As the great work begins Pastor Derek teaches us that "To accomplish our great work, we need common purpose, collective effort, and Christ-like leadership".
Fore more resources join us at www.pgfirst.com
As the great work begins Pastor Derek teaches us that "To accomplish our great work, we need common purpose, collective effort, and Christ-like leadership".
Fore more resources join us at www.pgfirst.com
Nehemiah, Doing a Great Work, 3:1-32
Prior to coming here, we lived in the Kansas City area for twenty years. One of the tragic and defining moments in the city’s history is the Hyatt Regency collapse, which remains the deadliest non-deliberate structural failure in American history. The hotel’s lobby had a unique design. It had 120-foot walkways that connected the north and south wings of the upper floors. On July 17, 1981, the fourth story walkway collapsed onto the second story walkway. Loaded with partygoers, the concrete and glass platforms crashed down, falling onto a tea dance in the lobby, killing 114 and injuring 216 people.
The ensuing investigation found the engineers who had approved the final drawings to be culpable of gross negligence, misconduct, and unprofessional conduct. Investigators concluded that the underlying problem was a lack of proper communication between the engineers and the steel manufacturer. Havens steel suggested a revised design where the fourth-floor beams supported both the fourth and second-floor walkways. The engineer accepted the revision via phone call without performing necessary calculations or viewing sketches that would have revealed its serious intrinsic flaws—that it doubled the load on the fourth-floor beams. The analysis concluded that it would have failed under one-third of the weight it held that night.
You don’t have to be an engineer to understand the challenges of trying to build something. Whether you’re building a Lego kit, a piece of furniture, a house, or an elaborate hotel, any number of things can go wrong which can lead to varying measures of disaster. Every project requires some kind of a plan, and elaborate projects require detailed plans that many people have to follow. A successful building project requires that all parties collaborate together, finish their respective tasks, and remain unified in the collective vision.
This is also true in God’s Kingdom. God’s Kingdom is filled with people who have been brought together for a united task. Yes, there is an individual aspect of Christianity, but there is also a corporate aspect, and in this present age, God gathers His people together in the local church to accomplish His purposes. We have been brought together for a common purpose, to make and mature disciples of Jesus by the power of the gospel for the glory of God. To accomplish this monumental task, we need to have a plan, we need to work together, and everyone needs to do their part.
Nehemiah chapter 3 gives us an illustration of what it looks like for the people of God to work together to accomplish a united goal. At first glance, this looks like a boring list of people with strange names who completed random tasks. It’s easy to wonder why this is even in the Bible. Upon closer examination, we see the outworking of skillful leadership, as Nehemiah was able to mobilize ordinary people from different walks of life to accomplish a monumental task in a short period of time. We also see the people of God working together in harmony, humbling themselves, and putting the greater good before their own interests. Here we see these elements illustrated.
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To accomplish our great
work, we need common purpose, collective effort, and Christ-like leadership.
At this point, God’s people had been back in Jerusalem for almost 90 years, and the city largely remained unrepaired. The Jews were able to rebuild their houses and the temple, but the city remained unprotected because the wall hadn’t been rebuilt. Their previous attempt to rebuild the city was halted by the decree of Artaxerxes, but now the good hand of God was upon Nehemiah (2:8;18), and the time was “now” for Jerusalem to be rebuilt.
This chapter records the division of labor, and starting at the rebuilding of the Sheep Gate, Nehemiah describes the work in a counterclockwise fashion. Depending on how we count, forty or forty-one sections of the wall were rebuilt. It was a remarkable project that could only be accomplished by everyone working towards a common goal.
To accomplish our great work, we need to embrace our common purpose. Nehemiah skillfully convinced the Jews to rebuild the wall. He appealed to reality, awakening them to the deplorable conditions they had been living in. He also appealed to their honor, that they were a reproach among the nations. After explaining God’s hand in the matter and the king’s provisions, the people responded with enthusiasm and said, “Let us rise up and build.” (2:17-18) He united the people around a common purpose: to rebuild the wall of Jerusalem for the sake of God’s name and the good of His people.
Without Nehemiah’s clear God-given directive, the people couldn’t have been united in their purpose. And whenever God’s people lack a common goal, competing visions will arise. Some may have determined that other building projects were more important, or perhaps they had personal projects they needed help with. Nehemiah’s directive was unmistakable, and God’s people were rallied around a common goal.
As a church, we don’t need to sit around and try and figure out why we exist. Nor do we need to reinvent our purpose every five years. Our God-given directive has been laid out by Christ Himself. Our task is to fulfill the Great Commission by proclaiming the gospel to all people groups. And when we do so, as God wills, disciples will be made. But then the work is just beginning, because we must carry disciples on to maturity by teaching them to obey everything that Christ commanded us (Mt. 28:18-20).
