copies of God's Word to Nehemiah 3. Nehemiah 3 is an exciting moment in the story of Nehemiah and Ezra. The wall is being built. And we will read this account and these lists of names and those involved. And tonight I want us to think about, rather than working through the names and the significance of their different offices and portions of the gate, we're just going to think about the broad message here. The broad takeaway is the unity of God's people at work here in building the wall. And you can hear that as we read. So turn your attention now to the reading of God's word, chapter three. Then Eliashiv, 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. And next to him, the men of Jericho built. And next to them, Zechur, the son of Emry, built. The sons of Hasaniah built the fish gate. They laid its beams and set its doors, its bolts and its bars. And next to them, Meramoth, the son of Uriah, son of Hakaz, repaired. And next to them, Meshulam, the son of Berechiah, the son of Meshezebel, repaired. And next to them, Zadok, the son of Banna, repaired. And next to them, The Tekoites repaired, but their nobles would not stoop to serve the Lord. Joida, the son of Pesea, and Meshualem, the son of Besodea, repaired the gate of Yashanah. They laid its beams and set its doors, its bolts and its bars. And next to them repaired Meletiah the Gibeonite, and Jadon the Maranathite, the men of Gibeon and of Mizpah, the seat of the governor of the province beyond the river. Next to them, Uziel, the son of Herariah, goldsmith, repaired. Next to him, Ananiah, one of the perfumers, repaired, and they restored Jerusalem as far as the broad wall. Next to them, Rephaiah, the son of Hur, ruler of half the district of Jerusalem, repaired. Next to them, Jediah, the son of Herumoth, repaired, opposite his house. And next to him, Hatush, the son of Hashabaniah, repaired. Malchijah, the son of Harim and Hashub, the son of Paath Moab, repaired another section of the Tower of the Ovens. Next to him, Shalom, the son of Halosh, Halosh, ruler of half the district of Jerusalem, repaired he and his daughters. Hanun and the inhabitants of Zenoa 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. Malchijah, the son of Rechab, ruler of the district of Beth, Hakarim, repaired the dung gate. He rebuilt it and set its doors, its bolts and its bars. And Shalom, the son of Kol Hosei, the 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 Shalah, of the king's garden, as far as the stairs that go down from the city of David. After him, Nehemiah, the son of Azbuk, ruler of the half district of Beth Zer, repaired to a point opposite the tombs of David. as far as the artificial pool, as far as the house of the mighty men. After him, the Levites repaired. Rahum, the son of Bani, next to him. Hashubiah, the ruler of the half district of Kelah, repaired for his district. And after him, their brothers repaired. Bavai, the son of Hinnadad, ruler of the half district of Kelah. Next to him, Azar, the son of Jeshua, the ruler of Mizpah, repaired another section opposite the ascent to the armory at the buttress. And after him, Baruch, the son of Zebai, repaired another section from the buttress to the door of the house of Eliashib, the high priest. After him, Meramath, the son of Uriah, son of Hakaz, repaired another section from the door of the house of Eliashib to the end of the house of Eliashib. And after him, the priests, the men of the surrounding area, repaired. After them, Benjamin and Ashub repaired opposite their house. After them, Azariah, the son of Maesa, the son of Ananiah, repaired beside his own house. After him, Benue, the son of Hinnadad, repaired another section from the house of Azariah to the buttress and to the corner. Pelal, the son of Uzziah, repaired opposite the buttress and the tower, projecting from the upper house of the king at the court of the guard. After him, Padaya, the son of Perosh, and the temple servants living on Ophel repaired to a point opposite the water gate on the east and the projecting tower. And after him, Tekhoites repaired another section opposite the great projecting tower as far as the wall of Ophel. Above the horse gate, the priests repaired each one opposite his own house. After them, Zadok, the son of Emer, repaired opposite his own house. And after him, Shemaiah the son of Shekiniah, the keeper of the east gate, repaired. After him, Hananiah the son of Shelemiah, and Hanun the sixth son of Zalakh, repaired another section. After him, Meshulam the son of Barakiah, repaired opposite his chamber. After him, Malkijah, 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. And between the upper chamber of the corner and the sheep gate, the goldsmiths and merchants repaired." Thus ends the reading of God's Holy Word. Let us go before Him and ask that He would bless our time meditating upon His Word this evening. Father in Heaven, we thank You for Your Word. We thank You that in Your providence You have preserved this Word for us, that we can have this account of all of these details of what happened many years ago. We thank You that Your Word is profitable to us, that it is applicable and relevant. We ask that You would help us by Your Spirit to see that in Nehemiah 3 this evening. We pray in the name of Your Son, in Jesus' name, Amen. Well, we have here another long list of names in Nehemiah and Ezra. This is a catalogue of relatively unknown figures, many of whom are only mentioned here. And as we read this catalogue of those involved, there's a resounding theme. They're all working together despite whatever office they have in regular life, whatever skills they might have in regular life, whatever position they're in. They're all working