Servant on the Scene

Man, we’ll say good morning and just kind of double click on what Becky had said. If you’re a guest with us this morning or if it’s the first time in a long time, just want to say thank you so much for being here and welcome. We really appreciate having you guys. And if I’ve seen you in the last couple of weeks, then man, welcome back, man. I’m good. I’m happy to see you too. Okay. There we go, man.

Well, yeah, we’re coming to the point of our service where we just have a moment of congregational prayer. Like I’ve been saying, if this is your first time with us, then man, you just get to sit back and be a spectator for it. Okay. That’s all right. But if you’re, if you’re one of the members here, if you’ve been testing the waters here at Sauldam for any length of time, I would invite you to do something. So every Sunday morning at this part, we just grab a neighbor and we just pray. We pray out loud.

We’ve had a number of, it sounds like no easy way to say this, a number of folks passed away. I was talking with Linda Mathis yesterday after Mr. Tommy’s service, and just thinking about the folks that have gone ahead of us to go be with Jesus. And I know that in the room this size, there’s a fair amount of pain, fair amount of problems. So what I want to invite you to do this morning is just grab a neighbor and pray for a person in the room or somebody that’s not in the room, and asking the Lord just to help them. If it’s a medical situation or if it’s some other life situation, just asking that God would intervene and help them out.

To kind of frame that, I want to read something. This is from the Postel family. Ray passed away a few weeks ago. “Dear Sauldam, I want to extend my deepest appreciation for the cards, food, and the flowers, and most importantly, for all the love and support for my family. Again, thank you so much. With love, Brenda Postel and family.”

If you will take it away and just pray for a moment, and I’ll gather us back together in a second.

God, you tell us in your word that we can cast our anxieties and our cares on you because you are a good father that loves us and knows us. God, you want us to bring our pain and our frustration to you. God, nowhere in your word are we told to suppress or to keep down. God, but we are told through the Psalms, through your son Jesus who came and lived and ministered among us, that we ought to bring our hearts to you and be honest with you. Lord, I pray that you would continue to woo us into deeper honesty and vulnerability with you as we go through the stuff of life that is frustrating and painful and terrifying.

Lord, we have a number of folks in this room that are sick. God, we have people in this room that have relationships that they want to see improve. Lord, there are folks in this room that are facing obstacles and challenges that they can’t wrap their hands and their hearts around. But God, we know that you see us. You love us and you care for us. Jesus, you told us in the Sermon on the Mount that your heavenly Father, our Father, feeds the birds every day and clothes the flowers such that birds don’t have to go to grocery stores and flowers don’t have to make or buy clothing. Yet, God, birds are adequately fed. They have more than enough. Flowers are more beautiful than the kings of this world. And how much more you love us and you care for us than birds and flowers. God, you know the number of hairs on my head and you care for us to such an infinite degree. God, please show your care. Please heal those that need healing. Father, help us.

Lord, right now, I need your help. God, as I open your word and as I preach, Lord, I need your help. God, help me to say what your word says in a way that gets to the hearts of our people here, Lord, so that we can walk out of here relying on you more, believing in you more, having greater confidence in you. And Lord, for the person in the room that truly is dealing with something, Lord, that has a problem, I pray, God, that you would use your word to minister and care for them.

That they would walk away from here saying, “I have met with the living God of the universe, and my problem is not so bad anymore.” Lord, for the person in the room that doesn’t know You, that isn’t so sure about this Christianity thing, or really what a life with Jesus can look like, God, I beg that You would please use me over the next few minutes just to woo them into a relationship with You. Lord, that they would be able to walk away and say, “I don’t know how it all fits together. I don’t know what this means for me, but I do believe in Jesus, and I want to walk with Him now.” Please, Father. God, may the people of Sauldam Baptist Church hear a better sermon than what I’m about to preach. Amen.

