Ripples and Dominoes [Nehemiah 6-8]

Today I want to start by telling you the story of Wangari Maathai. Wangari is from Kenya, and she might be one of the most impressive people I’ve read about in a long time. She was a very influential and important person in Kenya back in the 70’s and 80’s. She had a big pile of degrees from all sorts of international schools - Nairobi, Germany, she got her PhD in 1971. Later she ended up  getting elected to Kenya’s National Assembly, was the leader of the National Council of Kenya Women. She was a very impressive human being. In 2004 she was the first black African woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize, and she won that peace prize - for planting trees.

This is absolutely true, Wangari Maathai in the early 70’s was working for the National Council of Kenya Women, and she kept running into the same complaint from rural women: the streams were drying up, firewood is farther away every year, soil is eroding. The environment is crumbling, but the first sign of trouble was exhaustion - women who were walking longer and longer distances just to feed their families. So she had this brilliant, but simple idea - what if we plant trees! A row of trees along the riverbed, would protect the soil, keep it from eroding, it could change the lives of the people who live there. She sought advice from professional foresters and they laughed at her. They told her she needed a diploma to plant a tree - she said forget that. In 1975 she brought seedlings to the annual agricultural show in Nairobi. People started asking questions. Two years later she founded something called the Green Belt Movement - and it was so simple: women were organized to plant lines of trees called “greenbelts”. And it started small, but then it grew and grew. Keeping the environment from eroding changed lives, so they started offering classes, teaching people about nutrition, family planning, helping people build their life from the ground up, literally. Maathai described the ripple effect she saw happening. Women who started planting trees influenced their neighbors. And then the neighbors got involved, and then their neighbors - until it got so popular that the governments started reacting. Leaders trained through the movement launched tree-planting initiatives in Tanzania, Uganda, Malawi, Lesotho, Ethiopia, and Zimbabe. She was elected into the government, Kenya’s National Assembly in 2002, appointed ministry of environment, natural resources and wildlife in 2003 and won the nobel peace prize in 2004. NOT because she was some brilliant innovative mind - but because she did a simple thing, where it was needed the most. 30 million trees have been planted in Africa by a movement she started with a handful of seedlings. 

I think a lot of us, when we think of our purpose, we want something we can point to and say “see?!? I did a big thing. That mattered.” But the truth is most of life does not feel like that. Most of life is ordinary. It’s the woman who attends this church primarily online, but shows up to clean this building when it’s dark and empty. It’s the teacher preparing her classroom for the new batch of kiddos about to show up for the year. It’s the couple who spent their morning quietly praying for their teenager to encounter God in this place today. It’s the guy who grabs a ladder to change a burnt out light bulb, the kid ministry teacher who spent time reading over the lessons for Center kids, or the student ministry volunteer who has learned too much about caffeine and tiktok trends because of those students. You show up. You encourage one person. You invite one person. You pray for one person. You serve when nobody notices. You plant ONE tree. 

Today we’re finishing up our series called All Hands On Deck. If you’re joining us for the first time - WELCOME, I’m so glad you’re here. I’ll catch you up a little bit. We have been studying Nehemiah - the man who organized the rebuilding of Jerusalem. If you want to open your bibles we’re going to be in Nehemiah. And while you’re looking that up - I’ll recap a little bit. Actually, last week my friend Amanda came and preached and did such a great job - but I noticed when people were getting out their bibles, there was a couple people flipping through the book, and going too far and having to go back. Nehemiah can be sort of tricky to find, but I think you’re going to want to follow along today. Anyways, long story short - Jerusalem had been destroyed, and there was this guy Nehemiah who had a dream of rebuilding the city of his ancestors. So he begged the king of Persia for help, and the king of Persia said, “sure thing - go, rebuild your home.” So Nehemiah comes back to Jerusalem, and we’ve been following this construction project the last couple weeks - where he rebuilds miles of wall around Jerusalem with over 40 work crews helping out, and they do it in only 52 days. And everyone had to chip in, everyone had to work together, and they faced all kinds of obstacles from mockery to threats of violence. Literally it describes these builders working with a hammer in one hand and a sword in another hand. But they got it done. The wall is complete in Nehemiah chapter 6. Verse 15 says, [read v.15-16]. A Jerusalem with no walls was a weak neighbor, easy to control, easy to threaten. And so all the surrounding nations were actively trying to STOP the rebuilding. They knew - if this wall goes up, Jerusalem will get stronger, it will be safer, it will be harder to control them. And so they were throwing all kinds of obstacles at Nehemiah, but the work still got done. And the most important line is that last sentence: they realized this work had been done with the help of our God. 

