Harbor Church - Mid City

Building a Great City—Through Handling Success?

Neh. 6:15-7:3 Mid-City Oct. 3 2010

We’re in the book of Nehemiah, and this week we’re going look at how Nehemiah handled success. So critical that we learn to handle success. Michael Vick—one of the most successful college and NFL athletes of all times, but he couldn’t handle it. He ended up in jail, and, hopefully we’re seeing a bit of redemption taking place in his story. I could rattle off athletes all morning who have blown success, but it isn’t just athletes. It is pastors, businessmen, men of faith in the Bible—you name it. King Solomon (didn’t handle his fame & fortune well); Samson (didn’t handle his strength well). Musicians—the films Ray Charles & Johhny Cash and how recent films chronicle their struggles to handle success. I don’t care whether you are in business or a Bible college, knowing how to handle success is critical. And it doesn’t matter whether we’re talking about success on a massive scale, or whether it is just getting a promotion at work, or successfully getting a degree. How we handle success is so critical. And that is what we’re going to look at this morning—how handling success leads to a great life for you, and, in turn, a great city.

RECAP: Now, for those of you who haven’t been with us or if you have been sleeping, let me catch you up in the story. City of Jerusalem was a pile of rubble for 141 years. Nehemiah lives in Babylon and works for the king as his wine-taster His brother Hanani comes back in chapter 1, tells him that his boss changed his foreign policy, pulled the troops and money behind the rebuilding effort in Jerusalem and yet another rebuilding effort had fallen by the wayside. Nehemiah fasts/prays and God shocks him and the world and says, “You’re my guy to go rebuild the city.” I know you drink wine for a living, but I am with you, so let’s go. Nehemiah tells the king this in ch. 2. The King doesn’t kill him (which by law he was supposed to do), but instead agrees to pay for the whole thing and provide everything Nehemiah needs to make it happen. He arrives, tells the people, they commit in ch. 3, they face opposition from Sanballat & Tobiah & Geshem in ch. 4, Nehemiah starts seeking justice and righting the wrongs going on in the city where women were being exploited and trafficked sexually and there were check-cashing and pay day loan places everywhere bilking people of interest and Nehemiah shuts them down, in ch. 5 then a little more opposition, then this week we’ll see that they finish the wall.

V15 “So the wall was completed on the twenty-fifth of Elul, in fifty-two days.” Bam. They did in 52 days what no one had been able to do in 141 years. Reminds me of the Red Sox. 86 year drought for a world championship. The Curse of the Bambino seemed more and more real with each error the Red Sox would make to give away games. Yet, in 2004, the Red Sox finally broke the curse of the Bambino and won the world series. Well, that pales in comparison to a wine-taster doing what no construction experts and great leaders had been able to do before him in 141 years. Crazy success.

The question is how will Nehemiah handle his success. And from this story, we’re going to look at 4 questions that will help you handle success:

1. Why are you Successful?

2. Who is threatened by your success?

3. What is the proper response to success?

V16 “When all our enemies heard about this, all the surrounding nations were afraid and lost their self-confidence, because they realized that this work had been done with the help of our God.” Nehemiah says, “The reason I am successful is b/c of the help of God. Period. This theme has been throughout Nehemiah if you have been with us. Ch. 1 he prays and asks God to “give your servant success today by granting him favor in the presence of the king.” Then when the king miraculously appoints him governor and agrees to reverse his foreign policy and pay for the rebuilding effort Nehemiah says in ch. 2, “I also told them about the gracious hand of my God upon me and what the king had said to me.” He faces opposition shortly thereafter from Sanballat & Tobiah and look at 2:20, “The God of heaven will give us success. We his servants will start rebuilding.” They face more opposition in chapter 4--“Pray & post a guard.”

So, here is the first lesson in handling success Biblically, and I don’t care how hard you worked—you’re successful because God made you successful.

I know some of you don’t believe me. You subscribe to a basic karmic system that guides that universe. Your responsible for your success. You can’t back what you put out.

Let me tell you a few stories—the first is a true story from the Bible. It is the story of Gideon. Gideon was facing an army of no less than 135,000 men. Gideon goes out and gathers as many troops as he can possibly muster up and guess what God says. Let me quote God here, “You have too many men. In order that Israel may not boast against me that her own strength has saved her, announce that anyone who trembles with fear may turn back.” 22,000 took off, 10,000 stayed. God says, “aha, still too many.” And he whittles it down to 300. 300 taking on at least 135,000 men, possibly more.

