The Value Of Participation Series

Who does God use to accomplish His will here on earth? Who does God use to do His

will, to impact others and to participate in the tough tasks of life? There is a real simple

answer, He uses everyone! He uses everyone! And since God uses everyone, which

includes using you, using you and using me, I wanted to use our time together this

morning to talk about being a player in the activities of God in this world.

You have maybe heard it said that “everything has a place and everything should be in it’s

place”, well the same holds true for people. Everyone has a place in this world and

everyone should be in their place. When people are in their place, that special place that

God has for them, and they are using the gifts that God has given them, doing the thing

that God has for them to do, well, it is truly inspiring. It is also motivational and joy

producing and others are attracted. They are attracted because of the joy and energy and

because of the need within each of us to belong and to be needed and useful.

Do you have place on the wall? Of course you do! Do I have a place on the wall?

Absolutely! I hope that by the end of our time together today that we each can

understand more clearly where our place on the wall is and how God desires for each of us

to do what we can, with what we have and with what He has gifted us with to accomplish

His plan here in the world and specifically here at this church.

Prayer!

In case you were not here last week, you may be wondering what we are talking about

and maybe even what this pile of bricks is doing up here in front. Well for you and for the

benefit of all of us, lets hit the pause and rewind button just for a moment to review what

we learned last week.

Review Chapter 1+2

Now that we have all been refreshed and are on the same page of book, so to speak, lets

take a look at today’s scripture which is found in Nehemiah chapters 3and 4. I have

printed pieces of it for your use in the sermon guide, but if you have your personal copy of

God’s Word or can find a pew Bible please open to Nehemiah Chapter 3. Here we find

Nehemiah recording the names and origins as well as the places on the wall that each

person or group worked on.

This book in the Bible is called Nehemiah because of it’s author, but it could have just as

easily been called “The Workers”. Even Nehemiah gave the credit to the workers when he

wrote in Nehemiah 4:6 “”So built we the wall... for the people had a mind to work.”

Nehemiah faced a great challenge and had a great faith in a great God, but he would have

accomplished very little had there not been great dedication on the part of the people who

helped rebuild the wall. So let’s look at the scripture, shall we:

This is the second time that we have heard from Sanballat. Back in Chapter 2, Sanballat,

Tobiah and Geshem laughed at the plan that Nehemiah had for the rebuilding of the wall

and it even says that the three despised the Jews and the plan. I am not going to spend a

great deal of time today dealing with these three and the opposition that was to come up

against the Jews and Nehemiah for next week we are going to be taking an extended look

at the opposition that comes our way, both from the outside as well as from within our

very own ranks. But I think that this really sets the tone for today’s teaching. Look both

at what Sanballat said as well as the tone with which he said it. He called them feeble

Jews and I don’t think that you can argue to any great degree with him on this. You have

butchers, bakers and candle stick makers, you have merchants, perfumers and politicians

working on the wall. Nehemiah had people or rather God had people that you would

never expect to be completing this type of work.

Sanballat goes on to mock not only the workers but the quality of the work and the

materials with which they are building. If you go further down, you will find that Tobiah

is back in the picture and he makes a crack about the wall falling down if a small fox were

to run on it. Nehemiah found himself in a desperate situation with incompetent people,

facing ridicule from the outside and yet the work is getting done.