You've Got A Section | Nehemiah 2-3]

Today we are continuing our series called “All Hands on Deck” - and we’re going to tell the story of a guy who rebuilt the walls of Jerusalem in only 52 days, but he did it with 41 different work crews, and all of them had the same mentality: the job gets done, when everyone owns a piece. 

So let’s dive in. If you want to grab your bible, we are going to be in Nehemiah, chapter 2 and 3, but we’ll start in chapter 2. And while you’re looking that up, I want to give you a bit of the background. Last week Pastor Brian got us started with this series, and he told the story of Nehemiah, the cupbearer with a dream. If you missed it, let me catch you up - this guy, he had a very cushy job working for the King of Persia. In the THRONE ROOM. He was a cup-bearer, just had to refill the guy’s drink. But in his heart, he had a burden. He had a dream, a hope, a purpose - he wanted to rebuild the city of Jerusalem. And last week we saw how Nehemiah turned that burden into action - he went to the king and said, “King, I’d like to leave my cushy job as a cup-bearer and go back to Jerusalem and rebuild the wall of the city.” And the crazy part is that the King sees Nehemiah’s passion, he sees his heart for this city of his ancestors and he says, “sure, go on back - I’ll even pay for the supplies.”

And that gets us up to Chapter 2, verse 11, where it says, [read v.11-15]. Just imagine this with me. First off, I think the names of these places are hilarious. Jackal’s Well, Dung Gate, The King’s Pool - and he’s picking his way through the dark. And each of those titles comes from the ancient city of his ancestors - like the “fountain gate” and the “valley gate’ - that’s what it was called back in the glory days of King David, and the epic golden era of King Solomon. And he’s standing there in the dark, probably winded, maybe a little sweaty - because Cup-bearer to the King is probably a pretty cushy gig, he’s not used to crawling over rubble in the dark. But I imagine, his donkey can’t even get through - they’re touring the city in the dark - I bet it was easier to dream. I bet it was easy to visualize things as they once were in the dark. You can’t really see the destruction, broken piles of rock all over, heaps of trash - in the darkness, I bet he could visualize soaring arches, a beautiful wall, thick, sturdy embattlements. A city, protected. By the moonlight in this strange place, he looks at the rubble and dreams of what it could be. Of what it SHOULD be.

It keeps going in verse 16, [read v.16-18]. Now that right there is a really key thing I want to show you. There’s two parts to making Nehemiah’s dream happen. The gracious hand of God and my conversation with the King. One the one hand, “the gracious hand” - that’s the hope, the dream that Nehemiah has to rebuild. Last week we called it “the burden” - and we see this in all of our lives. It’s the itch we have in our hearts to fix something God has shown us. The other side is the conversation with the King. If the “gracious hand of God” is the dream, the hope for a better tomorrow, then the “conversation with the King” is the practical reality that makes that dream happen. Nehemiah could not have done this without his conversation with the King. This is an old quote, but I love it - Frederick Buechner put it like this, “The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.” Let’s leave those words up there for a second. On the one hand - deep gladness, that’s the gracious hand of God Nehemiah is talking about. That is the thing God has put you on this earth to do. It’s when you look at the rubble of this world and dream of what it could be, what it should be. Deep gladness - your dream of a better world, a better life. On the other hand - the world’s DEEP HUNGER. For Nehemiah, it’s the conversation with the King - the practical reality of what’s in front of him that makes the dream possible. 

And so as Nehemiah walks into this encounter, I wonder what it is for you. What is your deep gladness? What thing do you believe you have been put here to do? For some of you, you have a heart for community - if you see someone alone, that’s a crisis for you. I’m going to go talk to that person, and connect them with that person. Creating connection is your deep gladness. For some of you, it’s your home. My deep gladness is to create a safe environment for my children and their friends to grow in safety and love. For others it might be success in business - you want to grow a business to help others, or bring joy to the community, provide a service or create jobs for others. One of my favorite deep gladnesses is for retired people - because every day they get to wake up and chase that gladness with freedom. They are here to serve their neighbor, volunteer for a mission, pour time and energy into their grandkids or nieces and nephews. So, what is it for you? What is your deep gladness - that thing you have been put on this earth to do? 

