Grace Thoughts

Tim Kelley: I'm going to start in Nehemiah chapter 4. Alan Redpath, whose old commentaries I love to use, has one quote after another. Speaking of Nehemiah on this passage, he said this: "It is only the man with a crushing sense of burden and responsibility whom God can trust with his work. If you don't have a heart that is burdened with an overwhelming sense of conviction, you'll never be fruitful in the service of the Lord."

I thought it was a great quote on chapter 4, and I want to look tonight into what I will call an essential burden for every Christian to have. We'll find what that is in a moment. If we are to bear burdens in life, and we all will—some ministry burdens, some family burdens, personal burdens—then we have to have another type of burden, a compelling burden in our life.

Up to this point, Nehemiah saw that the walls in Jerusalem were broken down. He went to the Persian emperor, and he gave him permission to come rebuild the wall. So he comes in and joins forces with Ezra. This is about 100 years after the Babylonian captivity, 100 years after they got out of captivity. These walls have been broken down for about 170 years or so, burned at that.

His job is to come rebuild them. He was a butler in a sense. He was a porter; he was a food taster. He would taste the food to make sure it wasn't poisoned. He had a cushy job. Unless the food was poisoned, it was cushy. He lived in the palace, hung out with the king, and ate the king's food. He had this compelling burden when he heard that the walls were broken down. In Nehemiah 1, he wept and fasted for days on end. The king saw how burdened he was for the walls to be rebuilt.

It was against the law to be sad in the presence of the king. I wish I could make that law. I'd put a little sign on my door: "Leave the sadness here; smile." We make my daughter, Sadie, do that. When she's got an attitude, she’s not moving until she smiles. She'll purse her lips and squeeze a smile out because we're not going to let her go away with a bad attitude. We make sure the attitude is right.

The king asked him what was wrong, and he had the courage to tell the king truthfully. He could have been killed for bringing sadness into the presence of the king. The king heard the burden on his heart, and the queen said, "Look, we're going to send you back here for this amount of time. We're going to fund your way, give you timbers, and protect you to help you get this work done." The Lord had preempted the king's heart to do that.

Now they're back here. Nehemiah shows up with his work crew. He goes into the surrounding hillside where a lot of Jews still lived and had come back with the first returns. They built the temple, but they hadn't built the walls up yet. So there were a lot of Jews that lived in the community, and a lot came back with them to get Jerusalem back functioning as a city. It wouldn't function as a city without walls.

As soon as he shows up to build walls, that was a warning sign to all the local governments. They were like, "Oh no, the Jews are coming back. They don't bother us now because they have no protection. They just live in the countryside and don't really work together; they don't really have a functioning government or city here, so they're no real threat to us. But if they build walls, they'll be a threat. They can militarize, have their own government, and protect themselves. Don't let them build the walls." That's where you have Sanballat, Tobiah, and Geshem.

Nehemiah 4:1 says, "When Sanballat heard they were building the wall, he was angered and greatly enraged, and he jeered at the Jews. And he said in the presence of his brothers and of the army of Samaria, 'What are these feeble Jews doing? Will they restore it for themselves? Will they sacrifice? Will they finish it up in a day? Will they revive the stones out of the heaps of rubbish, and burned ones at that?'" The burning would always weaken the stone, and they were dealing with rubbish that had been lying there for 170 years.

Tobiah the Ammonite was beside him and said, "Yes, what are they building? If a fox goes up on it, he'll break down their stone wall." They were mocking them. Nehemiah prayed, "Hear, O our God, for we are despised. Turn back their taunt on their own heads, and give them up to be plundered in a land where they are captives. Do not cover their guilt, and let not their sin be blotted out from your sight, for they have provoked you to anger in the presence of the builders." So we built the wall, and the wall was joined together to half its height, for the people had a mind to work.

When Sanballat and Tobiah and the Arabs and the Ammonites and the Ashdodites heard that the repairing of the walls of Jerusalem was going forward and that the breaches were beginning to be closed, they were very angry. And they all plotted together to come and fight against Jerusalem and to cause confusion in it. And we prayed to our God and set a guard as a protection against them day and night.

