Video Transcript: Nehemiah

all right, being an effective manager. Qualification number five, being a finisher,  someone who, someone who gets things done. We're going to look at  Nehemiah case study, the problem that Nehemiah faced. Nehemiah 1:3, and  they said to me, the remnant there and the province who had survived the exile  is in great trouble and shame. The wall of Jerusalem is broken down and its  gates are destroyed by fire. So Nehemiah is in exile, and the walls of Jerusalem, 70 years before, had been destroyed. The Assyrians, or the Babylonians, had  annihilated them, taken people into exile. Daniel was part of that whole exile  thing, but now they're thinking about coming back. And Nehemiah is still in a  foreign land. He's the cup bearer of the king, and he hears some reports about  Jerusalem, and some had gone back, and yet the walls were destroyed. The  temple was not built. And so that's, that's the problem that Nehemiah is like, you  know, sad about this whole thing is his dream of the future, and everything that  God had promised, you know, had been destroyed, but there was the hope of it  being rebuilt. And Nehemiah hears that the walls are destroyed and and still  burnt, and no progress is being made. So action, one, Nehemiah 1:4. As soon  as I heard these words, I sat down and wept and mourned for days, and I  continued fasting and praying before the God of heaven. So Nehemiah, we're  going to see as a man of action. Before he does anything, he goes before the  Lord when he sees the hurt and he sees the brokenness, he himself is broken,  and he goes before the Lord. If you're planting a church and your heart is not  broken for the church, if your heart is not broken for people that are lost, if it just  doesn't tear your insides out. You might as well not plant the church, because  you will not have the motivation to carry through. And this, this is hurting  Nehemiah to the core of his of his being. The walls are destroyed. Jerusalem is  in tatters, and for him, that's the symbol of God's presence and God's plan in the world. So whatever it is that you're doing, if you're not heart is not broken for it,  then you're probably doing the wrong thing. You have to have this passion, this  energy, for the thing that that you're doing. Action number two, Nehemiah 2:5,  and I said to the king, if it pleases the king, and if your servant has found favor in your sight, that you send me to Judah, to the city of my father's graves, that I  may rebuild it. So he not only prays about it, it not only breaks his heart, but he  wants, but he wants to do something about it. When I had my first church, it was an established church. It was a 75 year old church, and I saw that when  because the people were friendly towards outsiders, that they they loved new  people coming to the church, that the church doubled in size just because it was friendly, and I but then the Lord really laid on my heart a passion for people that  didn't go to church. And I thought, well, if an old church is just friendly towards  outsiders and people come, what if you started a church for that very purpose?  We're going to start a church to actually reach people that don't go to church. So it was a passion. It was something that was breaking my heart, but I finally had  to go do something about it. I went to the powers that be, and I said, this is what 