Well, you may be able to tell with some of the songs that have been selected this morning that today we are talking about trust. We’re talking about trust. It is so sweet to trust in Jesus. One day we trust that we will be at the river before the throne of God. What is trust? Trust, I believe, is the firm belief in the reliability, the truth, or just the ability of someone or something else. It’s the ability to place your belief in another. That is trust. Trust involves placing confidence in someone else to do what you need. Trust is foundational in relationships. And as I’ve seen as a dad, trust can be built up over time and it can be broken in an instant.

Trust. We all trust something. You trust the pews. You came in this morning. You trusted that the pews would hold you up. So you put the full weight of your body on those pews and you are sitting. You trust your friends to keep secrets. So you share, you talk over the phone. One of the wildest things to me is that we trust cooks at a restaurant. All right, now hear me out, okay? You’re going to leave here in a couple minutes and you’re going to go to a restaurant and you’re going to order food to be made by people you don’t know, in a room you’re not allowed to go into, through a process that they haven’t verified with you, and you’re going to eat that food. You trust. We trust every day.

But sometimes we get in moments where that trust goes a little deeper, right? So like, who do you trust when your bank account is bottoming out and you’ve got mouths to feed? What do you trust in when you get that scary medical diagnosis you never expected? Where is your trust when everything around you is changing and feels unstable? Who do you trust when it feels like everyone’s against you? Now we show what we trust. We reveal who we trust by who and what we look to when we need security because we’re anxious, or when we feel like we need stability because life is chaotic, or if we just need some sanity because there’s no peace anymore.

But eventually everything we trust in will fail. People will fail. Organizations will go away. These bodies will break down. So who do you trust? I’m here to tell you there is one worthy of your trust. It is the Father in heaven who does not change, who has no even shadow of change. It’s the one who always determines good for you. It’s the one who would even sacrifice His own Son on your behalf. He is the one who is worthy of your trust. And my desire this morning is that you would leave here saying, “I trust God a little bit more.”

Last week as we were in our series of Nehemiah, you go ahead and turn in your Bibles right now to Nehemiah. Last week we saw that God alone is sovereign. God is in control. God runs all things. God is in charge. This morning we’re going to see trust in God. If God is sovereign, if God is in charge, if God is in control, then our response, our response reflex ought to be trust. We trust in Him. Nehemiah would continually learn this lesson as he underwent the mission that God gave for him. His mission would demand that he would trust in that sovereign God over everything, the one that we know to be one and the same with Jesus Christ.

Nehemiah, so he had this mission. If you aren’t familiar, God has taken the people that we call the Israelites, the Jews. He has taken them out of the homeland. He’s taken them out of the promised land because they have been breaking His law.

They have been going against His heart, and He keeps telling them, “Hey, obey, repent, get right with Me, or I’m going to bring you out of the land as a form of discipline and punishment for you.” They don’t take Him at His word. He keeps His word, and He exiles them. That’s over a course of decades even. And in that process, what happens is the city of Jerusalem, the very middle, the very center, the most important place in Israel, the city is attacked, and its walls are broken down, leaving it utterly defenseless.

Because the walls are broken down, that meant that the worship of God’s people has also started to break down. So Nehemiah, he is living in a place called Persia. He is actually the number one man to the king of Persia. He has this incredible access to the king through his role, serving in kind of this like intimate capacity of always waiting on him and talking with him.

Nehemiah is in contact with some of his Jewish companions and friends and brothers. They go back home. They go back to Jerusalem, and they see the incredibly terrible state of the city. They see how the walls are broken down. They see how worship isn’t happening. They come back to Nehemiah. They say, “Who can fix this?” Nehemiah. They talk with Nehemiah, and Nehemiah hears about how bad things are back home. Nehemiah then goes to the king because he recognizes God has given him a mission. Nehemiah’s mission would be hard, and he would have to continually and actively trust in God alone.

Let’s pick it up in chapter two, verse nine. The scripture will be on your screens. I’ll start off with just two verses. This is after Nehemiah has gotten permission from the king of Persia to go back to Jerusalem to rebuild the walls. “I, Nehemiah, went to the governors of the region west of the Euphrates River, and I gave them the king’s letters. The king had also sent officers of the infantry and cavalry with me. And when Sanballat the Horonite and Tobiah the Ammonite official heard that someone had come to pursue the prosperity of the Israelites, they were greatly displeased.”

