Speaker 1: 0:03

Well, hey again, before I dive into Nehemiah 6, just wanted to announce to you that we have hired Deborah Sistrunk to take over as our new assistant kid's town director. Is Deborah here? Deborah here, she ghosted us this morning. Okay well, she'll be starting on Wednesday, so it's okay, but anyway, if you do see Deborah, please give her a word of encouragement. We're excited she's joining our staff.

Speaker 1: 0:31

Speaking of staff, this is a sermon today about Christian leaders, and before you think, oh well, that's not me, let me pull up my fantasy football roster and start working on that, or whatever it is you might be into, I want to define what Christian leadership actually is, because Christian leadership is really it's influencing other people for God's glory and for the kingdom of God and to follow Jesus Christ, and so that can be a pastor of a church of 10,000, or it can be somebody who's influencing one person, so it really could be anybody. Any Christian ought to have some sort of an influence in the lives of other people. So you all have to pay attention now, but you have to also know if you're a Christian leader. If you're a Christian, I hesitate to use the word influencer because it makes me think about like social media influences. But if you're a Christian influencer, then you also have to know that you are. You're a target, that the enemy will target you.

Speaker 1: 1:37

Martin Luther, who lived a long time ago, started the Protestant Reformation in Germany about 500 years ago. He quickly became a target as he challenged the views of the Roman Catholic Church on justification, on the Bible, on the church, and he was summoned in 1521 to something called the diet of worms, which is not a new type of keto diet. It was a council. Actually, in Germany it would be the Diet of Worms, so it sounds a little different. But anyway, he was summoned there to answer for his teachings and what the Roman Catholic Church considered to be heresy, and they called him to renounce everything that he had taught. That was against what they taught, and he said no, I will not. So this is the truth of God's Word and on it here I stand. I can do no other. Well then, he left, and he was allowed to leave. But as soon as he left, the Roman Catholics made plans to capture him and then put him to death. And lo and behold, as he's traveling through a forest, these armed men come out of nowhere and kidnap him and take him to a castle and it was actually men sent by a friend of his, prince, frederick the Wise, who speared it to him away and hit him in this castle, and he went by an alias and nobody knew where he was. But while he was there in that castle he translated the entire New Testament into German so that all the German people could read the Bible for themselves.

Speaker 1: 3:15

Still, one of the greatest things that has ever happened to Christianity to this day, and what we see in Martin Luther's life and the lives of so many other people, is that God preserves his leaders. If God wants you to influence others for his glory in his kingdom, he will preserve you, and the first way we see that in this passage today Nehemiah 6, is that God preserves his leaders by giving them servants' hearts. Let's look at Nehemiah 6, 1 through 4. Now, when Sam Ballot and Tobiah and Geshem the Arab and the rest of our enemies heard that I had built the wall and that there was no breach left in it Although up to that time I had not set up the doors and the gates Sam Ballot and Geshem sent to me saying Come, let us meet together at Hacchapherum in the plain of Ono. But they intended to do me harm. And I sent messengers to them saying I am doing a great work and cannot come down. Why should the work stop while I leave it and come down to you? And they sent to me four times in this way and I answered them in the same manner. So we got Tobiah and Sam Ballot. They are back again causing trouble and just to make things easier, I am going to combine their names and call them Toballot. We had Brangelina, why not Toballot?

Speaker 1: 4:37

So the walls in Jerusalem were almost done and Toballot is getting desperate, trying to figure out a way to stop it. And so they try to lure Nehemiah away. And Nehemiah quickly somehow finds out that it is a trap, and this is another example of how God preserves his leaders, nehemiah. However, he finds out whether it is just the wisdom he has or somebody told him. God preserves Nehemiah here, but he doesn't let on the nose that is trapped. His response is, it sort of seems naive. He is like oh well, I can't leave my work. This is a great work, this is, how could I leave it? But his response, even though it is a little bit plain dumb, it still reveals a very key aspect of being a Christian leader, which is that a Christian leader is a servant. A Christian leader is a servant more than anything in the world. This is a key aspect of being a Christian leader.