And then on the other hand, what is the deep hunger you see? What is the practical reality that you see right in front of you that needs to be addressed? Maybe you look around this church and you see a need for teachers in the elementary room for Center Kids, or maybe you’ve got a heart for those kids that we serve through Hand 2 Hand. Or you see that the donation box of diapers is empty again. Or maybe it’s not in the church - but you notice your neighbor’s car never seems to leave the driveway on a Sunday morning. Or the lady up the street whose husband passed away 6 months ago and she never seems to get any visitors. It’s not hard to find practical needs all around us if we open our eyes. What deep hunger do you feel like God is nudging you to step up and fill?

I remember, in my very first church, there were these two moms. I may have told this story before, but it’s one of my favorite stories to tell - because I’m so proud of them. In the UP, some of the small towns really struggle economically, and when there aren’t enough jobs - sometimes people turn to drugs. And in the town I served in there was a huge problem with meth, and I’m sure none of you have any experience with cooking meth, but part of it is that the fumes are incredibly poisonous. And one day there was a story on the news about a house in a nearby neighborhood that had a drug bust, and they found a meth kitchen in the basement, and those toxic fumes had spread throughout the entire house - and the heartbreaking part was that there were children living in that house. And the police condemned the entire house - including all the kid’s clothes. It was a huge deal, it was all over the news for a week straight up there. And there were two moms in my church who watched the same news story, and they saw a deep hunger in this broken world. They saw children who had lost all of their clothes. And they each had young kids, and they had a deep gladness to provide clothing for children. Buechner said, “The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.” So they came to me and said, “what can we do?” And so we organized something called the Care Closet - which is basically a free Salvation Army type clothing ministry. People donate clothes, these moms sorted everything by gender and size. We gave them a room in the church, put up some clothes racks and tables and such - and every Saturday, people could come and take as many free clothes as they needed. It grew from one bin of donated clothes that we stashed in a closet upstairs, to a ministry that took over a whole wing of the church. They did it for years, and one of my favorite parts was when people would ask “how much?” - they’ve have three brown bags full of clothes and a couple of sets of shoes and sort of wince while they asked, “how much?” and we got to look them in the eyes and say, “oh no, this is all free. God bless” 

Last week, Brian challenged us about what burdens us - what makes us weep like Nehemiah wept for Jerusalem, and maybe you knew right away what it was. But maybe you’ve never thought about it before. So take a moment - right now, think about it. What is your deep gladness? What is the world’s deep hunger that only you can see?

 It continues in chapter 3, verse 1 and it says, [read v.1]. So Nehemiah sneaks in at night and surveys the place - but now it’s the next day, and the work has begun. There’s a high priest who is rebuilding the Sheep gate. Let’s throw this graphic up on the screen - this is a map of the city, and you can see the different gates all around the city. And it’s funny, the gates are pretty simple. The sheep gate was where the priests would bring in the sheep for the ritual sacrifices in the temple.

The sheep gate was where the sheep came in, I’ll let you guess what went out the dung gate. Now I’m going to be honest with you - most people skip chapter 3. It is literally thirty verses listing a bunch of Hebrew names of guys who worked on the wall, and which section they worked on. Literally the phrase “next to him” comes up 30 times in one chapter. Billy bob worked on this section and next to him was Jimmy John - but their names are way harder to pronounce than billy bob and jimmy john. But here’s the thing -because people skip it, they miss something amazing. Verse 1 is a high priest working on the Sheep gate. Verse 2 is people from the town of Jericho, just regular town folk. And the next three verses is just average guys. In fact, as we skim down the list - we’ve got goldsmiths and perfume makers, district managers and levites, government workers and craftsmen, priests and common folk. And this is the second thing I want you to see - to build the kingdom of God, we need everyone. Nehemiah needed 41 different work crews of ALL shapes and sizes to get the wall done. In our Church, we need EVERYONE. The church doesn’t work when a few people do everything, it works when everyone does SOMETHING. Now, I will say this - most churches deal with something called the 80/20 rule. 20% of the people do 80% of the work. We have over 60% of our church actively serving in some area - that’s three times the normal average. I literally had someone tell me when they first started coming last year - I wasn’t so sure about coming to this church, I knew you’d notice us. I wanted to go to one of those big churches where we could sit in the back and blend in and just attend without doing anything. This is a church that serves way above average, and I’m so proud of you all for that - but I’m not going to lie, I’d still love to see that number go up. Nehemiah needed everyone to build that wall for his city, and if Center Church is going to be serious about our mission of Zero people unchanged by Jesus - we are going to need everyone. This was deeply embedded in the culture of this church before I ever got here - but one of my goals as pastor of this church is that I want to continue this tradition of Center Church being a church of servants, not spectators. Most of you know what Nehemiah knew - it doesn’t work when a few people do everything, the church comes alive when everyone does something. All hands on deck. Verse 8 says [read it]. I love that picture - a goldsmith working next to a manufacturer of perfumes. Neither of them is a brick layer. Their trade, their training is in delicate, fancy things - not working with mud and stone - but they saw the deep hunger of the world in front of them, and they knew that this project needed everyone, and so they stepped up.