together. They're working alongside one another with this one purpose of building a wall to protect this new Jerusalem. This is an exciting moment and you can imagine the pride of these that are involved getting their names inscribed in God's word forever to mark that they joined the task of rebuilding the wall as the remnant has returned to Jerusalem. We see all sorts of families, of units, other citizens from other towns, crafts, trades, callings, holy callings. They're all working together side by side. Next to them, next to them, after him, after him. It's repeated over and over. It's interesting the way that this comes about. And as we turn to this passage, what so often is done with this portion of God's Word is it's limited to practical advice for church work or leadership advice for anything in particular. And that's the great takeaway from Nehemiah chapter 3. But as we've been reading, I think it's helpful to see in the context of the story This is a story about God remaining faithful to a people that were disobedient, people that had turned their backs on God. And yet he has allowed it to come about that they would be able to participate in this work, in kingdom work. This is a gracious gift that God has given to this exiled people, this returned remnant. He has given them a united spirit. He has given them a united task. He's given them a good leader. And the resounding theme here is that God is faithful to an unfaithful people. And this is just one small chapter in that story. Well, with that being said, there are some remarkable things about Nehemiah's leadership and about what happens here and some very practical takeaways for us. And I want us to think about how, as a church, as the New Testament people of God, how do we work together in the things that God has called us to do in a united and supportive way? There are practical things to learn here. First of all, we see this event takes place in an amazing way. Remember, Nehemiah has come. He is the blessing of the king. He's the cupbearer. He's inspected the whole wall. He faces some initial opposition from these rulers of the province beyond the river, Sanbalat and Tobiah, and they jeer at him and mock him. And he gives this rousing speech, and he tells them, God's hand has been upon me. We need to do this. And the people respond well. And we read that in Nehemiah 2, let us rise up and build. And here it is. They do it. They rise up and build. And as they do that, it's striking that every portion of the wall was being worked at at the same time. They could have gone maybe in a different way and worked at it section by section with more consorted effort into one section, but every section was rising up together. Well, think about what could be the significance of that. Nehemiah assigns each section of the wall to 41 different groups, and the ball is built up at one time. It's interesting that in this chapter, Nehemiah, the Nehemiah that's leading the people, isn't even mentioned. There is a Nehemiah there, but it's not the same Nehemiah that we've been following from Nehemiah 1 and 2. This leader isn't even mentioned. But when we pick up in chapter 4, he stops using the first person singular that we come to know him by in chapters 1 and 2, and he begins to use the first person plural. Rather than saying I or me, he says we. And you can see that in Nehemiah chapter 4. We built the wall. And he's showing that this wasn't his singular effort, and it wasn't the singular effort of any one person. This was all hands-on-deck, every-member work. Every-member ministry. And this is a picture of what the church ought to look like. The church isn't meant to be a group, an organization, an institution, where there's some key people working and everyone else benefiting and sitting by. The church is meant to be this kind of work, where it's all happening together, all hands on deck, everyone pitching in. Kingdom work is corporate work. It's body work, united, corporate, all hands involvement. That is the faithful response to the salvation we have been given in Christ. This is what it means to be part of the body. We are all called to do this kind of work as members of the church. And I want us to really focus on that theme this evening. So we consider work and kingdom work. It's good to think about that we are all called to patterns, rhythms of work and rest in our lives, our just regular daily lives. We were meant to work six days and then rest. We were meant to work primarily in the daytime and rest in the evening, and God has established these patterns. We need rest and we need to work, and that is good. As God made man, he gave the creation mandate. Work the garden and keep it. That was some of the first instruction, even before the fall. Man was designed to work. As we consider that kind of general work, we also need to recognize that part of our work should be working in specific and particular service to God, in ministry. We aren't meant to work just for our own gain and our own fulfillment, our own desires. We are meant to work in service. We are to serve others and to serve the church. There is a corporate picture here of everyone chipping in. And I think one of the remarkable things that we may miss is we're many years separated from this account as we don't have the same experience of being in exile and coming back to our homes and needing to rebuild, there needed to be a united effort here. It is difficult to overcome past failure, past sin, past undoing and shame by yourself. As Nehemiah rallies the people and they rise up in a corporate group, you can see that this intentional united effort was necessary. You can consider what the first steps would have been to rebuilding this wall. They