Speaker 1: 5:35

Most people in the world think of leadership as amassing strength or power and then oftentimes using that strength and power against the people you are supposed to be leading. But not with Christian leadership. A Christian leader is called to serve God first and others second, and then, most importantly and maybe most and the most difficult thing is not to be in it for yourself. A Christian leader is not in it for themselves, and we see this. The most supreme example of this is Jesus, who is not in it for his own glory, but for the Father's glory and for our sakes. Mark 10, 42, and 45 says and Jesus called them to him and said to them you know that those who are considered rulers of the Gentiles Lord it over them and their great ones exercise authority over them. But it shall not be so among you. But whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be slave of all. For the Son of man came not to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many. Jesus is telling his disciples, and he's telling us, that if you're a Christian leader, you're not to lead the way the world leads. You're not to lord it over people. In other words, you're not to use your position of strength or power to better yourself while at the same time pushing other people down and harming them. You're not to do this for personal glory. You're to do this for the glory of God and to serve the needs of others. Now, how does that help us persevere or be preserved? Well, think about this. What if Nehemiah had gone out to meet with Tobalat? What if he had thought in his head hey, you know what, maybe they're gonna surrender to me If I get a peace treaty and then I go back and tell the others I'm gonna look like a hero. What if Nehemiah had done this for his own ego? Will he be dead? Because they were gonna kill him? And so it would have been a disaster for the project. It would have failed. They would have failed without Nehemiah's leadership. Anytime we attempt to lead in the church or in the kingdom of God, the way that most people lead in the world, what we get is disaster, Because pride comes before the fall. That's what the scripture says.

Speaker 1: 8:14

In the movie Jesus Revolution it's about the Jesus people movement in the 1960s and 70s where all these hippies started following Jesus right. And in California there was a guy named Lonnie Frisbee who had been a hippie and had been right in the thick of it on Haight Street in San Francisco and been on drugs and all that, and then Jesus saved him and brought him out of that life. He kind of remained hippie-ish, but he was a Jesus follower now and he started roaming around and telling people about Jesus and eventually came to this church in Southern California, calvary Chapel, pastored by a guy named Chuck Smith, and Chuck invited him into the congregation and he started sharing about Jesus and preaching about Jesus and all these hippies started coming to church. It was incredible, amazing work, amazing revival that God was doing. But then Lonnie started to become entranced by the attention of ministry, by even the feeling of power that can come with ministry, and he was making things about him in the worship service and it was going to destroy everything they had accomplished. And so Chuck Smith told him you gotta leave, and he did. Well, that, unfortunately, is one of many, many very sad examples of how power hungry leadership becomes toxic in a church and can lead to destruction. And it always happens at least almost always because a leader is in it for himself or herself and not to serve and not for the Lord.

Speaker 1: 9:55

Servant leaders, christian leaders, delight, take joy in what John 3.30 says. This is John the Baptist talking about Jesus. He says he must increase, but I must decrease. Boy, if that is your mantra, if that's if you wake up every day and you say, lord, let me decrease and let you increase, even as a result of my decreasing, you will glorify God with your influencing others and you are seeking the kingdom. You will be a beautiful example of a Christian leader out in our world.

Speaker 1: 10:36

Now I've been talking a lot to Christians, but I wanna make sure that I address non-Christians. What if you don't believe this stuff? What if you don't know Jesus? You're like I don't believe any of this stuff, it's not me. Well, I want you to see just how important it is that Jesus is the one who served us first, that Jesus is the one who serves us so well. Look at Philippians 2, 5, 3, 8.