This is like the movie 300. Makes you think of the movie 300 doesn’t it. And those 300 Spartans in the movie knew that they were on a suicide mission. They knew they would never see their families again. Unless, in the back of their minds, they had one hope—if the gods got involved. Which is why you see Leonidas climb the hill and take money to appease the gods and, in the end, turns away disgusted with the gods.

But not in the case of Gideon, because 300 men, fighting with all they had was more than enough for the one true God—the God of the Bible. And there is this really poignant line in the story of Gideon that Charles Spurgeon highlights—and thanks to Jon for sending me this. Spurgeon says notice what the battle cry of the 300 men. This is the great moment in any battle when all of the soldiers raise their swords or spears or bayonets and scream and charge. And do you know what their battle cry was: Judges 7:20, “A sword for the Lord and for Gideon!”

If we only cry, "The sword of the Lord!" we shall be guilty of an idle presumption; and if we shout, "The sword of Gideon!" alone, we shall manifest idolatrous reliance on an arm of flesh: we must blend the two in practical harmony, "The sword of the Lord, and of Gideon!" We can do nothing of ourselves, but we can do everything by the help of our God.”

Let me break down what Spurgeon said. If you are a Calvinist—and if you don’t know what these terms Calvinist & Arminian are, don’t worry—I’ll define them. Calvinists love the sovereignty of God—that he has control and authority over everything. But If you are a Calvinist on spiritual reformation steroids, then here is the mistake you can make-- you only emphasize the sovereignty of God to the exclusion of any personal responsibility—so you would only cry “the sword of the Lord,” and you would sit back in idle presumption as Spurgeon says—doing nothing and presuming upon God to act. No need for me to do anything—God has it under control.

Arminians, on the other hand, love personal responsibility and free will. So, if you are an arminian on spiritual steroids, then you emphasize personal responsibility to the exclusion of God’s sovereignty. Thus, Spurgeon says, you only cry the sword of Gideon, and you are an arrogant, self-confident jerk with an idolatrous reliance on the flesh—on yourself. The key, to Spurgeon & Nehemiah, to handling success is wedding both—yeah, we took 300 men in against 135,000 and those 300 men gave it all they had; but 300 men don’t defeat 135,000 unless Jesus shows up. The sword fo the Lord and Gideon; we worked as hard as we could on the wall and with God’s help we did it in 52 days.

Now I know I haven’t convinced some of you. So let me give you some modern day examples. We’re a young church, but all the grey hairs, you can speak to this, particularly when it comes to parenting. You gave it everything you had as a parent, but how your kids turned out was well beyond your effort or control. Think about it: you can’t protect your kids from everything. You can’t even protect them from you. The things that come out of your mouth as a parent. If you’re like me, your trying to catch your words. Get over it—your kids will be in counseling one day processing what a jacked up mom and dad they had. Am I making excuses—no, I think you would be hard pressed to find a mom and dad who are putting more effort into parenting. (That is the sword of Gideon; our work on the wall). But at the end of the day we trust and hope and rest in the grace of Jesus and in him showing up in our kids life. That is the sword of God; the help of God.

(2) Who is threatened by my success?

First, let’s check in with Nehemiah, and then we’ll make application in our world. V17 “Also, in those days the nobles of Judah were sending many letters to Tobiah, and replies from Tobiah kept coming to them.” Ahhh, Tobiah. Surprise, surprise, that he is back on the scene. This guy never lets up. He opposed Nehemiah in the beginning and he’ll be with us in the end. You’ll see him in Ch. 13 when we get there. Here, we see that Tobiah is a man of wealth and influence. He is connected to all the nobles—the people with land and money and political power, and remember the nobles are the group that are still smarting from the rebuke they suffered by Nehemiah for bilking the poor by charging exortibant interest rates and taking advantage of their daughters sexually. So this group doesn’t like Nehemiah.