would have had to clear away the broken rubble, the charred gates that had been burned down. They would have had to painfully, physically, laboriously be reminded of the punishment that their people, their fathers and grandfathers had suffered because of sin. And it was in their face. And as you can imagine, being in their shoes, experiencing that, there was likely a great temptation to doubt, to question if this was even worth the trouble. Will God really be faithful? Will we actually be preserved? Will there be any lasting hope for our people? It's a bleak situation. Nehemiah is resolute and he emphasizes, God's hand is upon me. God is interceding here. He is getting involved. And while it's a bleak situation, when it's done in unity, done together, there is encouragement and there is a and excitement to the work. We need the body. We need to look over and see our brothers and sisters striving on faithfully, serving God, caring for more than oneself. We need to model that to one another, and we need to look for that in one another. We need that encouragement. We're not meant to live our Christian life in a bubble. We're not meant to be individualistic, but to be part of the body. As we think about the life that we have been saved from, the death that we've been saved from, the desperate state in which we were in apart from Christ, and maybe we fear, am I actually saved? Do I actually belong to Christ? Is the hope of God's Word, is it true for me? And it's important to express those doubts to others and to come alongside one another, that we would be an encouragement in times of doubt, in times of struggle. We can't do it on our own. We're not meant to. The church wasn't designed to operate that way, where you come sit in church and go home and never serve one another, never work together, never live lives together. We need to do this work together. The people of God serving alongside one another that saw expressed by one another's service that despite past failures, God is worth serving. There is hope for God's people. As we consider that kind of body work and we think ahead to the New Testament and that amazing picture that Paul paints for us of the church in 1 Corinthians 12, and we think about the different gifts, it's kind of a strange setting because there wasn't a need for all the different gifts, and yet they're mentioned here. They're all doing very similar work with one another. They're laying the bars and the bolts and putting up a wall. And yet they're all gifted differently and in some ways their special interests seem to come into play. You see that the high priests and the priests were by the sheep gate which would have been near the temple. And you see their desire to protect the temple and their interest in that in their regular office helped motivate them to do this manual labor of building up the wall around the temple. And you see others. Others were building in front of their very homes. And what brilliant leadership is that for Nehemiah to ensure the quality of the wall. If it's going to be built in front of your own home, you're going to want to make sure it's done right. We see these different things mentioned to show us this united effort, yet different stations, different gifts, different interests involved. All working together, all working at the same task. A diverse body and yet a united effort. As we think about that for ourselves in our own context, we all have different gifts. We all are at different stages of life and different capacities of being able to serve and yet we ought to ask ourselves, are we pitching in? Are we serving? Are we serving the church? Do you consider yourself as one serving next to the person next to you? As one listed alongside, after so-and-so, here I am serving. Are you part of the body? This is what the community of Christ ought to look like. coming to serve serving alongside this lowercase new jerusalem this returns to jerusalem is these humble means is a picture anticipating the new jerusalem the new city the city of which we who are in christ are citizens and we have application here rich application what does it look like for me to serve the new Jerusalem. And that's not just limited to what we do on Sundays. It's not just limited to our relationships with one another here as members of this body, but you can serve God and His kingdom beyond just church work, but in all that you do. And when you do all of your work to the glory of God, it has eternal significance. So there's encouragement for you in your regular callings, regular work, that there is spiritual significance to doing that work well and faithfully and with the desire to see God's kingdom expanded. And there's also a call to work particularly towards the mission of the church. The mission of the church is made clear and simple in the great commission that Christ gives to the disciples Our task as the gathered body of Christ, that one body, our united task, is to make disciples by bearing witness to Christ and what He accomplished. To bear witness to Jesus Christ, the Son, in the power of the Holy Spirit, to the glory of God the Father. Christ's purpose, His stated purpose, was to seek and save the lost. And we are now his ambassadors. He has ascended on high. The king is reigning on his throne and he has left his church here to be his ambassadors, to do his work, to seek and save the lost. And we don't save him in ourselves, but by wearing witness to him who came and worked. And we need to do this together. That Great Commission, while it's to all of us as members of the body, it is clearly given to the Church. You are not meant to go out and start baptizing people. The Church is to baptize as we make disciples. And