Speaker 1: 11:02

This is a passage that we often talk about around Christmas, because it's detailing how Jesus came to earth and took on form, the form of a man, says have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men and being found in human form. He humbled himself by becoming obedient, to the point of death, even death on a cross. Jesus is the Son of God. He is. You know what? Jesus has no beginning. He is eternally equal with the Father and with the Spirit. They have no beginning. They have always existed and they always have been equal and continue to be equal in power and in glory. He's equal in every way with the Father, with the Spirit. And yet it says he emptied himself. He came to earth as a man.

Speaker 1: 12:02

Now think about all that Jesus could have done in coming to earth as God. I mean, if you're a golfer, think about this. Jesus is the only dude who could ever shoot an 18. Like on a real golf course, not in putt putt, like real golf 18 every time. Okay, it's a silly example, but think about it. He could have amassed all of the strength of all of the armies of the entire world in his favor. He could have garnered all of the wealth of all of the kings of the entire world. He could have had every king in the world serving him. But he came to serve us. He came to not just to serve but to die. Do you know that?

Speaker 1: 12:52

Multiple times in the gospels, jesus will say something to the religious leaders and they'll be so mad that they wanna kill him. And it's like every time. It's like nope, it's not his time. He'll either evade them somehow or he'll like almost disappear. You're like like, where is he? Nobody, do you see him? Where'd he go? No, I don't know why. Because the father was preserving him until the day when the father saw fit to no longer preserve him.

Speaker 1: 13:23

It's like when Judas comes to betray Jesus, jesus is like I know what you're doing, it's my time, do what you gotta do. Why? Because his whole mission one was to come to glorify the father, but also to come and serve and then die. And he look, he wasn't coerced into doing this. He died willingly, gladly, because it glorified his father and because it was the only way for us to have salvation, for us to have relationship with God. There is no other way for us to have eternal life.

Speaker 1: 14:02

Without Jesus, we all face an eternity of death. We can't earn our way to it. We can't do enough good works to overcome it. We must have this as a gift, and so Jesus, being the God man, the only, he's the only one who could die in our place. Take our punishment that we deserve on himself and then give us eternal life in exchange. If you have never experienced that, if you don't know this Jesus, then I invite you to place your faith in him, Place your trust in him. Give up trying to earn this for yourself, give up trying to gain power or glory for yourself, or whatever it is you might be doing right now that's keeping you from a life with Jesus. Give it up, surrender it to him, put your faith and trust in him, and you will find that you have been missing out on the greatest person and the greatest experience you could ever possibly imagine in this life alone. And then what awaits you? Eternal life in the next glories that we cannot even imagine. If you've not done that, if you've not placed your faith in Jesus Christ, turn from your sin today. Let him lead you and let him serve you, because he will serve you well. Well, going back to Christian leadership, the second way that we see that God preserves his leaders is by growing them in Christ-like character.

Speaker 1: 15:29

Look at Nehemiah 6, verses 5 through 14. This is a long chunk. We're gonna read. It says in the same way, sam Ballot, for the fifth time, sent his servant to me with an open letter in his hand, and it was written. It is reported among the nations and Geshem also says it that you and the Jews intend to rebel. That is why you were building the wall and, according to these reports, you wish to become their king. And you have also set up prophets to proclaim concerning you in Jerusalem. There is a king in Judah, and now the king will hear of these reports. So now come and let us take counsel together.

Speaker 1: 16:07

And then I sent to him saying no such things as you say have been done, for you are inventing them out of your own mind, For they all want to frighten us, thinking their hands will drop from the work and it will not be done. But now, oh God, strengthen my hands, for when I went to the house of Shemaiah, the son of Deliah, son of Mehetabel, who was confined to his home. He said let us meet together in the house of God, within the temple. Let us close the doors of the temple for they are coming to kill you. They are coming to kill you by night. But I said, should such a man as I run away? And what man such as I could go into the temple and live? I will not go in. And I understood and saw that God had not sent him, but he had pronounced the prophecy against me because Tobiah and Sandballot had hired him For this purpose. He was hired that I should be afraid and act in this way and sin, and so they could give me a bad name in order to taunt me. Remember Tobiah and Sandballot? Oh, my God, according to these things that they did, and also the prophetess Noah Daya and the rest of the prophets who wanted to make me afraid.

