Today is an anniversary. Five years ago today, I began to serve as the pastor of this church.
Isaiah 58:12 says, “Your people will rebuild the ancient ruins, and will raise up the age-old foundations; you will be called Repairer of Broken Walls, Restorer of Streets with Dwellings.”
I believe this verse applies to us today. We are called by God to be rebuilders of the ancient ruins. This year, our church is celebrating 155 years in this building. But the history of this congregation is much older, going back to 1639. There have been times over the past four hundred years when this congregation has waxed, and times when it has waned. Right now, we are on an upswing, and I believe the Lord has called us to spiritually rebuild his work here in Yarmouth Port.
Haggai 2 also has some interesting verses that, I believe, apply to us today…
“Who of you is left who saw this house in its former glory? How does it look to you now? Does it not seem to you like nothing? But now be strong, O Zerubbabel,” declares the Lord. “Be strong, O Joshua, son of Jehozadak, the high priest. Be strong, all you people of the land,” declares the Lord, “and work. For I am with you,” declares the Lord Almighty.
“The silver is mine and the gold is mine,” declares the Lord Almighty. “The glory of this present house will be greater than the glory of the former house,” says the Lord Almighty. “And in this place, I will grant peace,” declares the Lord Almighty.
These verses refer to the rebuilding of the Temple in Jerusalem after the time of the Jewish exile to Babylon. But I believe these verses also apply to us today.
There are many people here today who remember the former glory of this church. Some of you remember a time when there were so many people in this church that you needed two services. There was a time when there were many more children here than there are today. But let us not forget where we were five years ago. I came to this church five years ago in the middle of the pandemic. We had 57 people at the first service I preached here. Now we are averaging around 100 people each Sunday. Half of the people here today weren’t here five years ago. The Lord is doing a great work in our midst.
And I believe the Lord would say to us, as we begin another year together, “Be strong and work, for I am with you!” I believe the Lord would say to us that the glory of this present house will be greater than the glory of the former house. I believe that the best is yet to be for The First Congregational Church of Yarmouth! I believe that the Lord will enable us to reach many more people for Christ in this place. And he will give us the resources to do it. He says that all the silver and all the gold are his.
So, I would suggest to you today, that we are in a spiritual rebuilding phase. This church is not what it once was. But also, praise God, this church is not what it will one day be. We have not achieved all that the Lord would have for us.
For the rest of our time together, I invite you to meditate with me on another verse of Scripture that is all about rebuilding. It is Nehemiah 6:3. The context of this verse is that Nehemiah, who was cupbearer to King Artaxerxes of the Medo-Persian Empire, has obtained permission from that king to come and rebuild the wall of Jerusalem. As you may remember, the Jewish people had been removed by God from their homeland because of their disobedience. The temple in Jerusalem and the wall around the city were both destroyed by the Babylonians. The Jews lived as captives in Babylon for 70 years. Then in the year 538 BC, following the decree of Cyrus, King of Persia, the exiles began to return to Judah under the leadership of Zerubbabel. The Temple was rebuilt and consecrated by official permission of King Darius I in 520 BC. Ezra the scribe won the approval of Artaxerxes I to return with additional exiles in 458 BC. He was followed by Nehemiah in 445 BC.
The immediate context of Nehemiah 6:3 is that Nehemiah has organized a group of Jews to work on rebuilding the wall around Jerusalem. But they have not completed the work. The wall is finished but the gates are not yet in place. Furthermore, Nehemiah and his work have been opposed by at least three powerful men: Sanballat, governor of Samaria to the north of Jerusalem, Tobiah, governor of Transjordan to the east of Jerusalem, and Gesham, who may have led a north Arabian confederacy that controlled vast areas from northeast Egypt to northern Arabia and southern Palestine. The first two men are threatened by Nehemiah’s rebuilding of the wall in Jerusalem because they are afraid that Nehemiah will build up a more powerful nation and come to take them over. Gesham may be afraid that Nehemiah’s efforts may somehow interfere with his lucrative spice trade. These men have tried to derail Nehemiah on several occasions, but with no success.
Now, Sanballat and Geshem take a different approach. They send a message to Nehemiah accusing him of revolt against Artaxerxes and so they invite Nehemiah to come and confer with them before the report of the alleged revolt gets back to the king. Nehemiah correctly surmises that these men are merely scheming to harm him and to frighten his fellow Jews so that the work on the wall will remain incomplete. And so, Nehemiah sends the following response, not once, but four times, to his opposition…
I am carrying on a great project and cannot go down. Why should the work stop while I leave it and go down to you? (Nehemiah 6:3)
I believe that this verse summarizes the spirit we need to have as a church as we enter our sixth year of labor together in the Lord. We are carrying on a great project and cannot go down!