All right. We see a little, see, immediately got a little bit of drama brewing for Nehemiah. Okay. Nehemiah has left Persia. He’s gone back to Jerusalem. He’s gone back home. He had to cross the Euphrates River getting there. He starts giving this official letter from the king of Persia saying, “Hey, Nehemiah is supposed to be here.” Nehemiah was given this hall pass from the king. So Nehemiah is just carrying out his job. He’s just doing his mission. And immediately we see a little bit of drama brewing.

The good news for Nehemiah though, is that Nehemiah, if you’re a note taker, you can write this down: Nehemiah trusted God over man. Now see, Nehemiah, he saw that God is better than man. Think about this. The king of Persia, the most important and influential person in the known world for Nehemiah at that time, gave Nehemiah the pass. He gave him the letters. He gave him the ultimate trump card to be able to say he belongs here. He’s doing what he’s supposed to be doing. But Nehemiah trusted in something better than the king because he knows that the king’s letters don’t compare with God’s authority. He knows it doesn’t matter if the king gave me this permission. God is in charge.

Nehemiah also recognized he might have this, this escort of the infantry and the cavalry sent with him, but he knows that people can’t protect him like God can. Nehemiah continually is placing his trust in God and not in people. Nehemiah saw God’s better than man. He saw that God is bigger than man too. You look at verse 10 immediately as soon as Nehemiah gets on the scene, saying, Sanballat and Tobiah, we will see their names pop up multiple times over the course of this book. They will be the enemies and the opposition to what God is doing through Nehemiah. They are going to be a pain in his side. And it would have been so incredibly tempting for Nehemiah to give up on his mission because of few naysayers. It would have been so tempting for him to give in, yet he stayed committed to his work.

You see, Nehemiah trusted in God alone, even when there were false forms of trust to be had. And even when there was enemies and oppositions to what he trusted in, Nehemiah trusted God over man. Not only should we trust God over man, but we ought also to trust God despite challenges. That’d be The second thing you can write down: Trust God despite challenges. You look at verse 11. Look at it with me. After I arrived in Jerusalem and had been there for three days, I got up at night and I took a few men with me. I didn’t tell anyone what my God had laid on my heart to do for Jerusalem. No, I only, the only animal I took was the one I was riding.

Makes you ask a question. How many animals does somebody need to take with them for anything at those days? I don’t know. He’s got his front pocket animal, his back pocket. I just don’t know. He has all this stuff. He’s got his one animal that is. That’s all he needs.

So verse 13, I went out at night through the valley gate toward the serpent’s well and the dung gate, and I inspected the walls of Jerusalem that had been broken down and its gates that had been destroyed by fire. I went on to the fountain gate and the king’s pool, but farther down, it became too narrow for my animal to go through. So I went up at night by way of the valley and I inspected the wall. Then heading back, I entered through the valley gate and returned.

Man, you see Nehemiah, he gets up after three days of being in town. Three days of people saying, Nehemiah, so good to have you, man. What brings you back home? And he’s just, he’s mum about it. He doesn’t tell anybody for days what he’s doing. You just imagine showing up to the house that Nehemiah is staying in for a couple of days, his Airbnb or whatever it is. And people keep saying, man, what brings you back? Tell us news of Persia. But man, why would you leave Persia to come back here? All the walls are broken down. Nothing’s really going on here. Why would you ever come here? And Nehemiah just keeps it to himself. He’s just sitting there.

Then one day, a couple of days later, he gets up at night and he takes only a couple of guys and takes his one animal. And he just starts riding around to these historical sites that we can still see today. He ends up making about a one and a half mile ride that night, inspecting the broken walls, the broken gates, the broken entryways, the broken pools, the brokenness. So much brokenness.

