Your Place in TOGETHER

You know, last week when we were doing the meet and greet, Jeremy, I was talking with him, and he said he was looking out over the congregation. And it just brought tears to his eyes because he just seen everybody welcoming and talking and loving up on each other. And I want to tell you, as a pastor, that means a lot.

And you probably wonder, why do we do the meet and greet to begin with? It’s kind of, you know, it’s not so solemn or whatever. Well, one, there’s a couple reasons. And one reason is, number one, we don’t want anybody here not feel welcome. We want everybody. And sometimes it just needs a little bit of a push to get someone out of a seat to go over and see someone that they don’t know or who’s kind of visiting and just say, man, I’m glad you’re here. Thanks for coming. And then plus, it’s just good to see folks that you know and love. And so that’s why we do it. That’s why it’s done.

And like I said, we’ve got a brand new baby. Well, two babies in a couple weeks. Gosh, one here already. I just think that’s amazing, Elise. Gosh, we, when we had April, I don’t know if she came out of the house for like six months. I mean, and the first time we took her to the mall, you’re looking at everybody like they’re a pedophile. I mean, you’re just, oh, no, get away from my kid. And you just got her in church. And I just think that’s amazing.

So we want to pray for a number of things. You know, a couple weeks ago. I just think this is so neat when we pray in service. Because to a pastor, I just think that’s amazing. And I just think that’s amazing. I just think that’s amazing. It just, I was doing supply in Goose Creek a couple months ago. And I did the same thing. And I did the same thing we do here and had them do it. So we’re going to do this.

Here’s what I want you to pray for. Everybody here knows somebody lost. You know, Carter’s going to be helping us learn how to witness and evangelize. And sometimes that can be a scary time because we don’t want to mess it up. But I want to share something with you. You can never mess it up. God can take however you do it, whatever words you use, and benefit them. The Bible says that His word never comes back void. And so what I want you to do is just get into small groups like we normally do. And just think about somebody. And, you know, if I asked you to think of two people that are in your life that are lost, you could probably think of two just like that. So I just want to think and just pray just for the lostness in our community and that they would know the love of Jesus that you know. So let’s just do that. Get in your small groups now and just pray, and then I’ll close it up.

Lord, I thank you for you. Thank you for the fact that without you, we don’t have salvation. Without you going to the cross, we have nothing except lostness. But that’s how much you loved us. You loved us so much that even while we were yet sinners, you died for us. So, Lord, just help us see people like you do. All they’ve got difference is they, in reality, they’re either lost or they’re saved. Lord, we want to get them to the ladder. We want them to come to know you like we know you. Because then the kingdom comes now. It didn’t happen to wait until after they die. We get the kingdom of God even now. So, Father, give us boldness. Let us see people and love them. Let us see their need. Work through whatever inhibitions we have and just be courageous for you. And now, Lord, open our hearts and our minds to hear you clearly. There won’t be Al Smith’s words, but like Jeremy would say, it will be your words. And as John the Baptist said, may I decrease and you increase. So, we give this time to you. In your precious name we pray. Amen.

If you’ve got your Bibles, I’d like you to turn with me to the book of Nehemiah chapter 3. If you’re wondering where Jeremy’s at, he’s taking care of a baby and helping his wife. But can you imagine having three under five? Whew. That’ll make you grow old quick, won’t it? But they’re doing well.

And so, just help Him not have to worry about preaching this week. He allowed this old guy to preach. So, we’re in Nehemiah chapter 3. Nehemiah is one of those, Nehemiah 3 is one of those chapters you go, really? Put that in the Bible? I mean, it’s, you look at it and you go, you could have left that one out. And when you first read through it, you kind of do. Charles Swindoll is one of my favorite pastors and preachers and writers. And he did a book on Nehemiah called Pass Me Another Brick and left this chapter out. And so, I’m thinking that, so, but it’s an interesting chapter.