What is the great project God has called us to work on together?
Nehemiah was called, not only to rebuild a wall, but also a nation. I believe God has called us to rebuild his church by his grace and to rebuild people’s lives! But ultimately, it is the Lord who builds his church and it is he who rebuilds people’s lives. God simply calls us to be co-laborers with him. Jesus said to Peter, “You are Peter, and on this rock, I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it.” (Matthew 16:18)
Now, to be the Lord’s co-laborers in rebuilding his church we must have a vision. Proverbs 29:18 says, “Where there is no vision, the people perish.”
Nehemiah was a man of vision. When he heard of the plight of God’s people, when he heard of the sad condition of the returned exiles who had no wall of protection, God put it into Nehemiah’s heart to rebuild.
As clear as any time that God has spoken to me in my life, he spoke to me five years ago and called me to this place. He put it into my heart that we should arise and rebuild this church by his power and grace. And one of the first things we did together in that process was to write a new vision statement for the church based upon Acts 2:42-47. It goes like this…
Shining
Christ’s
Light
through
Teaching,
Fellowship,
Worship
Service &
Outreach
to our
community
and world.
The value of having a written vision statement is that when the going gets tough it helps you to keep the main thing the main thing. Having a vision means that you do not lose focus on the one thing God wants you to do when many things clamor for your attention and energy. As a church we need to keep the main thing the main thing as we enter our sixth year of labor together. And that main thing is shining Christ’s light, communicating Christ to our community.
In Colossians 1:28, Paul says, “We proclaim him [that is Christ], admonishing and teaching everyone with all wisdom, so that we present everyone perfect in Christ.”
C. S. Lewis once wrote, “… the church exists for nothing else but to draw men into Christ, to make them little Christs. If they are not doing that, all the cathedrals, clergy, missions, sermons, even the Bible itself, are simply a waste of time. God became man for no other purpose.”
So how are we to carry on this great project? I believe Nehemiah gives us several clues. First, we need to carry on this project with prayer. Nehemiah is a prayer-filled book. When Nehemiah first heard of the trouble of the returned exiles, he sat down, he wept, he fasted, and he prayed before the God of heaven. Nehemiah prayed even as he spoke to King Artaxerxes, asking him for permission to return to Jerusalem and rebuild the wall. When Nehemiah faced opposition, he prayed.
We need to pray more, and depend upon God more, if we are going to accomplish all that he would have us do. I believe we should attempt something so great for God that it is bound to fail unless he is in it. And if we are going to do that, then we need to pray.
In 1955 there were only 4,000 churches in South Korea and only one million Christians. Today, there are 51 million people in South Korea and a third of those are Christians. Prayer has played an essential part in the growth of Christian faith in South Korea. Pastor Billy Kim says, “Prayer is the premise to revival… Prayer does not need proof—it needs practice.”
A second thing we learn from Nehemiah is that we need to carry on God’s project with attention to the blueprint. The book of Nehemiah is linked to the book of Ezra. In fact, originally, they were one book. Now, Ezra was a scribe who taught the returned exiles the Scriptures. And in Nehemiah 8:2-3 we read…
So, on the first day of the seventh month Ezra the priest brought the Law before the assembly, which was made up of men and women and all who were able to understand. He read it aloud from daybreak till noon as he faced the square before the Water Gate in the presence of the men, women and others who could understand. And all the people listened attentively to the Book of the Law.
I believe Scripture gives us the blueprint for rebuilding God’s church and for rebuilding human lives. If we are wise, we will give our full attention to it.
A TV news camera was on assignment in south Florida after a hurricane. Amid the devastation and debris stood one house on its foundation. The owner was cleaning up his yard when a reporter approached him.
“Sir, why is your house the only one still standing?” asked the reporter. “How did you manage to escape the severe damage of the hurricane?”
The man replied, “I built this house myself. I also built it according to the Florida state building code. When the code called for 2x6 roof trusses, I used 2x6 roof trusses. I was told that a house built according to code could withstand a hurricane. I did and it did. I suppose no one else around here followed the code.”
When the sun is shining and the skies are blue, building our lives on something other than the guidelines of Scripture can be tempting. But there’s only one way to be spiritually ready for a storm.[1]
A third thing Nehemiah teaches us to do is to carry on God’s project with worship. In Nehemiah 8:6 we read…
Ezra praised the Lord, the great God; and all the people lifted their hands and responded, “Amen! Amen!” Then they bowed down and worshiped the Lord with their faces to the ground.
