According to a 2013 study by Transportation for America, one in nine bridges, they said, remained structurally deficient. That makes you nervous. That was in America, so I'm sure British bridges are much more sturdy. But that was apparently the findings of this report in 2013, that one in nine bridges were structurally deficient. But however true or not that may be about bridges in the United States, I think we can say that the number is probably higher for churches that are structurally deficient, not just in America, but around the world. Churches, like many bridges, can operate under a kind of veneer of usefulness and purpose, but deep down underneath there are great structural problems. In this chapter that we have just read we see, of course, Nehemiah and the people of Israel rebuilding the walls of Jerusalem. Of course, that was a physical rebuilding of a very real city with walls made of bricks and mortar. But there are lessons from this passage which help us as we build a spiritual building, a spiritual city. We're in a church right now, but the church is not the four walls we're within, although we can call that a church. But really, in the Bible, the church is people. And that is what God is most concerned with building. building up throughout New Testament. There are exhortation encouragements to build one another up and what happened physically here in the Old Testament carries across lessons for us today about how we build one another up and how we build the church that we might be strong and fortified and accomplish the purposes which Christ wants us to accomplish in the world today. It's a long passage, one of those passages which if you're reading at home, you might be tempted to sort of skip over until you get onto something a bit easier, but there are lessons. as I say, to be learned from this chapter. I just want to make three observations this morning, and I'm sure there's many more that could be made. I'd encourage you to look, and you may find other nuggets, which I have not. things to observe in this chapter which are incredibly helpful to us even today. And before we look at those, just another point. I read all those names and even as I read them I thought, why am I doing this? Why are we reading name after name of people who mean nothing to us? But imagine that your name was in this chapter. Imagine you were one of those who were building the sheep gate, or the dung gate, or whatever gate it might be, or whatever part of the wall. This would be your favourite part of Scripture, wouldn't it? The part where you are mentioned. And all these people, although they're unknown to us, they're known to God, and they were known to God. And he has recorded them in the Bible. And he wanted their names recording. So it's good for us to acknowledge that and to read it publicly. But let's look at these three observations from this chapter to see what we can learn today. And the first thing I want to draw your attention to is verse one. Seems a good place to start. Look at what verse one says. Nehemiah writes, then Eliashib, the high priest, rose up with his brethren, the priests, and built the sheep gate. They consecrated it and hung its doors. In this passage, 10 gates are mentioned. You can see them on the map in your service sheet, and there are probably other gates as well, hence why there's one or two other gates on the map. But 10 are mentioned in this chapter. They are, if you want to know, the Sheep Gate, the Fish Gate, the Old Gate, the Valley Gate, the Refuse Gate, the Fountain Gate, the Water Gate, the Horse Gate, the East Gate, and the Mifkad gate or the mustering gate as it's translated as. And if you look at the passage in detail you see that the gates on the eastern side That's on the right of your map. They seem to be more or less intact. It doesn't say that they repaired them or rebuilt them. It says they just rebuilt the walls around them. They seem to be intact. But as you go round to the west, and go up to the north, you find that they start needing to repair the gates. The gates need repairing and the two northernmost gates, the sheep gate and the fish gate, they need to be rebuilt entirely. It seems nothing was left. And this was probably because Jerusalem at this time was more vulnerable in the north. There was a valley round the south on the east and to the south, which made it more defensible. So when Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon, came to attack Jerusalem, it seems he came from the north. And the brunt of the besiegement of Jerusalem happened in the north, which probably explains why the Sheep Gate and the Fish Gate were utterly destroyed, and those other gates on the west side suffered the most damage. And that was where the people had to do the most rebuilding. But notice where they start. Notice the first gate that is mentioned in verse one. We're told that, no less than the high priest himself, Eliashib, rose up with his brethren, the priests, and they built the sheep gate. They built the sheep gate. the Sheep Gate. The Sheep Gate was the gate nearest to the Temple Mount, as you can see on your map. And it seems that this was the place where the sheep and other animals for sacrifice would be brought into the Temple. It was a very significant gate in the city. That was where all the sacrifices to be burnt on the altar were brought into the city. And did you notice one other detail, something unique that is said about the Sheep Gate, which is not said about any of the others. Look at the end of verse one. It says, they built as far as the Tower of the Hundred and consecrated it. Then as far as the Tower of Hananel. We're told that they consecrated the Sheep Gate. The other gates were told they were built and they were hung with bars and bolts and