And so, if you’ve got it, I’m going to read just the first five verses. There’s 32 verses here. And if I read all 32, by the time I got to 15, you’d be asleep. Okay? And the reason is, there’s all kind of names in here. I mean, you’d be waiting. Let’s see if I can pronounce that one. Because that’s kind of where we’re at. So, just follow me with the first five verses of Nehemiah chapter 3.

And the high priest, Eliashib, and his fellow priests began building the sheep gate. They dedicated it and installed its doors. And after building the wall to the tower of the hundred and the tower of Hananel, they dedicated it. And the men of Jericho built next to Eliashib. And next to him, Zachar, son of Emre, built. The sons of Hassanah built the fish gate. And they built it with beams and installed its doors, bolts, and bars. And next to them, Miramoth, son of Uriah, son of Hakuth, made repairs. Beside them, Meshulam, son of Berechiah. Are you getting the message here? Waiting for me to mess up, right? Okay. Son of Berechiah, son of Meshezabel, made repairs. Next to them, Zadok, son of Bainah, made repairs. Beside them, the Tekoites made repairs. But their nobles did not lift a finger to help their supervisors.

Now, that’s just the first five verses. We could have gone through all 32 and you’d have gone, really, Al? And I probably would have had, like I said, probably wake up about half of you. But you kind of look at this chapter and you go, okay, why is this chapter here? And so quickly at this point, what I want to do is just give you what I think are two main reasons that Nehemiah decided he wanted to include this in Scripture. And I think they’re very important.

Now, I don’t know how you are about directions and building things. I’m kind of one of those do-it-yourself guys. I love YouTube. If I can figure out how to do it on YouTube and not pay somebody to do it, I like that. Because I’m not normally that inclined, you know, to be kind of a builder or instruction guy or car repair guy. But if I can do something simple and save a little bit of money, I’m that guy.

One time I went down to Home Depot. My grill had all rusted out and was crumbling, so we needed a new grill. So I went down there and I bought a grill. And here was the deal. Okay, here’s what the grill cost. But for an extra $40, they would assemble it for you. And this old smart boy said this, I can put that together. I can save $40. And so I saved my $40 and I took that box home. And then I opened the box. And I don’t know who does directions for those things, but I’m sitting there thinking they go to some insane asylum and they find the craziest guy in there. And they say, we need directions. Okay, we need to put directions together on how this works. And because I opened that thing up and it seemed like there was a million screws and bolts and washers and nuts. And I’m going, my. And it took me all the worst $40 I never spent. Huh? Did I take it back to them? No, I was happy just to leave it where it was. I was hoping it would stay together.

And so the thing is, is directions, you know, putting things together. One time for April, I put together a basketball goal that direction said takes two men to do. Well, I did it. But Christmas, we almost missed Christmas because of that thing. I mean, I would, it was up all night long putting that thing together. Directions. What do we do with directions? We see directions. There’s directions everywhere. And women, you know how well us guys take directions and love to read those kind of Things. I found some directions while looking some things up this week. This was one on Tesco’s Tiramisu dessert. It says, “Do not turn upside down.” You know where it said that? On the bottom. Okay. On Marks and Spencer’s bread pudding, product will be hot after heating. On a bottle of Boots Children’s Cough Medicine, do not drive a car after taking this medication. On night-tall sleep aid, warning, may cause drowsiness. On a child’s Halloween Superman costume, wearing of this garment does not enable one to fly.

John MacArthur tells a story in his book, in his journal called Feathers, where he says this, “Evidently the British need to be more careful reading directions on the use of a special gun that NASA just simply called the chicken gun. This gun had been specifically built to launch a dead chicken at maximum velocity directly onto the windshield of airliners, military jets, even the space shuttle. The idea was to simulate the frequent incidents of collisions with airborne foul to test the strength of the windshield materials in construction.”