I wonder, when was the last time we worshipped with that kind of enthusiasm, that kind of reckless abandon? Do we have a sense, when entering this sanctuary, that we are coming before the face of God? Do we come as participants in worship, or just as spectators of a service?
In Bill Moyers’ book, A World of Ideas, Jacob Needleman remembers…
I was an observer at the launch of Apollo 17 in 1975. It was a night launch, and there were hundreds of cynical reporters all over the lawn, drinking beer, wisecracking, and waiting for this 35-story-high rocket.
The countdown came, and then the launch. The first thing you see is this extraordinary orange light, which is just at the limit of what you can bear to look at. Everything is illuminated with this light. Then comes this thing slowly rising up, in total silence, because it takes a few seconds for the sound to come across. You hear a “WHOOOOOSH! HHHHMMMM!” It enters right into you.
You can practically hear jaws dropping. The sense of wonder fills everyone in the whole place, as this thing goes up and up. The first stage ignites this beautiful blue flame. It becomes like a star, but you realize there are humans on it. And then there’s total silence.
People just get up quietly, helping each other. They’re kind. They open doors. They look at one another, speaking quietly and interestedly. These were suddenly moral people because the sense of wonder, the experience of wonder, had made them moral.[2]
I believe that when we have a sense of wonder toward God, gained through real worship, we too have our lives changed for the better.
This leads to a fourth thing that Nehemiah teaches that we need if we are going to carry on God’s project. We need care for each other. Nehemiah cared for people. When he found out that the nobles and officials were charging interest to their poor brothers and selling them into slavery, Nehemiah confronted the wealthy leaders of Jerusalem and told them it wasn’t right. He made them promise that they would stop what they were doing. He made them give back what they had taken from the poor. And Nehemiah personally fed 150 people daily at his own table. But unfortunately, the church today in is not always as caring as it should be.
When our children were young, we went on vacation to Maine and one day I took my oldest son to the local miniature golf course. James’ favorite hole had a miniature church building that you had to hit your ball through to get it into the hole. The structure was a beautiful replica of a typical New England church building, kind of like our church. However, every time James and I tried to hit our golf balls through the church, the church spit them out again. Finally, we discovered the right technique, not too hard or too soft. But afterwards, as I reflected on that mini golf church, I thought, “That mini golf church is just like many real churches in America today. Many churches just spit people right back out the front door as soon as they come in!” The church is often not the caring, welcoming place it ought to be. Oh, we accept people alright, so long as they come in just right, not too slow and not too fast. But otherwise, we spit them right out again.
I’m glad this church is not like that. We aren’t perfect. But we are friendly. Still, we need to always remember that truly caring for people is something we need to work at every day and every week. People do not care how much we know until they know how much we care!
A fifth thing we need to carry on God’s rebuilding project is celebration for what God is doing. Nehemiah 8:10 says, “The joy of the Lord is your strength.” Nehemiah encouraged the people of Jerusalem to rejoice in what the Lord was doing in and through them. He encouraged them to focus on what the Lord had helped them to accomplish rather than focus on the things they hadn’t accomplished yet. We can look at the glass as half empty or half full. It’s our choice. And so, I would encourage you to make the choice to rejoice every day. As my friend Tim Hansel used to say, “Until further notice, celebrate everything!”
Finally, we need to carry on God’s project without becoming distracted. Nehemiah’s enemies sought to distract him from rebuilding the wall of Jerusalem. They didn’t want him to finish the project. And we have an enemy who doesn’t want us to complete our project of leading men and women, boys and girls into a saving relationship with Jesus Christ. Nehemiah did not give in to the distractions presented to him. And neither should we.
Do you remember the Robin Hood movie with Kevin Costner? There’s one scene in the movie where Robin asks a young man, “Can you shoot arrows amid distractions?” Just before the boy releases the string, Robin pokes his ear with the feathers of an arrow. The boy’s shot flies high by several feet and misses its target. After the laughter dies down, Maid Marian asks Robin if he can shoot amid distractions. Robin raises his bow and takes aim. Just as he goes to release the arrow, Maid Marian leans in and flirtatiously blows into his face. Again, the arrow misses the target.
Distractions on the spiritual journey come in all shapes and sizes. Whether those distractions are pleasant or painful, the result is the same: we miss the mark.[3]
Can you shoot amid distractions? Can our church?
Yes, we can, with the help of the Holy Spirit!
Yes, we can, as God enables us by his grace to say: We are carrying on a great project and cannot go down!
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