so we see this corporate call of our Savior. We need to be doing work together. as we consider the particular work that was involved here. There's some practical application there for us as well. They were building a wall. There was a unique circumstance, a unique time and setting for God's people where they viewed themselves and rightly viewed themselves to still be remaining a people set apart, a people who were holy. and who were very concerned about worshiping God rightly. They did not want outside influences influencing their worship. They did not want to be dominated by the people of the land and threatened to not be able to worship God as they knew was right. And that's clear in Ezra and Nehemiah both that they were concerned with right worship. So they needed to build a wall. They were defensive. When Christ comes back or when Christ comes, he opens the gates in many ways and he calls the nations in. And so while we're not to build a wall in the same way, we're not to fortify and have a particular kind of conservative effort where we fortify and withdraw from the world. That's not our MO. We are to go out. We just referenced the Great Commission. And yet, we are to be defensive in many ways. Not physically, by building physical walls, not in a way that would cause us to be unloving or dismissive to others, uninvolved in the lives of those around us, in our communities, in our cities. But we are to be defensive spiritually. We should be concerned about where we are vulnerable. We aren't vulnerable from physical attack very often, but we are in danger spiritually. There are real spiritual threats. And we ought to consider what does it mean to build up spiritual walls against spiritual threats. How do we do that? We're not meant to remove ourselves from society. We aren't to be fortifying ourselves in that way. But we are to fortify ourselves as a community, set apart. And we do this through pursuing sanctification by the ordinary means of grace. We defend ourselves from spiritual threats by the ordinary means of grace, going before God in prayer, going before Him in His Word, and in sacrament. We ought to be doing this faithfully, and as a church, corporately, we must remain faithful in doing this. We come here to be fed and to be strengthened, for our defenses to be strengthened, that we would not fall into temptation, that we would not be brought down with earthly perspectives, that we would be reoriented to think with a heavenly perspective, to be pursuing things above, to be mortifying our sins, to be faithful in that battle. And when we go before God's Word, when we go to Him in prayer, as He has instructed us in His Word, when we sing His praises, when we gather in that special corporate way and we receive the sacraments, we experience those things, we are strengthened in a real spiritual way. It's not make-believe. It's not superstition. It's not a fairy tale. There's a real spiritual battle, and we would be fools not to build the spiritual walls. Be faithful in pursuing greater and greater holiness by the ordinary means of grace. Be encouraging us as a body to do that, and do it as you go out from here in your day-to-day life. As we come together, as we gather before the King In many ways, it's just like that same concept where you're standing next to the person next to you, swinging that hammer, building the wall, living out faith. As you hear the praises of the person next to you, you be encouraged. We have hope. There's something worth praising. God is real. He is faithful despite our faithlessness. We need to stand side by side, hear one another, lift up praises to God. We need to encourage one another to stay strong, to run the race, to pursue holiness. And this is something we do as a body, from the littlest here to the oldest. No matter your station, no matter your gifts, no matter your particular callings as you go out from here, We are to gather together and encourage one another in the mission of the church, in remaining a people set apart to holy people that are seeking to go out and make disciples of all nations. And we can't do it alone. We'll jump ahead briefly to Nehemiah chapter 6 verse 16. As the wall is completed, it says, and when all our enemies heard of it, that is the wall being finished, all the nations around us were afraid, and they fell greatly in their own esteem, for they perceived that this work had been accomplished with the help of our God. God is faithful. This was no mere human effort. The surrounding nations knew it. The wall went up, and we'll read about its progress. It goes up in a matter of months. Two months, they finish the wall. And the nations were afraid. Only a true God, a living God, a God involved in his people's lives could have brought this about. If God is not at work, the labors labor in vain. The blessing of unity comes from God, comes from above. It's not from ourselves. So we must depend upon God as we seek to work alongside one another in kingdom work. Let's pray to that end. Father in heaven, we thank you for your promises. We thank you that you do give us reason for hope. We pray that you would help us to live in light of that fact, help us to go out from here and in our day-to-day moments, in our times where we're no longer sitting here in church thinking about you, but we get so often distracted and consumed by our own wants, our own concerns and needs, desires and tasks. Help us to remember your word. that you call us to work faithfully towards your glory. Help us as a church to be united, to love serving side one another, and help all of us to serve you, to serve your work. I pray that you would bring that about in us by the power of your Spirit. I pray in Jesus' name. Amen.