The challenge of what Nehemiah was going to do was enormous. Just put yourself in his shoes. You’re riding around your homeland. You’re riding around home and everything that you can remember being one way. It’s not just changed or different. It’s dismantled. There’s something to say for a change in improvements. That’s not what’s happened. It’s just been leveled. It’s just been demolished. Stones are laying on the ground where they used to stand up 10 feet tall. The walls, which used to provide security and safety for your city, have been torn apart. That’s what Nehemiah is seeing as he’s going around town. He makes this ride.

I have to imagine that as he’s plodding along and he’s just taking an account of all the stuff he’s seeing, he’s just thinking, how in the world? How am I going to do this? Who’s going to do this with me? Who’s going to fix this stuff with me? How in the world are we going to be able to put this place back right again? We can’t do it. It’s not in us.

Nehemiah would have seen that there is enormous challenges. We’ll learn in a few minutes though that Nehemiah recognized, or actually if you look at verse 12 again, Nehemiah recognizes, he says, I don’t, I didn’t tell anyone what my God had laid on my heart to do. We all come to moments where God lays something on our hearts and we know we just have to do it. But it can be difficult sometimes to recognize the voice of God laying something on your heart and some other voice.

I just want to, this is just for free this morning. I just want to give you a couple ways you could test whether or not something is from God or if it’s just a little spicy Mexican food after church. The first test you can ask yourself is, does the Bible actually command what I think I should do? Like the Bible is really clear about some basic parameters of Christianity and church. Like listen to this one from the end of Matthew’s gospel. Jesus comes near and he says to the disciples, all authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth. Go there, Zero question about whether or not we’re supposed to be making disciples. Jesus has explicitly told us your job as a disciple and as a church is to make disciples. That’s what you’re here for. That’s your job. The Bible commands that. We don’t have to worry or wonder, am I supposed to do this thing? God’s told us to do that thing.

The second question you could ask yourself about something that God may have put on your heart is, is this good for fellow Christians? Is this good for my brother or my sister in the faith? And we test that by looking at other parts of the New Testament where Paul and the other authors say, love one another, encourage one another. Hey, on the screen, let’s just keep it up the whole time because I’m going to reference that a few times. Thanks, guys. You don’t have to worry or wonder, am I supposed to confess my sin to them? Yes. The Bible says, confess your sin to one another. You don’t have to worry. Hey, am I supposed to forgive this person? Yes. The Bible says, forgive one another as Christ has forgiven you. You don’t have to wonder, man, has God laid it on my heart to donate money to this church? You don’t have to wonder that. God tells us to tithe our money to the church. There’s so many things God tells us explicitly we’re supposed to be doing that are good for each other. You don’t have to wonder about that.

Or maybe a third question. Will this act of faith grow my faith in God? Listen to what God says in the book of Isaiah. This is verse 2. Man, God tells us, take steps of faith. Do things that stretch your comfort because God says, I will give you the nations. Enlarge your tent. Push yourself. And I will fill that and I will help you with that. You don’t have to wonder if this grows my faith. Is this a good thing to do?

Or the fourth question. Do other vibrant Christians affirm it? You don’t have to wonder if I’m supposed to do something that if I run it by a couple other folks here at the church that clearly are having their quiet time in the morning, clearly are praying for each other, clearly are sharing the gospel with other folks. If they all say it’s a good idea, it’s probably just a good idea to go ahead and do. I run a lot of my ideas for the church by Becca. Y’all need to rejoice. I run a lot of my ideas through Becca. And she sifts those things out. And it’s usually only one out of four that even make it to anybody else. Because she’s like, Jeremy, I see where your heart’s at, but I just don’t buy it, man. I don’t think that’s from the Lord. I just think that’s just agaves from yesterday, man. Do other Christians who have a vibrant relationship with Jesus, do they affirm it or do they push on it a little bit and say, I don’t think so? Sometimes God doesn’t speak to us through our Cheerios or through the clouds in the sky. He just speaks to us through other believers who are also walking with Him.