Speaker 1: 17:18

Boy, these guys just don't give up. So they keep on trying new things. They can't lure Nehemiah out Now. They try fear mongering. They are, you see, in this open letter that Sandballot pretends to be to have the Jews best interest at heart. He's like oh, I'm so troubled by these accounts. I've heard, oh, I've heard that Nehemiah is trying to become your king. And this is just so troubling because now I'm just forced to write a letter to the Persian king to tell him all about it, and I'm only doing this for your own good. So come and talk to me if you change your mind. It's just, it's total malarkey. But they don't know that. I mean the people.

Speaker 1: 17:58

He set up a plausible explanation. Fear mongering is proven to be twice as effective in advertising. This is why, for the next year, you're gonna hear all these really negative, horrible political ads that you just wanna turn off. You know it's like don't vote for that guy. If you vote for that guy, our country's gonna spiral into chaos. You're gonna have to live off of bugs and rainwater. You know it's like you don't even have to talk about the candidate, like, who are we even voting for? Just don't vote for that guy. Well, that's how they get votes. That's what works. It's really sad, but fear is such a strong motivator. So I mean, tobalette has a great strategy here. He could really sway these people into turning on Nehemiah and giving up on this project.

Speaker 1: 18:44

But Nehemiah, his response shows his character. He shows that he is an honest man with nothing to hide. He says this is a total falsehood. You are making this up. I mean, he's just clear and he's confident in the truth and he doesn't attack, he doesn't insult. He just was like no, here's what's true. I got nothing to hide and that's absolutely squelchers this whole thing. And so what we see is that Nehemiah's character is.

Speaker 1: 19:12

It is above reproach and that is what is necessary for a Christian leader. A Christian leader is not perfect. I'll say it again a Christian leader is not perfect. If you're not a Christian here today and you think ill of Christian leaders because you think they're all hypocrites, look, I'm a sinner. Every Christian in here is a sinner. Every Christian leader that you ever have known is a sinner, except for Jesus. Anybody who pretends not to be a sinner is a sinner, because they just lied. So that's not the standard for anybody.

Speaker 1: 19:47

The standard for a Christian leader is to be above reproach. What does that mean? It means that our lives, public and private, have no hint of scandal or unrepentant sin. Again, we sin, but we repent, right. No hint of scandal or unrepentant sin. Why? Because a Christian leader is called to have Christ-like character. And when we have Christ-like character, when we are seeking to please Jesus with our lives. That's the fruit. That's the fruit. We'll still sin, but we'll repent and God will protect us and preserve us from falling into scandal.

Speaker 1: 20:31

So Nehemiah's character puts a stop to the fear of mongering, but to ballot still won't give up. Now he's like okay, what can I do next? I'll have this guy, shemiah, reach out and Nehemiah, for some reason, goes to visit him. He's a shut-in and he begs Nehemiah. He says meet me in the temple. They're gonna kill you. We gotta go in the temple and shut the doors.

Speaker 1: 20:52

And so Nehemiah's response here again shows character in multiple ways.

Speaker 1: 20:56

One he shows character in that he's like I'm not running away from my role, I'm not running away from my people and my mission. That would make me a coward and then I would fail them, I would fail the Lord. So he knows it's a trap, but again he's responding, kind of playing dumb a little bit here. But then the second thing he says is that can a man such as I enter the temple and live? What does that mean? Well, it kind of makes you think that maybe what Shemiah is suggesting is that they go meet not just in the temple but in the holy place, or even the most holy place inside the temple, if you remember from the Old Testament, the most holy place was a little room where the Ark of the Covenant was and that's where the presence of God dwelt. And there was only one person who could go in that room one day a year. That was the high priest, on the day of Atonement. If the high priest went in any other day of the year he would die. If anybody else went in, ever, he or she would die. So Nehemiah is saying I'm not the high priest, I can't go into the temple and to the most holy place and expect to live.