All throughout this series we have been making parallels between Nehemiah rebuilding a wall and serving in the church. We look at Nehemiah and how he needed ALL hands on deck, and then we look at the church and our own personal lives and realize that we need all hands on deck here and now too. We look at the obstacles Nehemiah faced, and then we look at the obstacles in our lives today. But the most important feature of all of this is that the work had been done with the help of our God. In your life - if you are holding back because you feel like you can’t do it. I can’t pray for my co-worker, I don’t have the right words. I can’t get in front of people and play an instrument - I have stage fright. I can’t parent my kids the right way - I’m too much of a screw up in my own life. I can’t try to help someone read the bible - I have so much I don’t even know. If you’re out here today spinning your wheels because you think your efforts are not good enough - remember the work has been done with the help of our God. Have you ever had one of those weeks where you feel like you can’t get anything right? You just keep making dumb mistakes and it’s embarrassing or maybe even shameful and you just feel so worthless? I had one of those weeks last week. I had a day last week where I had three meetings in a row - and at every meeting I messed something significant up. I forgot a thing, or a failed at a thing or I got it wrong - and I did it all in a row. Days like that don’t come for me very often, but they do come. And I just get totally overwhelmed by my failure, and I start to think “God you got the wrong guy. I’m not good enough for this work you’ve given me.” And that day I ran to Jesus in my prayer. And I just poured out all my insufficiency in front of God. And God gave me this nudge - “I didn’t ask you to be good enough. I’m good enough.” And then I found this verse - this work had been done with the help of God. We are not out here doing this life alone. God didn’t ask us to be good enough. God asked us to lean on the one who is good enough. The work had been done with the help of God.

But then I have to show you what happens next - because this is so cool. Over in Chapter 7, I’ll be honest, it’s not the most exciting chapter - but there’s two nuggets. First, verse 4, [read v.4]. They finish the walls, but the city is empty. The houses have to be rebuilt - and so Nehemiah creates a registration and he starts taking notes on everyone who comes back. Verse 6 says, [read v.6]. The wall has been rebuilt, Jerusalem is safe now, and the people start coming home. And I’m not going to read this next part, because if you’ve got your bible open you can see it’s like 50 verses of super hard to pronounce names - listing all the people who return to the city. This is the ultimate “nature is healing” moment. And down in verse 66 we get the totals it says, [read v.66-69]. And what I want you to catch from chapter 7 is that the wall is not just about the wall. The wall is the rock that was tossed in the pond, but the effect ripples outward. The simple act of stacking bricks on top of one another led to people being able to return home. And what I want you to catch from that is that small things have big effects when God gets involved.. You might think hand 2 hand packing is not a big deal. You just threw an extra package of granola bars in your grocery kart, you just threw 10-12 items into a plastic bag, or you just hung it in a locker - none of those are big huge things. But what if, because there was food sent home on the weekend, one of those kids isn’t as hungry as usual - so they can focus a little better on their studies. So they get a better grade, so the teacher sees something in them, so they get a good recommendation to college, so they get a higher paying job and change the growth of their entire family tree - because you put granola bars in your grocery cart. Or working in the Nursery. Maybe you think playing cars with toddlers and picking up plastic food every week is not important work. But maybe a single mom comes into this church - and because you are there she feels safe to drop her kiddo off so she can focus in worship. And if she focuses in worship, maybe she will see the family of God worshipping together and want to know more, maybe she’ll hear the gospel for the very first time and give her life to Christ - all because you put goldfish crackers in a cup and gave it to a two year old while the kids danced to some Christian music. The little things we do have enormous ripples when God gets involved. 