So British engineers heard about the gun, wanted to use it, wanted to test the windshield of their newest, highest speed train. Arrangements were made. The gun was sent to the British engineers. The testing site was arranged. The gun was loaded with a dead chicken. And when the gun was fired, the engineers stood shocked as the chicken hurled out of the barrel, smashed through the shatterproof windshield, blasted through the console control, broke the engineers’ backrest in two, and embedded itself in the back wall of the cabin. The horrified British sent NASA the disastrous results of the experiment, explaining what they had done, along with the designs of the windshield, and then asked for further suggestions. NASA responded with a one-line instruction that said, “Next time, thaw the chicken.”

Doing something you may have never done before. Reading directions. I think one of the problems sometimes we have in our Christian walk is sometimes we forgot to read directions. And God has a plan for all of us. He has a place for all of us. And that’s what we’re going to talk about this morning, because I think that’s important. Especially about this. Nehemiah is about to build a wall. He’s got a lot of things, but what you’ll find as you read this chapter is there ain’t a construction worker in the bunch. Okay? What you’re going to find is there’s a lot of different kind of people, but there ain’t no wall building people in this bunch. Yet the Bible says that they come together.

So I want to come up with, I think, two major commitments that the Lord expects of His people in the church. Because just like Nehemiah was building a great wall around a city that he loved, a nation that he loved, a people of God that he loved, God is building a great church here. And God is doing some things here and asking us to be part of the building process. And I think we can garner some things from this passage, this chapter that just has a whole bunch of names and where they worked and what they did that I think can touch our lives.

Number one is this. The Lord expects us to be involved. I want to show you a map of the, of the, the base of the wall around Jerusalem at the time of Nehemiah. Guys, can we throw that up? Okay. This is it. If you can kind of see it, this is kind of the wall. It’s, I know it’s kind of hard to read from where you’re at, but I just want you to just kind of envision. You see where there are towers, there are gates all around the city. There’s wall. Imagine when Nehemiah got there, this thing was just a dump. Not only was some, a lot of the gates were missing. The towers were down. Some places where the wall was, it was completely to the ground. I mean, if you wanted to look at something that seemed like an impossible task, it would have been this wall.

And so when Nehemiah starts building, Nehemiah is a pretty sharp guy. And he realizes that this is how we’re going to build it. We’re going to not just build it and say, okay, we’re going to do this tower first. And then we’re going to go to this part of the wall. Then we’re going to build this gate. And then this part of the wall, then the next tower and move around the city. He said, no, we’re not going to do that. What he says, we’re going to, we’re going to build the entire wall at the same time. We’re going to use, we’re going to use everybody we can use. And everybody’s invited and everybody can work on the wall. And the wall is going to come up all around the entire city of Jerusalem at the same time.

Now, why is that important? Let me tell you something. If you start one place and you finish it, you might just stay there and just finish that part. Or you’re going to say, that’s all we really need to build. We don’t need to build the whole thing. Well, He said, no, we need to build the whole thing. And if we all come up together, then we’re more likely to take on this project and complete it. So that’s kind of his thinking and what he wants to do.

So the Lord expects us to be involved. And what He expects us to be involved is because everyone gets to contribute. There are some names in here and I pronounce, I probably mispronounce some of them. And I’ve been reading this book for most of my life. And I’m thinking, who are these people? See, everybody gets to contribute and everybody is significant. I find it interesting that some of the people here you’ve never heard of before. So you get to this chapter. And yet these people are important to not only to Nehemiah, but they’re important to God.

And you may be looking at yourself and sitting there going, well, who am I, Al? I mean, who am I to? I don’t know anything. I’m not a biblical scholar. I’m afraid when I get in front of people. I’m telling you, the Lord can use you. Everybody’s significant. These people were significant. And why were they significant? They were significant for this reason. They were part of a bigger picture. The big picture was the wall. It wasn’t about them.

And what I find is, as they’re building this thing up, and I want to tell you too, everybody’s working. Everybody’s working. If you look at just verse 1, the high priest, Eliashib, and his fellow priests were rebuilding the sheep gate. Okay, that would be in the northeast corner of Jerusalem, right outside temple. The sheep gate. This would be the gate that when Passover would come, they would bring those sheep in. Did they know that 400 years later, they would bring that sheep in to be sacrificed at the temple? The ultimate Paschal lamb would be coming through the eastern gate on a donkey. Did they realize that? No. But even the priests were involved. The Levites were involved.