I remember, the moms from the care closet - one of them, my friend Nicole. I remember I recruited her to serve in leadership. I told her, “I love what you’re doing with the care closet - I think you need to lead my finance team.” And she pushed back, “I’ve never even been on a church committee, I don’t know how to do that.” And I didn’t ask her to serve on the committee, I asked her to step in as the chair. And she was like, “ah, I’m not so sure.” But then I said, most of the work we do in church is not rocket science. Just like putting bricks on top of one another to build a wall is hard work, but it’s not complicated. And I told her, “I don’t want you on the team because of your brilliant financial mind, I want you on the team because I see your passion. I see your hunger to make a difference through this church. This mom of two wonderful little girls, who had never served on a church committee before and knew nothing about managing finances of a non-profit before we trained her - she led that church to pay off 115,000 dollars in debt, it was a mortgage on the roof. Under Nicole’s leadership, they became a debt free church, and they paid it off 10 years ahead of schedule, and I got burn that mortgage in service. One of my proudest moments as the pastor of that church - and I didn’t even do it. That was ALL Nicole.

Now I’m not going to read through the whole chapter 3 - trust me, nobody wants to hear me try butcher hebrew names for 32 straight verses, but I want to point out one more section. Verse 23 it says, [read v.23]. And I want you to catch that phrase, “across from his house” - it says it over and over. Verse 28 we see it again, [read it]. Here’s why this matters - in your life, right here and now, today. In Byron Center Michigan, 2026 - there is a section of the wall across from your home. These guys, they weren’t going to be able to fix the whole wall - but they could look out their front window and fix the section right across from their home. As we search for deep gladness and deep hunger in our lives - we don’t have to look very far. Sometimes we simply need to do the work that is in front of us. So let me ask you, what is “across from your home”? What neighbor is across the road that needs you to reach out and invite them to church? What co-worker is across from your cubicle that needs you your listening ear? What check lady is across the counter when you get the groceries? Is there a “deep hunger” that you can meet that right in front of you in your daily life? Can I just - can I just name two that we might be missing? I love all the things we do for kids in this church, I love that they are such a large chunk of who we are - but I think single people in this church can get overlooked. I think there’s a deep hunger, right in front of us - and I wonder if someone would have a deep gladness to reach those people. I have another one - I think there’s a loneliness epidemic in our world. It hits all of us, but especially the men of the church. I think as time and technology grows the most valuable thing the church can do is build community. We spend a lot of time on sermons and worship music - but the truth is, you can find better preachers than me on youtube. Better singers too. But there is a deep hunger in our church and in our town for connection, for community. That’s why I’m so thankful for events like the Center Kid’s gatherings that Jenn Rubick has been putting together, they went to Hager park last week. The men’s breakfast that meets every couple of months that Steve Allison puts on. The way Lynn and Ron Smith open their home and their pool for the youth group. The Lorenzen’s starting those game nights, and even Josh’s church fantasy football league. Those might sound like silly fellowship events - but I have this feeling that stuff like this is the cornerstone of some of the most important work we do. There’s a deep hunger for community, for family. Is that hunger across from YOUR home?