Watch what happens next - chapter 6, we finish the wall, chapter 7, everyone comes home, and then chapter 8, you’re going to want to follow along with this. Verse 1, [read v.1-2]. So picture this for a second. They all gather with a unified purpose in the parking lot, er - I mean, the square. And the priest brings out the book of the law [hold up the bible] before the men and women and children old enough to understand. Verse 3, [read v.3-4a] Verse 5 [v.5-6a]. Do you see what I’m describing? This is church! If you’re following along with your finger, you’ll notice I’m skipping all the names - but with a big crowd, the priest Ezra has a bunch of helpers and then the kicker is in verse 8 [read v.8]. This is the very first sermon in worship ever recorded in the bible. They read the book, and explain it to the people. It finishes up verse 9, [read v.9-10]. Can you imagine this moment? After all those years away, they have gathered to worship God - and they’re weeping. I imagine they are tears of joy for something they never thought they would ever get to do again. To gather as the family of God, to lift up his name, to shout Amen, to hear from his word, to learn about him, grow closer to him.  And all the leaders are like, “no don’t cry - it’s a celebration, go eat and drink at a festive meal, we’ll turn the bouncy house on after the last song” Okay - they probably didn’t have bouncy houses. But do you see it? The walls are not about the walls. It’s about what you DO with the walls. The walls enabled people to return, the return of the people enabled the community to gather in worship. The gathering in worship enabled them to hear about God - to grow closer to him. And here’s the secret - rebuilding the walls was actually God’s method of ultimately bringing his people closer to him. God’s vision for this moment, God’s goal with all of this is not, “I just really love walls.” God’s ultimate purpose was to bring his people closer to his heart. Isn’t that just incredible? God is so good.

The good news that the word of God has for us today is that the work of God in our lives is exponential. The work of Jesus in our lives is exponential. It’s not addition, it’s not 1+1=2, it’s like a multiplier. He takes the seed, the stone in the pond, the first domino - and he amplifies it. He takes your small, simple obedience, and uses it to literally change the world. The work of God is exponential. Actually - here’s an easy way to remember this. I just learned this - horsepower is another example of multiplication. One horse - a single, powerful Belgian draft horse can pull roughly 8,000 pounds on its own. A single horse can pull four tons. Now if you’ve got two horses - you would think, double it - 16,000 pounds right? Two horses, so double the amount. Standard math says - two horses would pull twice as much. But in reality, they can pull up to 24,000 pounds. That’s three times what a single horse can do. AND, even more - if the horses work together, it’s even more. If you take two stranger horses - 24,000 pounds. But if you take two horses that were raised, trained, and conditioned together as a team - they learn to sync their strides, and together they can pull up to 32,000 pounds - that is four times as much from 1 horse to 2. The work of God in our lives is exponential. If you keep showing up, keep giving it your best, he will take those simple efforts and multiply them. One invitation. One prayer. One seedling at a time.

See here at Center Church, we are part of a network called the Zero Collective. And our mission, we heard from Pastor Brian, our mission is to see zero lives unchanged by Jesus. We want every single person to have their life changed by a relationship with Jesus. If you are here today, and don’t have a connection to Jesus - please come talk to me after, I would love to pray with you, pray for you. We do all the things we do with that one goal in mind - zero lives unchanged. And we work really hard at it! This church operates at a level way higher than the amount of people who come.  We’re a small rock with really big ripples, together we work really hard and do our absolute best day in and day out. But the truth is - that goal is TOO BIG for our efforts. If we want to see a revival in Byron Center and beyond - it’s going to take more than our human efforts. We need a multiplier. We need the work to be done with the help of God.