The final question I ask myself all the time. Will my future self thank me for doing this? That’s what drives me to exercise. That’s what drives me to choose asparagus sometimes over other food. But really, I’m just eating whatever Becca makes me. So I just don’t really have a choice. I guess my future self will thank me for eating whatever Becca has put in front of me. Will my future self thank me for this? God won’t tell you to do something that won’t be good for you in the long run. That doesn’t mean that God won’t tell you to do stuff that’s not uncomfortable. Oftentimes, the best things in life come through some discomfort.

That’s what Nehemiah was going to learn as he was going to contend for the revival and the restoration of his people. He was going to get deeply uncomfortable because God had laid something on his heart. Other people of God were going to affirm it. It was going to stretch him like crazy and it was going to be good for the people of God. Nehemiah was going to see God revive and restore his people. But it would only happen if Nehemiah trusted Him to do the difficult things He was telling him to do. The same is true for us. God will continue to revive and restore the low country, the churches of the low country, The people of the low country. But it will only come if God’s people trust Him and do the hard things He tells us to do. That’s the only way. Sometimes the issue, though, is not understanding what God has placed on our hearts. The issue is not feeling up to the task, right? If you’re not a little bit nervous about doing something that God has told you to do, then maybe you’re not quite hearing from the Lord. Think that God always gives us something to do that stretches us and pushes us and challenges us. We must trust God. We must trust Him to show us what needs to be done, and we must trust Him to strengthen us to do it.

That’s that next thing I want you to write down: Trust God to give you strength to do His work. This is just taken again from Nehemiah’s own story. Verse 16. The officials of Israel, they didn’t know where I had gone during that nighttime ride. They didn’t know what I was doing. For I had not yet told the Jews, the priests, the nobles, officials, or the rest of those who would be doing the work. So I get them together. We have a powwow. I said to them, “You see the trouble we’re in. Jerusalem is lying in ruins. Its gates have been burned. Come, let’s rebuild Jerusalem’s wall so that we will no longer be a disgrace.” And I told them how the gracious hand of my God had been on me and what the king had said to me. They said, “Let’s start rebuilding.” And their hands were strengthened to do this good work.

Nehemiah finishes this nighttime ride. He has seen a mile and a half of the destruction of these walls. He has gotten a full picture of just how bad off the situation is. So he goes and he reports what he has seen to the people that are going to be doing the work. And more importantly, he tells them about how God’s hand has been on him. And their response is, “Let’s go. Let’s do it. Let’s rebuild this place,” because their hands were strengthened. Nehemiah trusted God to give him the strength to do the work.

I imagine at this point, a bit of spiritual lethargy had settled in. There was some spiritual laziness going on. You see, the initial exile, the initial invasion of Jerusalem had happened about 150 years before this. How many lifetimes is that? How many generations is that? Imagine your only experience of your homeland, of your capital, of what you call safety is destroyed. An entire lifetime of never having known the walls being built. An entire lifetime of never seeing anything better than that experience. Nehemiah, if he’s just a normal age person, never lived in Jerusalem when Jerusalem was still intact. When it was still whole. This is all new to him as well.

Nehemiah had to come against some potential laziness. Certainly some generational spiritual coldness. But God’s gracious hand was on Nehemiah, and it was the foundation of his confidence. Nehemiah’s confidence, Nehemiah’s trust was not in a king who gave permission. It was not in himself who had a plan. No, his trust wasn’t even in the other Jews that were going to do the work. His trust was in God alone.

So my question for you: Is your trust in God? This is where you say amen. Is your trust in the Lord? Because if it’s not, everything else will fail. Everything else will fail. Even in perfection, even in Eden, God’s design for people is that we would fully trust in and submit to God. That’s His design for us. Especially with the introduction of sin into this incredible world that God has made for us. This incredible world that is beautiful yet is not fully what God designed and intended it to be. Especially in a state like this, our only hope in life and death, the church’s one foundation. It’s not me. It’s not Al. It’s not our deacons. It’s not in any guiding documents. It’s not in our bank accounts. Our one foundation is God alone.