I want to do. Will you help me do that? So that's what Nehemiah does. Action  number three, Nehemiah 2:17. Then I said to them, you see the trouble we are  in, how Jerusalem lies and ruins with its gates burned. He's talking to the  people, his own people there in Judah. He's gone there now come. Let us  rebuild the wall of Jerusalem that we may no longer suffer derision. You know,  the neighboring peoples are looking at the torn walls and the burnt bricks and  saying, you know, this is the God of Israel. You know, this is his holy city. And so  it was under derision. People were mocking verse 18, and I told them of the of  the hand of my God that had been upon me for good, and also for the words  that the king had. Spoken to me, and they said, Let us rise up and build. So they strengthened their hands for the good work. So Nehemiah goes and he, you  know, he sort of sells the project. You know, this is no good. The walls are  destroyed. Come on, we can do this. God is behind this. Even the foreign king is behind us. Let's, let's do this so you can see step by step. Now Nehemiah prays  about it. He goes and looks at it. He then sells the people on this idea, and they  get started. Action four. Nehemiah 4:6. So we built the wall, and all the wall  joined together to half its height for the people had a mind to work. So there's all  this enthusiasm, this energy, this this huge task of rebuilding the wall. They don't have a lot of people, and yet they're working hard at it. They're going at it. That's what a manager does. He gets, he sees the need. Assembles the people, sells it to them. Let's do this. And then they start working. And he's behind them all the  way, okay, any good manager has to be able to accomplish stuff, stuff that they  can't do on their own. To unite the whole church, unite groups of people, teams  of people to go do something. If a manager can't do that, then you're not really a manager. Okay? Well, they run into a problem as as you always do. You know,  you're trying to get something done. You're trying to get people together to get  something done. There are going to be some problems along the way. So here's problem number two, Nehemiah 4:7. But when Sanballat and Tobiah and the  Arabs and the Ammonites and the ash, the Ashdodites heard that the repairing  of the walls of Jerusalem was going forward and that the breaches were  beginning to be closed, they were very angry, and they all plotted together to  come and fight against Jerusalem and to cause confusion in it, and we prayed to our God and set guard as a protection against them, day and night in Judah, it  was said, the strength of those who bear the burdens is failing. There is too  much rubble. By ourselves, we will not be able to rebuild the wall. Okay, so  there's, there's a couple of threats. One, there's a threat from the outside. The  neighboring nations are seeing these Israelites starting to rebuild the wall, and  they're feeling a little threatened. So they're like threatening themselves. We  have to do what we can to stop them from rebuilding the wall. We don't want  Jerusalem strong again. So there was this threat from up without, and often, as  a manager, there are threats from without. You're trying to accomplish  something, you're trying to build a church. Let's say you're trying to plant a 

church. I remember when we were trying to plant a church, the first problem was the space. And we went to schools and we asked, Can we use your space and  and this township was against churches using the space, and this one had this  problem, and you had to fight for these things. There were, there were threats  from the outside that wanted this to not get off the ground, but not only threats  on the outside, on the inside, okay, the people start rebuilding the wall, and they  have all this enthusiasm and they're doing it, but then they look around and they  see all this the stone that's, you know, one on top another. And they start, you  know, when you begin something, you start realizing how much work it is before  you begin. You look at something, you go, yeah, I think we can do that. But after  working at it for a while, you realize this is a lot harder than you thought. And so, so we read here, there was too much rubble. We ourselves are not able to  rebuild the wall, we can't do this. In the end, you realize, you know, what are we  doing? We can't do this. Why is it hard to finish? What you start this? This whole section is called being a finisher, having the tenacity, the will, the drive, the  passion to start something and to finish it. Why is it hard to finish? What has  started? Number one, the enthusiasm of the new is gone. I mean, in the  beginning, you have all this new stuff, planting a church. We had a little team of  people we're going to plant the church, and everyone on the team was  enthusiastic, and they were willing to work, come in on Saturday, work at night,  they were willing to do stuff. You go to the average church, you can hardly get  three people to do anything. It's the same Christians. But the problem in a  traditional church that's existed for many years is the enthusiasm wore out long  ago. In a new church, there's all this enthusiasm. You can use it new project.  Let's go projects in your own home. You know you you're gonna rebuild  something. You get a paint, and you start. And you have all this enthusiasm. You buy the paint, you get you plan it out, get all the right colors. But about halfway  through, it's like. Ah, this is a lot of work. The enthusiasm is waning. Number  two, the task is always a lot harder than anticipated. We're doing this remodel  thing in our church. I thought it would take two weeks. We've been working for  two months. Probably won't be done for another two months. It's just a lot  harder. I'm famous at our church for saying, how hard can it be? I look at things  and go, Well, how hard can that be? Apparently, things are a lot harder than I  think they are, because they end up being that way. So you get tired number  three, people get bored and want to move on to other things with this renovation thing. I remember the first night I had people just show up and do anything. And  a couple people showed up, and I gave them a sanding bar. You know, we had  done something to the wall. You got to go around this wall. It's 80 feet this way,  60 feet that way, 80 feet that way, 60 feet that way, and you have to sand. They  lasted about 15 minutes, and they came back and said, You got anything else to do? Why? Because they number one. They got bored, and they discovered this  is a lot of work. It sounded like fun. Everyone coming down and doing 