And we see that Tobiah also had connections on the inside. V18 “For many in Judah were under oath to him, since he was son-in-law to Shecaniah son of Arah, and his son Jehohanan had married the daughter of Meshullam son of Berekiah.” Tobiah’s son married the daughter of Meshullam. Now if you go back to Neh. 3 you see that Nehemiah placed Meshullam over the rebuilding project on the wall. So Tobiah had the Jewish nobles with him and he also had a mole inside Nehemiah’s core leadership team in the rebuilding project.

V19 “Moroever, they kept reporting to me his good deeds and then telling him what I said. And Tobiah sent letters to intimidate me.” So here is a guy with a competing vision for the city and for the people and he is doing everything he can to oppose Nehemiah’s success because he is personally threatened by Nehemiah. More than likely, he is probably a Jew who claims to be a worshipper of the God of the Bible.

Huge lesson here: not everyone who claims to be a Christian is a Christian. Many of you here are new Christians. You have just trusted Jesus with your life. There will be Tobiahs that are opposed to this spiritual success in your life. It threatens the vision of success that they have for you or for themselves. And some of them will claim to be Christians.

Quick example from my life. A close friend of mine would say he is a Christian. For a time, he was on list of people who received updates about what God is doing in our church plant. One day I got an email from him that read, “Please remover me from you update list. You are throwing away your life and I don’t want to read about it. You are one of the most gifted people I know with huge potential to be successful and make money and you are throwing it away.” Tobiah—competing vision for my life.

So, here is the point: handling success (and I mean God-given success) means learning to listen to the right voice. You can’t let Tobiah’s voice, the voice of those who are opposed to what God is doing in and through you, to get you off track.

(3) What is the proper response to success?

7:1 “After the wall had been rebuilt and I had set the doors in place, the gatekeepers and the singers and the Levites were appointed.” Setting the doors in place—this is like a ribbon-cutting ceremony. It is the last thing you would do, much like putting doors on your house when you are building it. No doors—then anybody can come and go as they please. But with a door, the house is secure. Such was the case with the city. It was now a secure city—they could control people coming and going. They could build churches, open businesses.

Singers/Levites: Notice what follows, Nehemiah appoints singers and Levites. The Levites were the priests. He says, “OK, get the praise team, get the pastors, and it is time to have church. Let’s worship.” Nehemiah says, “God has shown up. He has done this. And we must worship.”

Friends, this is the proper response to success. Worship. You fall on your face and give thanks to the one who made it all happen. It really is interesting, isn’t it—Nehemiah is building a worshipping city. He is seeking to build a worshipping city who knows that God makes them successful.

But Nehemiah didn’t finish the task. Roughly 400 years later Jesus Christ came and picked up as a city builder where Nehemiah left off, building a worshipping city. And talk about success. Jesus was successful in every way imaginable. But, shockingly, the one successful human being in all of human history was treated as a failure. He was taken outside the gates of the city, and treated as a criminal. His death, for our life. He was willing to trade in his success for our failure. And in the most remarkable act of grace in all of human history, his success was credited to us, and our failures were credited to him. And that is why we praise Him! That is why we worship.

The beauty of the gospel of Jesus Christ led me to worship this morning at 4:41 AM. I woke up at 4:41 A.M. with the voice of Tobiah in my head—Stephen, you’re not enough. Some of you are thinking—you are sick. What is wrong with you. Well, here is what happened. That old success dream came back. I couldn’t believe it. I thought I was over it. I shared it with you some time ago. It is the dream I had some during college and a million times during law school where I just couldn’t go to class. I couldn’t find the class or I would keep forgetting and then all of a sudden finals are here and I am going to fail. There was a new wrinkle this time. This time a police-man showed up at my door and sat down and asked me my class schedule, and to my shame, “I couldn’t remember it,” proving to her that I wasn’t going. And I was straining trying to remember my criminal law professor’s name---interesting right, that it is criminal law.

And then I woke up, and I laughed, and remembered the gospel, “Jesus, you’re enough. You went to class for me. You passed the test that I never will. You know that I have failed in so many areas as a pastor, a husband, a friend, a worshipper. And that knowledge is what compelled you to take on flesh. and that is why you came to live and to die for me. And the gospel, of Jesus Christ, was so sweet to me, at 4:41. At 4:41 I remembered the success of Jesus Christ. At 4:41, I rejoiced in the reality that I am successful, not b/c of anything I have done or will do, but b/c I am in Christ. Are you?

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