In Judah, it was said that the strength of those who bear the burdens is failing. There was too much rubble. By ourselves, we will not be able to rebuild the wall. And our enemies said, "They will not know or see till we come upon them and kill them and stop the work." At that time, the Jews who lived near them came from all directions and said to us ten times, "You must return to us." In other words, "Hey guys, stop this. You're going to get in a lot of trouble; they're going to come and kill you." Ten times they came.

In the lowest parts of the space behind the wall, in the open places, I stationed the people by their clans with their swords, their spears, and their bows. And I looked and arose and said to the nobles and to the officials and to the rest of the people, "Do not be afraid of them. Remember the Lord, who is great and awesome, and fight for your brothers, your sons, your daughters, your wives, and your homes." When our enemies heard that it was known to us that God had frustrated their plan, we all returned to the wall, each to his own work.

The people building the wall were burdened. The work was hard, and they were trying to restore old rubbish. They weren't buying new blocks; they were using the old blocks that were burned by the Babylonians 170 years before. Many of them had come from Persia to do this work, but many of the workers were local. For them to come build the wall, they had to leave their own crops, their sheep, and their cattle. They were leaving their own homes to come work in this daunting job.

You can see the tension that was there. They had their own stuff to do, but they still had this wall, which they were for, but how much was it going to cost them? The local enemies were threatening them, and some of their own people came ten times and said, "What are you guys doing?" The workers were getting tired, the local enemies were threatening to invade, and the local Jews were trying to talk them out of it. They said, "Why ruffle the feathers? We're getting along just fine without this wall. Nothing's really rattling our cage; we can raise our sheep and our families, and no one's bothering us. We're creating all this tension in the community because we want to rebuild our walls and resurrect Jerusalem. Why are you doing that?"

They did it because it was a work of God. Their strength was failing, it was hard to stay motivated, and they felt alone and overworked. I remember this back in the early 90s. At one of our churches, we needed a new roof. One of the people in the church suggested we get a big pot of chili and breakfast food, and we'd all show up for a work day to put a new roof on. It worked; we had 25 guys show up.

We all jumped on the roof with our shovels and started scraping the old shingles off. It turned out that the people who put the roof on previously used the wrong type of roofing nails. Instead of the little nails you can pop out with a shovel, they were long, so the roof was coming out in two-inch sections instead of whole sheets. But we got the whole roof off, and by noon, the roof was stripped down and we were ready to start putting shingles on. We had a bowl of chili, and then everyone said, "Well, I'm done for the day," and they left.

By 1:00 that day, there was one person left on the roof: me. My wife doesn't even let me use hammers, never mind putting a roof on. I remember I was on the verge of crying. I was a grown man, and I saw these clouds out there and heard the thunder. I was standing on the whole roof of the church, I had to preach tomorrow, and I was all alone. I was absolutely overwhelmed with the thought. There wasn't one shingle on; it was just bare wood. I was overwhelmed and overburdened.

If we're conscious of the needs—sometimes ministry needs, family needs, business needs—these burdens can crush us. I had to learn early as a young pastor that there's a very important word in ministry: "no." We're not taught that; we're always taught "yes." You ought to, you better, you should. Yes, do it. Then you get overwhelmed and burdened.

There's a bigger principle here. Jesus doesn't need us to be mission-centric; he needs us to be Christ-centric. If we're Christ-centric, the mission gets done. If we focus on Christ and draw near to Christ—if me as a Christian, as a pastor, as a leader, just draws near to Christ. If I'm burdened in my family, I draw near to Christ. If I'm burdened in my finances, I draw near to Christ. Sometimes these burdens aren't meant for us to work harder; these burdens are meant to push us and draw us closer to Jesus Christ. That's when the burden becomes easy and light.

I read a lot of books about the condition of the American church and how it's failing here and there and some of the burdens facing the church. In this day, I believe there's a creeping error coming into church-ianity because we're becoming mission-centric. The church ought to be doing this and that, and I would say, "Amen, amen, amen." However, is the church drawing near to Christ? Christ is more concerned with knowing us intimately and personally and us growing in our faith than he is with anything we can produce for him. As we draw near to Christ, sit in his presence, and let these spiritual disciplines take over our life, we bear fruit. Jesus Christ is the engine that drives ministry.