Not only were they involved, but it was just, it was fascinating some of the things they were doing. It talks about there were perfume makers involved. Just imagine that. You’re a perfume maker, and they said, we need you to go work on that gate. I’d make some great perfume. No, no, we want you to get the hammer out. We want you to get the trowel out. We want you to start, you know, laying brick. We want you to pick up things. You know what they did? They did exactly that. Goldsmiths, politicians, guys who had never probably ever worked with their hands were out there doing it. Why? Because everybody was contributing. Everybody was significant. And everybody saw the big picture.

Folks, do you see the big picture in this church? Do you? Do you see what the… I had a guy tell me, I did a funeral yesterday, and I had a guy at the funeral home say, Al, that church has been a center of that community since probably almost inception, going all the way back to 1841. Do you still want to be that? This church has an opportunity. You know, Charleston’s coming to us. Whether we like it or not, they’re coming. Do we want to be a part of this community to the point where people come to know Jesus like we know Jesus? That’s what we need, the bigger picture.

I like the ones He knows. He names people that we would never have probably named, but they’re in God’s word. Now, there’s one that He doesn’t name, and that’s in verse 5. He says, beside the Tekoaites made repairs, but their nobles did not lift a finger to help. He doesn’t name the nobles for good reason. Of this group, they’re the only ones that don’t work. Of this group, they’re the only ones that says, either I’m too good for it or you go do it. I’ll watch. I’ll supervise.

The Lord expects us to be involved, and that’s what it’s called. The other thing is not that we’re to be involved, but here’s the Second part, and I don’t want you to miss this. The Lord expects us to be unified. Being together is one of the most important things a church can do. I’m always amazed that whenever Satan wants to attack a church, and when you’ve been in the ministry for 40 years, you see how Satan attacks a church. It’s always from inside. Now, I think right now we’re in a great place, but we’ve got to be careful, and we’ve got to warn ourselves that if Satan wants to mess this up, he’ll start on the inside. He never starts on the outside. See, if he starts it on the outside, we just circle the wagons, and we get together. But if he can start discord inside the church, church. That’s all it takes, and it doesn’t take long.

Now, I want you to think about this for a second, too. You’re a lost person, and you’re thinking about church, and so you’re looking at a church, and you see a church that acts like family and loves each other and kind of works through difficult situations, and you go, man, I don’t know how they do it and why they do it, but I want to be part of that. But if you look at a church, and there’s discord, and they’re spending all their energy, and they’re spending all everything that makes them who they are on each other and looking on the inside, not on the outside, do you want to be part of that? I don’t.

See, division destroys the mission, and there were people that you’re going to read through the book of Nehemiah that are going to look to destroy the mission. Two of them Jeremy preached on last week, a couple of them. There was Sanballat, there was Tobiah, and Geshem. Okay, so those are three guys who has one purpose. They don’t like what’s going on. They don’t like the way it was. They don’t like the new guy coming in, and their whole deal is, we don’t want to change. And so they’re going to be part of discouragement. They’re going to be part of saying, we don’t like it that way. They’re going to come back in and try to undermine, and they’re going to do all those kinds of things. And they’ll do that throughout the book of Nehemiah.

Division always destroys the mission, which brings us to this last thing. We get to choose our attitude in the endeavor. So do we want to be like those priests that were working at the Sheep Gate? Do we want to be like those perfume workers? Do we want to be like those goldsmiths? Do we want to be like those politicians that are saying, I don’t know a whole lot about building a wall, but I can look at the guy next to me, and I can be part of what he’s doing.