gates and all these things, but only the sheep gate is consecrated. And what does consecrated mean? Well, consecrated means to make holy, to set aside something as special. That's what it means to make something holy. And the Sheep Gate, alone of all the gates in the city of Jerusalem, was consecrated. It was made special. They acknowledged that this gate was important. And the most likely reason seems to be because it was the place where the sacrifices came in. I believe there is a lesson here for us today. Cities obviously have their foundations underneath the walls, don't they? That's what you build upon, the foundation. But spiritually speaking, this first one points to what is the true foundation of God's people, back then and today as well. It's not something you dig in the earth. Our foundation is the sacrifice of Christ. Back in the Old Testament, they obviously sacrificed sheep and goats and lambs and bulls and all these other things, but the book of Hebrews makes clear that those things were just shadows. They were pictures of a greater sacrifice that would come later. If I can put it in sort of crude language, the sacrifice of the Old Testament were IOUs to God. They were acknowledgement that sin needed to be paid for. God could not just sweep sin under the carpet, a blood had to be paid, a debt needed to be paid for sin. It couldn't just be forgotten. And so when they offered a lamb, when they offered a goat, when they offered a bull, the person who was confessing their sin was acknowledging, my sin matters. My sin requires a penalty. And that lamb or that goat, et cetera, illustrated that fact. But those sheep and goats were never able to take away sin. They were just an acknowledgement. They were just an IOU. And just like an IOU may settle for a time, It can't settle forever. Eventually, the person you owe is gonna say, come on now, I need the money. The I owe you is not enough. And that's exactly what happened when Christ came. Christ came, the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. And when he died on that cross, he was that perfect lamb. And when he was sacrificed on that tree, he was able to take away sin once and for all, so that anyone who trusts in him can be forgiven. That is the gospel. That is the central teaching of the church. That is what Christ told us to go and tell the world. And just like the sheep gate was consecrated when Nehemiah and the others rebuilt the walls, So the gospel message for us must be consecrated. It must be special. We must not neglect that. There were many other gates in the city. There were many other places which needed to be repaired and be considered as well. And likewise, there were many teachings in the Bible, many things that we should teach and look into. but we must never forget, we must never neglect the central message of scripture, the gospel. Why Jesus came into this world, how he came and died on a cross and rose again three days later. That is the gate, if you like, that we must consecrate. You might remember in the book of Isaiah, when Isaiah is chosen by God to be a prophet, and Isaiah's given this astonishing vision of God in the temple. And when Isaiah sees the vision, he says, woe is me, for I'm a man of unclean lips. He sees the glory and the beauty and the purity of God, And he says, he becomes very conscious of his own sinfulness, his own weakness, his own faultiness. And he says, woe is me, for I am a man of unclean lips. But then an angel comes and takes with some prongs a coal from the altar, and he puts it on Isaiah's lips. and he essentially tells him, now you are clean. Now you are ready to preach God's words. And the symbolism, hopefully, is obvious. The angel took a coal from the altar and he purged Isaiah's lips. That's what always needs to happen. Before we can serve God, we must come to his altar. Before we become useful to God, first we must be forgiven by God, be restored into a relationship with Him. And that doesn't come through our work, it doesn't come through our service, it doesn't come through our money, it doesn't come through anything we offer to Him. It's all His grace to us, that cold from the altar. that sacrifice of Christ, which makes us right with Him. And that's always where it starts. That's always where it must begin. You might remember John Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress, and he has this huge burden on his back, picturing his burden of sin. And he sees evangelists, and the evangelist tells him to go to the Wicket Gate, tells him essentially to go to the cross, and only when pilgrim, Christian in that story, goes to the cross, only then is his burden removed. Only then does it roll off his back and go into the tomb, never to be seen again. And his real journey starts at the cross. That's what we must remember. That is what we must keep as central in any church, if it's to be strong, if it's to be secure, So that's the first observation, first lesson from this passage. They consecrated the sheep gate. They consecrated the place of sacrifice. And we as a church must do that as well. Put Christ and his sacrifice in first and foremost place. But there's something else I want you to observe as well. And this is towards the end of the passage, although really it's kind of all the way through in different parts. But did you notice a particular phrase or a similar phrase which is repeated several times towards the end of the chapter in particular? Look at verse 28 for example. We say, beyond the horse gate, the priest made repairs, each in front of his own house. Or again, look at the end of verse 30. It says, after him, Meshulam, the son of Berechiah, made repairs in front of his own dwelling. And time and time again in this chapter, we read of people who repaired the wall