something, and it is fun for a half an hour. Then you get bored, or, you know, it  starts hurting. Number four, people are forever hopeful that the next project will  be easier and more exciting. You know, they do something for a while, and it's  like, I'm tired of doing this, but oh, there's something over there that's probably  more exciting. And people keep bouncing from one new thing to another. So a  

manager has to fight all of that. How do we stay on task? How do we finish what we start? Action number five, Nehemiah 4:13, therefore, I stationed some of the  people behind the lowest points of the wall. They had all these threats from the  

neighboring villages and countries that you know were threatening to destroy  the wall or even kill people. So I stationed some of the people behind the lowest  points of the wall at the exposed places. Posting them, this is interesting.  Posting them by families with their swords spears and bows. After I looked  things over, I stood up and said to the nobles, the officials and the rest of the  people, don't be afraid of them. Remember the Lord who is great and awesome  and fight, who for your families, your sons and your daughters, your wives and  your homes. When our enemies heard that we were aware of their plot and that  God had frustrated it, we all returned to the wall, each to our own work. From  that day on, half my men did the work while the other half were equipped  spears, shields, bows and armor. Why families? Why did he post them by  families? Because people will fight for what is important to them. If you want  your people to fight for your project, you need to appeal to what is important to  them. Why are we doing this church renovation, it's so that we can worship God  better and we can support one another better. See, I have to sell, not this. This  would be really cool. You know, you know, our old sanctuary is kind of old and  tired. Let's just do something new and be really cool. I mean, I think that, I think  it will be really cool, but no one's going to do a lot of work, because it's really  cool. I mean, there might be a few artist types, but the vast majority are not  going to do anything unless they can see that it makes a difference with the  things that matter to them most. So as a manager, you want to motivate people,  you have to appeal to what matters to them most. Action, six, Nehemiah 6:15.  So the wall was completed on the 25th day of Elul in 52 days. I mean, so they I  mean, they worked hard. They got it done. Opposition to the wall. When all our  enemies heard about this, all the surrounding nations were afraid and lost their  self confidence. Okay, so they defeated their enemies. They lost their self  confidence. But notice why? This is kind of interesting to me. They lost their self  confidence. Why? Because they realized that this work had been done with the  help of our God. Okay, so they they didn't lose their confidence because they  saw the wall going up. They didn't lose the confidence because Nehemiah was  such a great leader. They lose they lost confidence because they realized that  this is a project that could not be done unless God was behind it. They lost  confidence because God was behind it as a church, that's what I want people to  see, that we are doing. Yeah, we're trying the impossible. Yeah, our little rag tag 

group couldn't do this. But you know what, we have the God of the universe  behind us. We're going to succeed, not because of us, but because he. And you  know what? That's what people will see. They will see God. They will realize that we couldn't do such a thing, and God will get the glory. In Proverbs 19:21, Many  are the plans in a person's heart, but it's the Lord's purpose that prevails.  Proverbs 16:3, commit to the Lord whatever you do, and He will establish your  plan. So you want to be a manager like Nehemiah. So what do you do? You  know you have this huge task in front of you. Have this impossible thing that you have to organize. You have this team of people that isn't united, and you have is  you just want to quit. What do you do? Bottom line, what does an effective  manager do? He puts another brick on the wall. You see, that's all, that's all you  have to do. Because you know what God is, the one that's going to build the  wall, and when the wall is going to be finished, but that's up to him. Your job,  your task is just to motivate to do whatever it takes to get one more brick on the  wall. And after that brick is on the wall, then you get the next one. All of a  sudden, the wall is done.