Speaker 1: 22:05

Who am I to think that that shows his character. That shows that, more than anything else, he longs to be obedient to the Lord. The pleasing the Lord is the most important thing in his life and that's what we see for again, for any Christian leader, character is what matters most. It matters far more than appearance, than ability, than achievement. If you go look at the qualifications for elders and deacons in 1 Timothy, chapter 3, you can turn there now or you can look it up later Just go through the list and make a mental note of are these character qualities or are these about gifts and abilities and achievements? It's 90% character and the most important thing it starts with above approach Must be above approach. It's 90% character, because character is what matters most.

Speaker 1: 22:56

It matters more than education, the disciples. They were not educated men, they were fishermen. They were tax collectors. They were not guys who were sitting in a seminary studying all the time. It matters more than speaking ability. Is it great if you have a pastor who talks real smooth and cracks funny jokes and makes lots of cool movie references? Sure, that's great. However, however, that doesn't make you a person of great character. Look at Moses. Moses was he stuttered all the time. He's like I don't want to get up and talk in front of people, but God used him. Character matters more than looks and charisma. I mean King Saul was chosen as king in Israel because he was a head taller there, but he also knew he was a super good looking. He was really ridiculously good looking, but he was a coward and he was a terrible king. And God said I don't want him as king, I want this guy. He's this scrawny little shepherd teenager, david. He's a man after my own heart. He's a man of character, christ-like character. That's who God wants.

Speaker 1: 24:08

Stephen Clark, priest here. I don't remember a couple of years ago, in one sermon he said over and over again he kept saying it who we are is more important than what we do. In other words, character is far more important than ability or achievement. And it's no surprise, because look at what Jesus says in Mark 3, 14, when he calls his disciples. He says he appointed 12, whom he also named apostles, so that they might be with him and he might send them out to preach. Did you catch what? The first thing that Jesus wants them to do is Be with him.

Speaker 1: 24:48

The first priority for a Christian, for a Christian leader, is be with Jesus. This is how we get Christ-like character. Not by learning about Jesus so much. It is about being with Jesus, being with Jesus in His Word, not just to read it and study it and learn about all the intricacies of it, but to be with it in a way where we are communing with the Lord, praying with Him, to Him, spending your Sundays here in worship, praising Him. This is how we are with the Lord and this is how we grow in Christ-like character. And if you have Christ-like character, god will use you. God will use you to influence other people and you may not even realize it, but He'll use you for His glory. And that brings me to our final point, which is that, no matter what, being a Christian leader is always worth it, because in the end, god is always glorified through us. Nehemiah 6, 15 and 16 says so.

Speaker 1: 25:55

The wall was finished on the 25th day of the month of Elul, in 52 days, and when all our enemies heard of it, all the nations around us were afraid and fell greatly in their own esteem, for they perceived that this work had been accomplished with the help of our God. 52 days it's not a long time to finish a project like this. Especially they didn't have concrete mixers or back hose or any cool toys like that. They just had their bare hands. And you know they were half the time they were working while they were kind of preparing for a threat, and it was crazy stressful work, but they got it done.

Speaker 1: 26:29

But then think about everything that Nehemiah went through during that time, just that short span, I mean. He was ridiculed, he was slandered, he had multiple plots against him, he was threatened and then from within, he dealt with discouragement, he dealt with disunity, there was all kinds of problems. But even think about his life as a whole. He was a man who was born in exile. He was a man who was not going to come back to Jerusalem unless the pagan Persian king let him come. And God moved in the heart of this Persian king to say, yes, nehemiah, you can go back and build your wall. God was moving here, god was, was working everything ultimately for his glory, and he preserved Nehemiah's life all through it. And look what it did. Verse 16 says it shocked everybody around him. It shocked the nations. The word afraid here in verse 16 actually is probably better translated as all it's like shock and all you know. And they were not necessarily scared of God here, they were just in awe of God. I mean, what in the world happened to bring these pagan nations to a point where they are in awe of the God of Israel? It must have been something pretty amazing, must have been something pretty incredible, but that's what happened. And so what we see here is that, for Christian leaders, we can expect to be targeted. As I said just the beginning, we expect to face intense trials. We can expect loneliness and frustration, but God will still be glorified even through those trials.