in front of their own house. No one person in this chapter could have rebuilt the whole walls of Jerusalem by themselves, at least not very quickly anyway. But they built the wall in front of their own house. On beach missions, you know I'm involved with beach missions in the summer, and we often do tug of wars, at least when we're on the beaches. We'll have boys versus girls on the beach in the tug-of-war. Can you imagine it? If one of those teams looked at the other side and saw how strong they were and how much more there were of them, perhaps, and they just thought, I give up. There's no way I can defeat the other sides with their strength and with their numbers. That'd be a foolish way to look because, of course that's true, no individual can defeat a whole host. But in a tug-of-war, that's not what's important. What's important is that you pull as hard as you can on your bit of the rope. in unison with the other people on your team. You don't have to worry about the other side. You don't even have to worry about any other section of the rope in that tug of war. All you have to worry about is holding firmly onto your bit of the rope. I mean, that's the lesson we're being given here as well. These people focused on the wall in front of their own house. And that's not selfish. That's not just, I'm only concerned with this particular part, because by doing that, and if everyone did that, the whole wall could be built. And I believe that is taught repeatedly in scripture, that we are to take care of our own place first, chiefly spiritually. We have a special responsibility for what God has given to us. We're not to primarily worry about what other people are doing, but to make sure what we are doing is right and according to his word. It's interesting. Do you remember the Great Commission at the end of Matthew's gospel where Jesus says, go ye into all the world and preach the gospel? Notice it says, go ye, ye being plural of you. It doesn't say, go you into all the world. No one of us can do that. Go into every country of all the whole globe, telling them about Jesus. If you tried doing that, you'd kill yourself. As a single individual, we cannot hope to do that. We cannot hope to go into all the world and preach the gospel. but together we can. That's why Jesus said, go ye into all the world. And we all have different parts in that work. We all have a different part of the rope, as it were, but we do have our part. And what God says to us, as illustrated in this chapter, is focus on your part of the war. Focus on the part which God has given to you first and foremost. We've been told in other parts of scripture that God has set our times and our seasons and our appointed place. Where you are, the job you have, the family you're in, the time of history that we're living in has been appointed by God. He has put us into the place in which we are that we might serve him in it. And it's gonna look slightly different for all of us. It will look the same generally. We love other people. We show kindness and graciousness and generosity. That's the same for all of us. But exactly how that manifests itself is not gonna be the same for all of us. We all have to look to Christ to see how we serve him ourselves. If we're a husband, we need to love our wife. If we're a child, we need to honor our parents. If we're an employee, we need to honor our employer. And you could go on and on and on with the different situations of life we might be in. But what matters is that we serve God where we are, that we build our portion of the wall. That's the lesson of this passage. You cannot reach every individual on this planet, but you can talk to your next door neighbor. You can't love every family in the world, but you can love your own family. That's why we're given a very serious warning in Paul's letter to Timothy, and Paul very severely warns Timothy and his listeners, and he says, if anyone fails to provide for his own family, he has denied the faith, and he is worse than an unbeliever, because that person has not taken care of their portion of the war. That is the second observation from this passage. It reminds me a little bit of a little story I heard about two men riding a tandem bicycle up a steep hill. And after much effort, they finally made it to the top of the hill. And the front rider said, that was a tough ride. And the second rider responded, yeah, it sure was. If I hadn't kept the brake on, we might have slipped backwards. You see two people there not working together, not concentrating on their part of the job, or at least not concentrating on their part of the work in relation to others. We need to focus on what we should be doing for the good of the whole. But that leads to just one final observation, and this is back near the beginning of the chapter. Look at verse five, and we'll close with this. In verse five, Nehemiah says, next to them, the Techoites made repairs, but their nobles did not put their shoulders to the work of the lords. Tekoa was a region in Israel. Incidentally, it was the place where Amos, the prophet, was from. He was a herdsman of the land of Tekoa. And these Tekoites were given their particular responsibility of this particular section of the wall. But the nobles, the important people, the rulers of the people of the Tekoites, did not put their hand to the work. They did not put their shoulder to the work of the lords. We're not told exactly why they didn't, but I think we can guess from the facts that they were called the nobles. The nobles considered themselves above the work of building the city walls. Perhaps they thought that it wasn't their responsibility to get their hands dirty. They were nobles after all. Perhaps they thought that their best work existed in an advisory capacity