If you - I know some of you grew up in the church. When I grew up, Center Kids was called Sunday School, right? Anybody grow up with Sunday School? If you grew up in the church as a kid - do you remember the name of your Sunday school teacher? I remember we had different teachers for each grade - and I was thinking about it and I realized I can only remember my first grade teacher and my fifth grade teacher. I know, because I was a goody-two shoes pastor’s kid, I know I went to Sunday school every single year. I know there were amazing teachers in those rooms - but I don’t even remember their names! I don’t remember most of the lessons that were given to me in those classrooms - but what I remember is that my entire life I had adults who loved Jesus trying their best to share that love with me. I don’t remember the games or the crafts - I think my parents might have a Christmas ornament that I made in Sunday school on their Christmas tree - I don’t remember the small, steady faith of those volunteers - but I remember the WALL of adults who linked arms and said, “i’m willing to drop a stone in this pond, I’m willing to make some ripples that might change a life.” You might be sitting here this morning thinking your work in this church is insignificant. You might think, “I have no idea if the kids even understand what I’m talking about - I’m probably the worst elementary or nursery worker this church has.” Or if you’re a small group leader, “I just have no idea if people even like coming to my group” - but can I tell you? We haven’t put out life group sign ups yet - they’re coming out next week, but I’m already getting messages. People are eager to connect, they are eager for what you contribute to this church. Fully 1 in 5 adults in this church are investing in the next generation. I’m not making that number up. Last week we had 104 people worship in that building. And I went back and looked it up - we have 20 adults serving in Kid’s MInistry, and that’s not counting all the teenagers, our junior volunteers. The kids will not remember your mix ups and your mistakes - they will remember the wall of adults that taught them about the love of Jesus Christ.

I want to close today with the story of Andrew. Andrew was one of the disciples of Jesus. But he’s not a famous disciple. He doesn’t have any big moments, or quotable quotes. There’s no “gospel according to Andrew” - we barely remember that dude is a disciple at all. But at one point, in John chapter 1, he hears John the Baptist talk about Jesus. And Jesus walks by, and John’s like, “that’s the guy.” And so Andrew starts following Jesus around. And Jesus, literally, in verse 38, he sees that they’re just following him around and he’s like, “what do you want?” And Andrew says, “Teacher, where are you staying?” And Jesus looks at him and says, “come and see” - and they hung out with Jesus that whole day. And then Andrew does something that changes the world. He goes home and tells his brother about Jesus. His brother Simon, who later became known as… Peter. Peter, also known as the rock Jesus built his church on. He wrote books of the bible, he led the church in Jerusalem, he basically became the very first pope of the original church. But none of that would have happened without Andrew. 

You see, the things we do in life are like these dominoes. It’s a simple thing - one domino knocking over another. Planting trees leading to nobel peace prize winning “greenbelts” across Africa [have two dominos knock each other over]. Building a wall leading to people coming home, leading to worship being possible again. [knock three dominoes over]. Praying for 1 person, with the exponential help of God - leading to zero lives unchanged. [knock over four dominoes that get bigger and bigger]. Maybe you’re here this morning, and your the domino that won’t fall over. You have a friend or loved one who has been praying for you, inviting you, pestering you - they’re domino is bumping up against you and you’re just not sure what God can do with your life. If that’s you this morning, I want to invite you, challenge you, dare you, beg you to find out what God can do with your one, wild and forgiven life. You were made for more. Or maybe you are here today and you’re feeling like one useless domino, falling over by yourself. But if you take your domino and combine it with the efforts of all the people here - all hands on deck - there is no obstacle that we can’t overcome. And so in just a moment, we are going to give space for you to put your domino in place. I’m going to set these pieces up, and we’re just going to make a train of dominos as far out as we can during this last song. And then maybe one of the kids can help us knock it over at the end. Hopefully you grabbed one off the table on your way in, but if not - we’ve got some in the basket here. But before you bring your domino up, I want you to pray. I the silence, and during this last song I want you to think about one person in your life who doesn’t know Jesus that you could invite, that you could pray for, that you could share God’s love with. Who is the Peter that you could be Andrew to? You’ll find bracelets on the tables during lunch, they say “Zero starts with One” - we’ve used them before, but I found a bunch of them, and I just think that truth is so important, so feel free to take one of those with you. Zero starts with one. One brick in the wall. One seedling tree. One domino in the line. One prayer for one person who need to know Jesus. Let’s pray.