Speaker 1: 28:12

I'll close with a story about a guy named Mr Jenner. He's better known as the annoying little white-haired man on George Street in Sydney, australia. Seriously, that's what they called him and nobody knew his name for a long time. They just said there's this annoying white-haired guy that comes out and yells at people. He didn't really yell at people, so he made it his personal mission to share the good news of Jesus with three people every day. And he was a shopkeeper on George Street, which is like a touristy area or something in Sydney, and he would come out. He often would like run out after customers because he was a little socially awkward, you know. And he'd be like, excuse me, do you know Jesus? And well, if you die tonight, where would you be? That's all he would say. And he'd give him a track and people would be like what in the world? What are you talking about? You don't even know me. So he did that for years and years, and years, and years and years and apparently never, ever once, had a person say oh, tell me more, I would love to know more about Jesus. So, like he's doing, this, day after day, year after year, has never seen any fruit. Can you imagine the frustration?

Speaker 1: 29:24

He kept on so years later there's a pastor in London who hears a story about this guy and then here's another story about this guy. Apparently, these people who've gotten attract from him and we're like this is weird and left. But then they think about it. It's like the spirit is moving in their hearts and they go find a Christian friend or pastor and they're like what is he talking about? What is this salvation stuff about? And hear the gospel and they become Christians and this keeps happening. These people keep sharing these stories about how they originally had this little old man come up to them and tell them about Jesus. Come to find out.

Speaker 1: 30:06

This pastor in London finds that there are people in Australia, all over Australia, in the UK, in India, in different Caribbean islands, even a guy who is a chaplain in the US Navy that all of them had had an encounter with Mr Jenner and had later come to faith in Jesus Christ. And Mr Jenner never knew it. He had all told, shared the gospel with 146,000 people in his life. He never knew it until two days or two weeks before he died. This pastor from London found him Didn't even know the guy's name, but found him and told him about all these great stories of people coming to faith in Christ and two weeks later he died. But you know what? I don't think he would have cared If he never knew about all the fruit that came from his faithfulness. I don't even think he would have cared. He just knew it was for God's glory and that's all that mattered.

Speaker 1: 31:06

I want to tell you, if you are frustrated, if you are wanting to influence other people for Christ and it is hard and it is and you are experiencing resistance and you're having people at work tell you you can't talk about that stuff here. Well, guess what? Even if you never lead another person to Christ, but you faithfully tell people about him, god is glorified by that because you're being faithful. You're not doing it for yourself, you're not doing it for anybody, you're doing it for the Lord. That's what matters.

Speaker 1: 31:39

So I said I was going to close with that story, but I think I need to close with the rest of Philippians 2, verses 9 through 11. It says, therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that, at the name of Jesus, every knee should bow, and heaven, on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God, the Father. The Bible promises that Jesus will return one day as king and everyone's going to bow their knee to him, summon fear and trembling others and joy. And we're going to find that moment that every moment of our lives, every facet of history, every success, every frustration, every failure of our lives will have some way worked for God's glory. He will bring it all to a head and it will glorify Jesus Christ in the end.

Speaker 1: 32:35

Again, if you are frustrated, if you're feeling isolated, if you're feeling like giving up, you've got to know that God is working all these things for His glory. It's going to matter in the end. In the end, his glory will also mean it's our glory, because we are seeking to glorify Him. And if you're a right now, if you're a Christian leader, but you're finding that you're doing this for your own personal glory, hear the warning you will fall and you will fail if you make it about you. Instead of looking to your own needs, look to Jesus. Let Him serve you, let Him lead you. Let's pray.