Nehemiah building this wall, it’s sort of an obscure story - but it shows us so much about what the church can be, and what living a life of purpose looks like. The job gets done when everyone owns a piece. Think about it this way - if God wanted to do something himself, he could come down and do literally everything in your life, better than you can. He can do it perfectly. He can love our neighbors better than us. He can love our kids and our spouses better and more perfectly and more efficiently and do it without making mistakes while doing. And yet God chooses, in all his wisdom, he chooses to work THROUGH you, mistakes and all. Really sit with that for a second. You are one of God’s favorite methods for loving your husband or your wife or your children.. God loves people THROUGH you. That’s how he prefers to operate in the world. If you’re a Center Kid volunteer - You are one of God’s favorite methods for pouring into the next generation. If you serve in Hand 2 Hand, you are God’s method for feeding the hungry. If you serve in the band, or the tech team - you are God’s method for bringing people closer in worship. In your life, just like with Nehemiah all those years ago, instead of just snapping a finished product into existence, God chooses to work through the broken cobbled together efforts of the least likely builders. 

I had a friend one time, her name was Vicky, and she was serving in the kid’s ministry. And she was so good at it, and I complimented her. I said, “you are so great with the kids.” And I said, “you can really tell how much you love working with those kids.” And she scrunched up her face and said, ‘Oh, no - I don’t really like Kid’s Ministry at all.” And I was shocked because she really was brilliant at it. And I asked her, “well then why do you do it?” And she said, “because it’s what the church needs right now.” And I was so impressed with her servant heart, and there was a lot of other stuff, and I felt this nudge from God, and so I set up a meeting and I asked her, “Have you ever thought about becoming a pastor?” And she said, “Yeah, I think God’s been calling me a long time - but I’m just not sure. I’m not sure if I believe in myself.” And I said to her, “I don’t care if you believe in yourself. I believe in you. Borrow my belief. Think about it -Do you think I’m dumb?” She says, “No, of course not” - Do you think I would recommend someone who would do a bad job? Someone that could hurt the church? No, of course not. Well - borrow some of my belief. I believe in you. But more important than me - God believes in you. God’s not dumb. If he puts a calling on your heart - a deep gladness to fill a deep hunger in this world - he didn’t get it wrong. And now I want to reflect that message to all of you here today. God has chosen you to be his method of love in this world. Some of you when I said, “what is your section of the wall” - you knew exactly what it was, but then the doubt creeps in. I don’t know if I believe in myself. But let me ask you - do you think God is dumb? Do you think he would put the wrong guy on the job? Whatever your section of the wall, if God calls you to it - he’s got the right person. He’s pretty clever like that. You are the father God has chosen for your kids. You are the husband or wife that God has chosen for your spouse. You are the aunt or grandma or next door neighbor God has put in place, on purpose, to share his love into that situation. You are not there by some cosmic accident - You are God’s favorite method for this moment, for this section. Oh, and my friend Vicky? She’s been a pastor for about 8 years now, and she’s really good at it.

And maybe you hear all of that - “God’s favorite method” and “find your section” - and you hear it all, but you’re still not sure. Maybe you are in here this morning, still full of doubt. Nah, JJ, you don’t understand - my methods are so broken. I’m so messed up, there’s no way God could use me. If that’s you this morning - I have one last thing to show you. It’s about that sheep gate we read about earlier. If you read through the chapter, you might notice that every gate is described the same way. They set up the doors and installed bolts and bars. Every gate has bolts and bars, except for one. The sheep gate is where the sacrificial lamb would come in, and that door doesn’t lock. As Christians, we know who the sacrificial lamb is - it’s Jesus. Nehemiah rebuilt the wall of Jerusalem, but he only rebuilt it half as high as it used to be. In the book of Haggai, they talk about the temple that they rebuilt - and people wept because their efforts were so disappointing. It did not match the glory of what used to be, it was not good enough. The human efforts were not enough. If you are here this morning with sin in your life, with red on your ledger - I need you to hear this next part. Because when Jesus came, the glory of God returned to the temple. Ezekiel talks about this - the glory returns to the temple. [loud] Do you want to know which gate Jesus used every single time except one? When he came in on the back of a donkey to cheering crowds, that was a different gate - but every single other time - it was the sheep gate. The gate used for the sacrificial lamb. Where Jesus takes your broken human efforts and redeems them. Your broken human efforts will always fall short. But Jesus came and died in our place, took the punishment for our failures, and let our failures die on the cross. Then he rose on the third day, giving us a chance at new life. Christians who have Jesus - we don’t lean on our own abilities. If you give your life to Jesus, ask for forgiveness of sins, let him flood into your life and change your heart - HE will be the one to change the world. That’s not on your shoulders. Your job is just to find your section. To look at the world across from your home and find that place where your deep gladness meets the world’s deep hunger. Let’s pray.