Why Relationships Matter.
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Good morning and welcome to The Bridge!
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Is it just me or have you ever noticed that loving people isn’t easy?
funny example from marriage
funny example from life
funny example from church
with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love,
Why is this so hard?!
Because we’re not great at being humble.
Because we’re not great at being gentle.
Because we’re not great at being patient!
Because we’re not all that good at putting up with people that get on our nerves!
And maybe you’re thinking, “Well that’s not my problem. It’s everybody else’s problem.”
They’re the proud one!
They’re the disagreeable one!
They’re the impatient one!
They’re the one that won’t put up with me!
Here’s what we absolutely need to understand:
We get derailed when we stop moving forward together.
Nehemiah finally arrives in Jerusalem and after 3 days he wakes up in the middle of the night, mounts his horse and begins riding around the perimeter of the city inspecting the walls and the gates that were in dire need of repair.
(show drawing of Nehemiah’s Night Ride)
The historian Josephus recorded the circumference of JErusalem’s walls at about 4.5 miles. So Nehemiah is taking quite a long ride here in the middle of the night.
Other sources tell us that after Nehemiah’s reconstruction project the walls were 15ft thick and 12 feet high. Rebuilding the walls and the gates was a big job!
How did things get this bad? How did the entire city of Jerusalem, the city on a hill, the glorious city of God come to be nearly wiped out and swept away from the anals of history altogether?
We’re given a clue in Nehemiah’s journal...
So I said to them, “You see the trouble we are in. Jerusalem lies in ruins and its gates have been burned. Come, let’s rebuild Jerusalem’s wall, so that we will no longer be a disgrace.”
Why were they disgraced?
Because they were living in defeat!
Because they were divided!
Because they were living in the past!
Because their prior leadership was only it for personal gain!
Because they were paralyzed by fear of the surrounding nations!
Nehemiah challenged them and enouraged them that while yes, the work was huge, if it was done in alignment with God it would be a success.
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 said, we have a huge task before us, let’s do it together and let’s do it God’s way.
Nehemiah challenged them to dedicate themselves to a cause bigger than themselves and to each other!
They said, “Let’s start rebuilding!”
“Come, let us rebuild the walls of Jerusalem...”
Nehemiah 2:
Of course the opposition wasn’t far away and it quickly came in the form of criticisms and accusations.
I gave them this reply, “The God of the heavens is the one who will grant us success. We, his servants, will start building, but you have no share, right, or historic claim in Jerusalem.”
Nehemiah 2:19
When Sanballat the Horonite, Tobiah the Ammonite official, and Geshem the Arab heard about this, they mocked and despised us, and said, “What is this you’re doing? Are you rebelling against the king?”
The enemy had kept Israel on the sidelines for decades! The city had been conquered years prior to Nehemiah’s return yet the people hadn’t begun to rebuild. THey hadn’t begun to repopulate. They hadn’t reorganized and reunified.
Something bad that happened to them was still controlling them and dictating the outcome of their lives.
Nehemiah returned and said, “We’re no longer going to live defeated, complacenet lives. We may not have everything we want, but we’ve got everything we need!
We have God on our side
AND we have each other side by side.
So Nehemiah looked the enemy in the face and said, “I know what you’re trying to do. You’re trying to stall us again. To trying prey on our weaknesses again. You’re trying to divide us again. It’s not gonna work this time! We know who we are now! We are servants of the Most High God. You are not welcome here!”
The enemy was trying to play on their insecurities! “they mocked them”
The enemy was trying to magnify their weaknesses! “they ridiculed them”
THe enemy was trying to get them to question their motives! “What is this you’re doing?”
The enemy was challenging their allegiances! “Are you rebelling against the King?”
Loving people isn’t because loving ourselves isn’t easy!
Who here isn’t aware of their insecurities?
Who here doesn’t have a host of weaknesses?
Who here doesn’t make decisions that are selfishly motivated?
Who here doesn’t have divided allegiances or competing values?
The answer is we all do! And if our enemy can convince us that we’re in this fight alone, that nobody likes us, that we’re only looking out for ourselves, that we’ll never amount to anything, that we’ll never accomplish anything, we’ll set our own goals, chart our own course, and live our own lives. And when we do that, we don’t accomplish the “bigger than ourselves cause” that God created us for.
We get derailed when we stop moving forward together.
Nehemiah knew this. So he said, “Not today. We, collectively, together, all of us are GOD’s servants and we will rebuild the walls together.”