You know, that’s one reason I think Nehemiah was building the wall that he was building, the way he was doing it. For this reason, if I get tired, or I’m kind of getting frustrated because I’m not doing the best I think I can do it, I look over to my right, or I look over to my left, and there’s other people working on the wall. And if they’re working on the wall, I can work on the wall. You know, that’s how the military does it. That’s how they do it down at the Citadel, knob week, okay? That, I mean, everybody, you know, when you’re going through boot camp, and you’re about to give up, and you can’t do another push-up, you’re looking at the guy next to you, and if he can do a push-up, you can do a push-up. And it brings you together. You sacrifice together. You grow together, and then you overcome together. And that’s what Nehemiah is teaching here.

And he’s not, and I’m going to tell you, he’s not an expert. This guy was a cupbearer. This was the guy who gave the king his food in Susa, in Persia. This was the guy who tasted the food and tasted the drink before the king had it, just in case it might be poisoned. I’m not sure I’d want to volunteer for that job, but that was his job. What did he know about building a wall? He didn’t know anything about building a wall, but he was obedient to God to do it.

So we get to choose what attitude we want to have in the endeavor. And I want to share something too about Nehemiah. He’s the archetypical Jesus. Do you know what that is? Okay. An archetype was basically a copy, a shadow, A forerunning of someone else. Throughout the Old Testament, there are men in the Old Testament that are like, you know, pre-pictures of Jesus in the Old Testament. Example would be Moses. Moses is the one who goes and delivers His people out of bondage. Okay. Another one would be David as king. Okay. Another one here is Nehemiah. What is Nehemiah? He comes from the palace. He comes to the city of Jerusalem and he rebuilds the wall around the city. Another one would be Boaz, the kinsman redeemer. Throughout, we see the scarlet thread of Jesus throughout the Old Testament and some of the characters there. Nehemiah is one of those characters. And what Nehemiah does is he’s sitting there and saying, I know what’s best for my people and I’m going to serve. And these people follow him because they know who he is and what he’s about. Again, it’s an Old Testament picture of the church to come. This is what this wall is. And I just think that’s important.

You know, I’m one of those guys that just said, we just kind of need to go on it. I don’t, we don’t want to be Sanballats and we don’t want to be Geshems and we don’t want to be Tobiahs. Because who wants to be around those kinds of people? Who wants to be around what I call, you know, folks that just complain and whine and all those kinds of things. We want to get involved. First church’s pastor. I had a little gal in the choir and she’d come from a really tough upbringing, but when they would sing, she was all about worship. She’d always have a smile. Sometimes she’d lift up her hands, but it was all about Jesus. And I want to tell you, nobody kind of talks about, shows what a church is about like the choir does. That’s why if you’re in the choir, always be smiling. Okay. Don’t be falling asleep. Don’t be, you know, you know, frowning. You don’t like to be smiling because you’re leading in worship. And one of the ways you lead in worship is just how you look. And this gal was just like, you could always tell that when she was singing, she was enjoying the Lord and you just like being around her. People like to be around folks like that.

People, and I’m thinking it’s tough work. It’s hard work. It’s, it’s daily. It’s, it’s a grind sometimes, but they’re looking up and all what they’re seeing is this wall comes consistently going up and up and up and up and up because everybody’s involved and everybody’s unified. If there’s one trait that I see about the church and especially in the New Testament, more than anything else, it’s unification. God is always looking at us saying, be unified, be together. Then say you got to agree on every little thing, but it says on all the big things, be unified, be together, lift each other up, be family. Because I want to tell you, there’s a lost and dying world out there that’s looking for family. They’re looking to belong to something bigger than them. They’re looking for something where they can come in and they can contribute.

Someone one time said, I like William Temple. He said, the church is the only society that exists for the benefit of those who are not even its members. D.L. Moody’s one time said over a hundred years ago, he said, he said, he founded a church, a school, a publishing house, but he said this, a great many people have got a false idea about the church. They have an idea that the church is a place to simply rest in, to get into a nicely cushioned pew, contribute to the charities, listen to the minister, and do their share to keep the church out of bankruptcy. It’s all they want. The idea of work for them, actual work in the church, never enters their minds.