The gracious hand of God always strengthens the submitted hands of His people. I’ll say that again. The gracious hand of God will always strengthen the submitted hands of His people. The question is not, can God do through us what He wants to do? The question is not, is God’s mission captivating enough for us as a church? The question is, are our hands submitted to the Lord? Are we ready to accept the mission He has for us? Are we ready to embrace the strength He has for us? Are We ready? I believe that as we trust God to give strength, we’ll also trust God to give success. We’ll trust God to give success. When Sanballat the Horonite, Tobiah the Ammonite official, and a new guy, Geshem the Arab, heard about this, they mocked and despised us. And they said, what is this you’re doing? Are you rebelling against the king? I gave them this reply. Watch this. This is crazy to me. The God of the heavens is the one who will grant us success. We, His servants, will start building. You have no right or historic claim in Jerusalem.

Imagine the things Nehemiah could have said to these three dissenters. He could have said, hey, here’s my papers from the king. Don’t worry about it. It’s all good. He could have said, no, no, no, no. I’ve got a great plan. This is going to benefit you. It’s going to bring peace to the Middle East. No, he didn’t say that. He didn’t even say, man, look at all these people. They’re just raring to do something good. They’ll be good workers for us again. They’ll make you a lot of money. No. His confidence, his trust. Verse 20, the God of the heavens will grant us success. Get on board, bud. Nehemiah throwing down the gauntlet.

I wonder what that would have been like. I wish I could have been a fly on the wall when that moment happened. And to see this guy that doesn’t even live there. He doesn’t even live in Jerusalem. He lives in Persia. He’s a servant of the king. I imagine that he would have adopted some of those Persian customs having been grown up in Persia, serving in the royal court. He would have looked more Persian than Jewish at this point. Yet he did not even call upon the king that he served. He didn’t even call upon the empire he represented or the force of the military that escorted him there. He could have pointed to all the infantry and the cavalry and said, hey, either you’re going to listen to me or you’re going to talk to those guys. He didn’t say any of that. What did he say? God, the God of the heavens will grant us success.

Friends, there will always be an enemy, a mocker or a dissenter to God’s work. But God would give success to Nehemiah, even though the enemies were mocking. Even though there were dissenters, even though there were people against the clear work of the Lord, God would bless it and He would help it.

The enemies may seem important. I mean, look at their titles back at verse 10, Sanballat the Horonite, Tobiah the Ammonite official. These were the governors of the region. These were the local men in charge. These were the guys that could throw their weight around and get something done. These were the guys that could stop everything. In fact, if you go to Ezra chapter four, these are the guys that did stop everything. These are the guys that provoked the same king to write an edict to say, stop doing the work. They’ve already done it before. They knew they could do it again. So they come up to this next guy, Nehemiah, and they say, Hey man, we’ve been here before. We will get this shut down right now. You don’t have the permits for this. And Nehemiah says, I don’t need that. I do have it, but I don’t need it. God’s going to do this. Whether you like it or not, God’s going to do it.

The enemies may seem important, but they don’t compare to the God of the heavens. They may be governors of the region, but they are not the Lord of the universe.

I’ve got a question for you. If you knew God would give you success in His mission, what would you attempt for Him? If you knew God was going to give you success at something that His Word explicitly says is good, what would you try? There’s a story of a guy named William Carey, born in the mid 1700s, grew up in England, didn’t have a whole lot of education. He was bright. He was able to teach himself Latin, but not because he went to a prestigious university. He just worked hard. In fact, one time, one of his teachers compared him to an ox and he said, that don’t matter. I just plod along, man. He was the son of a cobbler and he began an apprenticeship just fixing on shoes, but he developed a love for the Lord and ultimately a calling to missions where he would eventually move he, his young son and his wife to India. 1793, they leave England for India. Eventually in his 40-year ministry, William Carey would found a Christian college. He would translate the Bible into seven Indian languages. He wrote a Sanskrit. That’s one of the Indian languages. He wrote a Sanskrit primer that’s still used in schools today. Former English missionary, his work still being used hundreds of years later by Indians for Indians. He directly led at least 700 people to Christ. And most notably, he sparked the modern missions movement.