We exist to see men, women and children become the committed followers of Jesus Christ. We don’t exist to promote our own agendas, to have the biggest church around, or to make a name for ourselves. No! We exist to glorify God by making and maturing disciples by the power of the gospel for the glory of God (Ph. 1:27). Christopher Wright writes in The Mission of God, “It is not so much the case that God has a mission for His church in the world, as that God has a church for His mission in the world. Mission was not made for the church; the church was made for mission-God’s mission.” Like God’s people building who were united in building the wall, we need to rally around our common purpose of fulfilling the Great Commission.
So it starts with a common purpose. This leads to the second element. To accomplish our great work, we need the collective effort of the people of God. This list is remarkable because everyone seems to be operating outside of their primary strengths. There’s not a
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single carpenter or stonemason in the group. Many of the people probably weren’t used to manual labor. Leading the way was the high priest and the priests, who because they saw the work as holy to the Lord, condescended themselves so that they could rebuild the Sheep Gate and the adjoining wall (3:1). The rest of the group included several rulers (15-16), goldsmiths, merchants, a perfumer (8, 32), the Levites (17), the temple servants (26), and even a guy with his daughters (12). Some rebuilt in high profile areas (15-16), and others in some not so glamorous areas (14). Nobody was begging off because of a lack of experience or because the work was ignoble.
Additionally, some people worked where they had a vested interest and others sacrificially gave of themselves for the greater good. Some repaired sections of the wall in front of their own houses (28-30), or in their own district (17). And even those from surrounding villages did their part (2,5,7,13,27). They sacrificed themselves for the greater good of God’s glory and the welfare of His people.
And so it must be within the local church. The work of the local church can only be accomplished by the collective effort of the people of God. We need all hands-on deck. We need people operating within their spiritual gifts and talents, but we also need all people to get involved and serve, even if it means operating outside of your strengths and comfort zone. We need all hands-on deck because our task is monumental and because the care of the body is entrusted to the body. The Bible never lays the responsibility of member care on a select few or the staff. Instead, it’s every-member ministry (1 Cor. 12:24b-27).
We exist to serve God and serve one another. We never graduate from being servants (or better, slaves) of Christ (Jn. 13:12-17). And, we are the body of Christ. Bitlinger says, “In order to accomplish His work on earth, Jesus needed a body of flesh and blood. In order to accomplish His work today, Jesus has a body of living human beings.” To accomplish our great work, we need the collective effort of the people of God.
The final element we see is this. To accomplish our great work, we need Christ-like leadership. Nehemiah is a strong but humble leader. He is a man of deep conviction who had a heart for God and a burden for the people of God. He was deeply committed to prayer but also knew he needed a wise plan. He was careful in how he addressed people and skilled in motivating them to action. He was comfortable exalting God and allowing others to receive the credit. Nehemiah was a Christ-like servant leader, and without his leadership, the project would have either fizzled, or it would have been an unmitigated disaster. But under his leadership, the work is characterized by order, humility, hard work, and selflessness.
The people of God need to be led by Christ-like leaders. In the Christian home, the husband is called to be the Christ-like servant leader of his wife. Husband, you are responsible for leading your wife into Christlikeness (Eph. 5:25-28). And without diminishing the importance of mothers, the biblical writers lay the responsibility of spiritual leadership in the home on the father’s feet (Eph. 6:4). Fathers, the reality is, your children
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will largely follow you spiritually. These are daunting tasks, which is why, like Nehemiah we must be Spirit-filled men who walk with Christ daily, who are devoted to prayer and Christlike servanthood.
We also need Christ-like leaders in the church. Yes, the church is the body of Christ, but even a body requires organization for it to function. The church is also a family, but every family needs a leader. And God has ordained that the local church be led by elders, a plurality of godly, biblically qualified men who lead, feed, protect, and oversee the local church (1 Pet. 5:1-3). Additionally, our church requires many ministry leaders, people who serve under the elders and carry out the work of the church.
Because people become like their leaders, it’s imperative that we lead with Christ-like humility. Christ-like leaders don’t promote themselves, but humbly serve others for the greater good of the Kingdom of God. J. Oswald Sanders writes in Spiritual Leadership. "True Greatness, true leadership, is achieved not by reducing men to one’s service but in giving oneself in selfless service to them. And that is never done without cost." Let us be leaders who are strong and humble, who have a heart for God and a burden for the people of God.
To accomplish our great work, we need common purpose, collective effort, and Christ-
like leadership.
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