Football star this week, one of the great coaches, a guy named Bud Wilkerson, he used to coach for years at the University of Oklahoma, said this, football is a game played by 22 exhausted men in need of a break, watched by 60,000 people in need of exercise. We don’t want church to be like that. How many of you heard the 80-20 rule? You know, 80% do 20% of the work, 80% give 20% of the offering. Nah, that’s not the church. That’s not the church of the New Testament. That’s not the folks that are around this, that are building this great wall.

Vince Lombardi said this, I believe that any man’s finest hour, the greatest fulfillment of all that he holds dear, is that moment when he has worked his heart out in a good cause, lies exhausted on the field of battle victorious. We’re always, we’re already victorious, ladies and gentlemen. We’re victorious because of a cross that we’re going to celebrate in just a little bit. But let me close with this. If you watch the Olympics, there were a lot of great stories in the Olympics. I want to show you a picture of a guy named Steven Nedorosik. Steven’s pronounced that five times. It’s like one of these words. Steve here came for one reason. He came, he’s a part of the gymnastic team. The gymnastic team was on a, they were on a dry run, a drought. They hadn’t won even a medal since 2008. He is the last guy in the last event for the, for the team competition. They brought him for one thing, the pommel horse. They didn’t bring him for the bars. They didn’t bring him for, for the, you know, the parallel bars. They didn’t, they didn’t bring him for the rings. They didn’t bring him for the, for the floor exercise. They brought him for the pommel horse. And this guy is, look at him. He’s the nerd’s nerd. He is. He was an electrical engineering major at Penn State. Okay. Now he loves Rubik’s Cube. They can do a Rubik’s Cube in 8.6 seconds. I mean, he is, he’s, and he’s just, he’s just a smart guy. He also, if you notice, wears glasses. They, I mean, during the Olympics, they would put his face next to Clark Kent’s. Okay. He wears glasses because he has a, he has a eye disease that makes him extremely cross-eyed. Yet you’re watching one. I’ll show you his routine in just a minute, where he takes his glasses off. He can’t even see what he’s doing. It’s all by feel. But now, he’s the last guy of all the team exercises, and how he does will depend whether they get a medal or not. He’s their home run hitter. He’s gotta step it up. All eyes are on him. It’s his one job to do. My question to you is this. Get the medal. My question to you is this. What’s God called you to do? You know what Steve Nedorosik was called to do, how he needed to step up. These people, we know what they were called to do. They needed to step up. Everybody’s involved. Everybody’s unified. What’s God called you to do? You’d be surprised how many folks, they’ll be older and they’ll kind of go, gosh, I almost went home, but God’s apparently got me here for a reason, and yet they never asked God what the reason is. God got you called here to do. When was the last time you prayed for God to sit there and say, God, whether I’m 90 years old or I’m 29 years old, what have you got for me to do? Building a wall? Building a gate? Putting mortar on a tower? I’ll do it. I’ll do whatever you want me to do, and I’m with you, and I’m with these folks. Yeah, we can be doing the negatives and stuff. That takes too much energy. Let’s get about the things we need to be about. God’s got some neat things for this church. Folks, I’m just kind of watching. You know, I’ve only been here a couple years, and I’m thinking, what an opportunity. What a great bunch of folks. We’ve got so much to be able to do, but are you ready to step up? Right now, we’re going to get ready to take on the Lord’s Supper. Jesus came for one reason. Do you realize that? Yeah, He healed. Yeah, He did all those kind of things, but He came for one reason. Christmas is nice, but that baby was born for one reason, that He would go to a cross and die. What’s your one reason? What has God got planned for you in Sauldam Baptist Church, in the community of Ravenel, South Carolina, to make a difference? I want you to bow your head. I want you to close your eyes. The Bible says before we come to the Lord’s table, we’re to come worthily. It means we need to get our act right. We’re coming to His table. We’re remembering what He did for us. So I want you to just get things right with Him. Just spend some time in prayer just saying, God, I messed up this week, or I need to apologize for this, or I need to repent of that, or God, maybe you’re at a place where you’re sitting there going, I need to step it up, Lord, and I just need You to make it real clear to me what my job’s to be. That’s what I want You to do.