Part of the reason that Becca and I served in Southeast Asia is because a guy named William Carey moved his family to India 200 years before we ever even were born. He said this incredible thing in his final sermon before leaving for India. It’ll be on the screen. Expect great things from God. Attempt great things for God. Just leave that up there. Just look at that. Expect great things from God and attempt great things for Him.

You see, William Carey, he was an ordinary guy. Nobody looked at him as somebody that had prestigious learning. He didn’t come from any money. He wasn’t influential where he lived, but he believed deeply in God and he trusted God and he followed the mission that God had given for Him. He was an ordinary man, but he had an extraordinary God.

William Carey, I think, epitomizes two servants from a parable that Jesus taught. One day, Jesus is sitting with His disciples and His followers. There’s a mixed bag of people that all would have wanted to come and listen to Jesus. So He says the kingdom of heaven is kind of like this. There’s this rich manager who was about to go and do this trip. So he needed to leave his estate in the hands of some capable guys that would be able to invest his money and take care of things for him.

So this manager picks three guys. He looks at one guy and says, “Hey, here is half of my estate. I want you to invest it. Take care of it. I’m going to come back. We’re going to talk about what you did.” Looks at another guy. He gives him a third of the estate. Says, “Hey, I want you to invest it. Take care of it. When I get back, we’ll talk about what you did.” And he looks at the final and he just gives him a tenth of it. Just gives him the rest. He says, “Hey, I want you to invest it. Take care of it. When I get back, we’ll talk about what you did.”

The guy that got half the estate, he takes that money and he invests it and he earns the full amount back. So he takes 50% of the original and he makes it 100%. Well done. The guy that was given 30%, he does the very same thing. He turns that original 30% into a new 60%. Catch my drift? The final guy. Does anybody remember what the final guy does? What’s he do? Say it again for the people in the back. He buries it.

When the master comes back, he approaches. He looks at the one who had taken the biggest risk and he said, “Man, good job for taking a risk. Good job for trusting me. Good job for trying. Here’s even more.” Looks at that middle one. Says, “Man, good job for taking a risk. Good job for trying hard. Here’s even more.” It’s the one who didn’t take a risk that the master comes and he says, “What did you do? You should have at least just put it in the bank. It would have got a little bit of interest. You would have made me a little bit of money. What are you doing?”

William Carey reminds me of the guy over here. He was given a little bit. He had some ability for language. Yes. He had a deep trust in the Lord. Yes. I imagine that he was a pretty flexible guy moving from England to India. He had some abilities to him and he took what God gave him and he invested it and God blessed it and gave him many more.

Nehemiah is similar. Nehemiah was given a lot. He was given an incredible mission. He was given an incredible calling and task and obviously given a lot of ability, given a lot of influence and he takes it and he invests it and he makes something come.

So I ask again, if we as a church knew that God would give us success in something that the Bible tells us to do, what would we do? Reminds me of the video that played a few minutes ago. You know, back in Matthew 28, Jesus gives us the Great Commission. He tells us explicitly, go make disciples of all nations. In Revelation 7, Jesus speaking to John, and He says explicitly, hey, around the throne, there will be disciples of every nation. So in the middle of the Great Commission and the great multitude is us. And we’ve been given a job. The question is, are we going to be faithful to do that job? Yeah, I think that we all need a reminder, not of what we’re supposed to be doing. I think we need a reminder of the faithfulness and the trustworthiness of the Lord.

Paul said this to the church in Corinth. I want to make clear for you, brothers and sisters, the gospel I preach to you, which you received and on which you have taken your stand and by which you are being saved. If you hold to the message I preach to you, unless you believe in vain. For I passed on to you as most important what I also received. Get this, folks. Jesus Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures. Jesus Christ was buried. And Jesus Christ was raised on the third day according to the scriptures. Then He appeared to Peter. He appeared to the rest of the apostles. He appeared to over 500 brothers and sisters at one time. Most of them are still alive, but some of them have died. Then He appeared to James. Then to all the apostles. Last of all, as to one born at the wrong time, He appeared to me. Paul the apostle.