as supervisors. It's a great role to be a supervisor, isn't it? To watch other people work. And perhaps that's what these nobles thought their role was, to watch other people work and to supervise them, but not get their hands dirty themselves. Again, it reminds me of a story of a rowing company who decided to host a kind of regatta, a kind of event, where they'd have races. And they had their rowing team, and they invited other rival rowing teams to join in with this event. And they looked forward to it with great anticipation and expectation of victory. And then when the day came, one of their rival crews when the race started, immediately shot into the front, and they actually won the race by 11 lengths. And there was a huge inquest after the race, wondering what had happened, what had gone wrong, how could they have had this humiliating defeat? And a committee was appointed and they themselves appointed several task forces to study the various aspects of the race. They met for three months and they issued a preliminary report and in the essence the report said that the rival crew had been unfair, they had cheated and they said this. I hope I'm not teaching grandmothers to suck eggs here, but in rowing, you know, you have generally rowers, and then you have someone at the front who does nothing, it seems. They just sit there yelling stroke. That's the cockswain, the cocks at one end of the boat. Well, this is what they discovered from their report. They said, the other team, they had eight people rowing and one cockswain steering and shouting out the beat. But we had one person rowing, and ate cockswains. The chairman of the board thanked the committee and sent it away to study the matter further and make recommendations for the rematch. Four months later, the committee came back with a recommendation, our guy has to row faster. You see the problem. Many managers, but not any workers. People willing to do the work and I think churches can take a lesson there, can't they? Some churches have leaders who think they are above the ordinary work of church. After all, they preach in the pulpit. They stand up week after week. Surely that's sufficient. It's the congregation. It's they who have to do the dirty work of talking to people in the week and getting their hands dirty, as it were, in the world out there. But surely not the church leader, not the preacher. He gets to stand in his pulpit. And many churches can be like that, where leaders do not get involved in the day-to-day living of being an ordinary Christian. But other churches have members of the congregation who think it is the pastor who does the ordinary work of being a Christian. After all, he does it so they don't have to. He's the one who preaches and he's the one who needs to live as a Christian and do all the things that the Bible says and we can sort of hang on to his coattails and let him do the work and function a bit like a priest. There are churches like both of those examples, but that's not what this passage teaches. Both the priests and the ordinary people of the people of Israel all were involved in building the walls. They all had their part to play. In fact, even as I was reading it, I picked up something which I hadn't noticed before. I should have made note of the verse, but did you notice where it said about one family and it mentioned that his daughters, did you pick up on that? His daughters, come find the verse, someone will perhaps shout it out if you see it, but it says his daughters put their hand to the work. You could easily imagine them saying, oh, well, we don't want to get involved with the manual labor, that's their job, it's the men's job. But no, even the daughters of this particular family, they put their hand to the work. Everyone, everyone has their role to play. We all have our part to play in bearing the burden of God's work. So that's really the question for each of us this evening, that last and third observation. Are you like the nobles of the Takoites who did not put their shoulder to the work of the Lord? We don't all have to do the same thing. Not everyone can preach. Not everyone can give huge amounts of money. Not everyone can pray for long hours. Not everyone can do everything. Not anyone can do everything. But we can all do something. and God is expecting us to do what we can for his kingdom. And I trust reading this passage with all its strange names and strange individuals, we can see that fundamental lesson that we all have a role to play in the greater task of God's kingdom and read the passage again more and I'm sure you'll find other insights and observations which are help to us as we seek to serve him but time is gone so we're going to sing our final hymn but it's a hymn very applicable to what we have been looking at number 779. It's a prayer really asking God to help us to see the ways in which we can serve him, the ways in which we can put our shoulder to the work that he has given. It's 779. Lord, speak to me that I may speak in living echoes of thy tone, as thou hast sought, so let me seek thy erring children, lost and lone. So let's stand to sing in closing, 779. With the angels on thy turn, As thou hast sought, so let me see. I may meet the wandering and the laboring feet. Oh, feed me, Lord, that I may feed my hungry ones I may stretch out a loving hand to restless, living child. that I may teach the precious things the Lord supports, and make my verse that faith may reach the king. ♪ That thy rich teeth may soothing power ♪ ♪ The world in season pass from thee ♪ ♪ To will you of old be ♪ ♪ Until my very eyes are full ♪ ♪ In gifting thoughts and glowing words ♪ ♪ I'll have to tell my grave story to you ♪ gives me all beauty and me. Just as the winds, and when, and when, until I'm blessed.