Do you believe God is trustworthy? You could say it confidently. Do you believe that God is trustworthy? He has proven Himself over and over again. He will make good on His promises to Nehemiah. And He will make good on His promises to us. And we can believe that because He made good on the gospel.

In the very beginning, God made you and I to live in a perfect relationship of harmony with God. We were made and designed to love God fully and be loved by Him. We were made to have a great relationship with one another. One where no backbiting, no sin, no disappointment would ever enter into it. But sin does come into the picture because Adam and Eve are deceived. Thus they disobey. So wrong is thrust into the right that God has made. But God, in His kindness, in that moment, He looks at Satan. He looks at the serpent and He says, I’m going to send someone who is going to crush you and make all this right again.

In steps Jesus Christ on the scene who came not as a conquering warrior or as a king who would dismantle everything. But Jesus Christ who would come as a servant of all, who would come as a sacrifice, the Lamb of God. The very same Lamb who would destroy the serpent. Who ever heard of a story like that where the Lamb beats the serpent? Who ever heard of that? It’s backwards, but that’s God’s way. And Jesus does it. He fully lives the life that you and I are supposed to live. And He offers you His perfection. And He takes your imperfection. And He says, when God sees you because of Me, He sees My perfection, My righteousness, My goodness, My rightness. You can have all that. If only you would accept it. If only you would turn away from yourself. If only you would stop trusting in other things and trust in God alone.

And this isn’t just a story. It’s not just mental concepts. Jesus, after He defeated sin and death on the cross, He came alive. And He started appearing to people. He started saying, hey man, I’m back. Look at my scars. I’m here. Look at my side where I was pierced. Guess what? It’s really me. I have made good on this good news. So you can trust me. Take me at my word. Take this grace. And just go and just try something with what I’m giving you.

We can trust God because the gospel is true and it speaks to your greatest need. Nehemiah, his experience of God does not compare with what we can have with God. At the very heart of it, Nehemiah was being spoken to by God through other folks. And then Jesus comes on the scene. God in the flesh. Emmanuel. God with us. And then when Jesus leaves, He sends the Holy Spirit. God as the Spirit who can live inside of you. You have deeper access to an intimate relationship with God than Nehemiah ever could have had. And God Wants us to take Him at His word. So, if you knew God would give you success at something God wants done, what would you attempt? I want to close the service asking that question, actually. We do this occasionally. I think physical postures put us in a spiritually receptive place. If you are curious about what God might be calling you to do, here’s what I want you to do. You just show me your palms and then you put your hands in your lap, palm up, just like this. Whenever I give a gift to my kids, this is how they receive it. This is the posture we need to be in to receive something from the Lord, too.

I’m just going to pray that question. Lord, what mission do You have for us? It could be a church-wide mission or it could just be a personal mission. You might have a conversation you need to have where you need to confess or apologize. Or we might have something as a church that we need to strive for. I’m just going to invite the Lord to speak and give Him a few moments of our silence for Him to speak. And I’ll close us together in prayer.

Lord, we are Your servants and we just want to hear from You. Speak, Lord. Your servants are listening. What do You have for us? Father, trust that You speak when we invite You. And I trust that You’ve spoken right now. Lord, whether it be a whisper or a shout that someone just heard, I pray that You would fan that into flame and that they would make good on it. They would trust You. They would strive with You to accomplish Your work. Whether it be a personal relationship to make right or a decision they have to make for themselves. Or if they need to give voice to something that our church needs to do. Lord, I pray that You would fan that into flame. And that we as a church would be receptive to Your mission. We would work to accomplish it.

Father, I love You. We love You. And God, we just want to strive for what You have for us. So Father, it’s in Your great name that we pray. Amen.