R328 A Circle of Friends

Friendships are so important, and today Dr. Wilton takes us to God's Word to talk about what it is to have a circle of friends. As we open the Word of God together, know that our phone line is open as well. 24 hours a day at this number 866-899-WORD.

That's 866-899-9673. We are here to encourage you. Now today's great teaching with Dr. Don Wilton. Nehemiah chapter 3. Now friends, I'm going to say to you this morning that this is rather an extraordinary passage of Scripture.

In fact, I have a confession to make to you. When I got to Nehemiah chapter 3, I said, certainly Lord, this must be one of those passages that I can just skip over. After all, there's just a whole list of names. It doesn't kind of make too much sense when you read it. You know, as I began to pray about it, God impressed upon me that there is not one single word in God's Word that God gives us license to skip over. All of God's Word is inspired by God himself, from Genesis to Revelation.

His Word doesn't contain the Word of God, it is the Word of God. And as I began to search my own heart in chapter 3, God began to reveal some things to me, but I'm going to show you in just a little while that in chapter 3 of God's book, that there was something rather extraordinary about what God's servant was able to accomplish against insurmountable odds, all because of the things that he did according to God's Word. We're going to see that by virtue of some of the illustration here, just as a matter of interest, north, south, east, and west. This was Jerusalem in the time of Nehemiah, when the walls were broken down. The pool of Siloam, which we have studied so much, is down here on the south side and we refer to that in Nehemiah chapter 3, the pool of Siloam. But what is important here is the construction of the different gates of the city of Jerusalem. And one may remember that back in Nehemiah's time that all cities were fortress by a wall, literally they would build a wall around the city and there would be selective gates placed around those walls and we're going to read about them. There was the sheep gate, the fish gate, the old gate, the valley gate, the refuse gate, the fountain gate, the water gate, that's not in Washington, that's in Jerusalem, the horse gate, the east gate, and the muster gate. Now I want to read to you the whole of Nehemiah chapter 3.

I want you to follow along with us in God's Word. Eliashib the high priest and his fellow priests went to work and rebuilt the sheep gate. They dedicated it and set its doors in place, building as far as the tower of the hundred which they dedicated as far as the tower of Hananel. The men of Jericho built the adjoining section and Zakir son of Imri built next to them. The fish gate was rebuilt by the sons of Hasanah.

They laid its beams and put its doors and bolts and bars in place. Meramith son of Uriah the son of Hakoz repaired the next section. Next to him, Meshalem son of Berachiah the son of Meshezabel made repairs and next to him Zadok son of Banah also made repairs. The next section was repaired by the men of Tekoa but their nobles would not put their shoulders to the work under their supervisors. The Jeshina gate was repaired by Joida son of Pisaiah and Meshalem son of Besodia.

They laid its beams and put its doors and bolts and bars in place. Next to them, repairs were made by men from Gibeon and Mizpah. Malatia of Gibeon and Jaden of Meranoth places under the authority of the governor of Trans-Euphrates. Uzziel son of Ha Haiah one of the goldsmiths repaired the next section and Hananiah one of the perfume makers made repairs next to that. They restored Jerusalem as far as the broad war. Rephiah son of Hur, ruler of a half district of Jerusalem repaired the next section. Adjoining this, Jadiah son of Haramoth made repairs opposite his house and Hattush son of Hashebaniah made repairs next to him. Malchijah son of Harim and Hasheb son of Pahath Moab repaired another section and the towers of the ovens. Shalom son of Halohesh, ruler of a half district of Jerusalem repaired the next section with the help of his daughters.

The valley gate was repaired by Hanan and the residents of Zainoa. They rebuilt it and put its doors and bolts and bars in place. They also repaired 500 yards of the wall as far as the dung gate.

The dung gate was repaired by Malchijah son of Rakab, ruler of the district of Beth HaKarem. He rebuilt it and put its doors and bolts and bars in place. The fountain gate was repaired by Shallan, son of Kol Hoseh, ruler of the district of Mizpah.

He rebuilt it, roofing it over and putting its doors and bolts and bars in place. He also repaired the pool, the wall of the pool of Siloam by the king's garden as far as the steps going down from the city of David. Beyond him Nehemiah, son of Asbak, ruler of a half district of Bethzer, made repairs to a point opposite the tombs of David as far as the artificial pool and the house of the heroes. Next to him the repairs were made by the Levites under Rahim, son of Banai. Beside him Hashabiah, ruler of the half district of Qilah carried out repairs for his district.

Next to him the repairs were made by their countrymen under Benuiah, son of Henadad, ruler of another half district of Qilah. Next to him Ezer, son of Jeshua, ruler of Mizpah, repaired another section from a point facing the ascent to the armory as far as the angle. Next to him Baruch, son of Zabiah, zealously repaired another section from the angle of the entrance of the house of Eliashib the high priest. Next to him Meromoth, son of Uriah, son of Hakos, repaired another section from the entrance of Eliashib's house to the end of it.

The repairs next to him were made by the priests from the surrounding region. Beyond them Benjamin and Hashab made repairs in front of their house and next to them Azariah, the son of Maaziah, son of Ananiiah, made repairs beside his house. Next to him Benuiah, son of Henadad, repaired another section from Azariah's house to the angle in the corner and Palau, son of Uzziah, worked opposite the angle and the tower projecting from the upper palace near the court of the god. Next to him Padiah, son of Parosh, and the temple servants living on the hill of Ophel made repairs to a point opposite the water gate toward the east and the projecting tower.

Next to them the men of Tekoa repaired another section from the great projecting tower to the wall of Ophel, above the horse gate. The priests made repairs each in front of his own house. Next to them Zadok, son of Imur, made repairs opposite his house. Next to him Shemaiah, son of Shekinah, the god at the east gate made repairs and next to him Hananiiah, son of Shelemiah and Hanun, the sixth son of Zalaph, repaired the other section. Next to them Meshalem, son of Berakiah, made the repairs opposite his living quarters.

Next to him Malchijah, one of the goldsmiths, made repairs as far as the house of the temple servants and the merchants opposite the inspection gate in as far as the room above the corner and between the room above the corner and the sheep gate the goldsmiths and merchants made repairs. May the Lord write his word upon our hearts this morning. As I began to ponder in my heart what it was God would want to say to me, I came to the conclusion that what God was saying here was what God was saying to Nehemiah back then. A circle of friends and that's our subject this morning. There is nothing more wonderful I should imagine outside of the fact that all of us have circles of friends. You know as in a family when one friend hurts everybody hurts don't we? When a friend dies we all hurt. When a friend leaves the family or a family member leaves the family we all hurt. When one laughs we laugh. When one cries we cry and yet here in Nehemiah chapter 3 we read this at first glance and what do we see? We see a whole lot of difficult names many of them very hard to pronounce with apologies to those who know the correct pronunciation to all of these names.

Most of them we would regard as being redundant information. We would also come to the conclusion that even the chronology is apparently meaningless and yet not so when one considers what God was able to do as he gave to his servant Nehemiah an insurmountable responsibility with an inordinate and monumental task to overcome. Nehemiah I want you to go and I want you to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem. He had a strategy. You know I think of these young children and I think of the fact that as we begin to rear our children what we want more than anything else worse is a strategy. We usually run to our parents and say what was your strategy?

I'm always on the lookout. I watch parents whose children are just precious and I I want to go up to them and say to them what was your strategy? Teach me something I need all the help I can get. Tell me tell me what it is that you did so that I can do the same thing. I want to give to you very quickly I don't want to preach on this this morning but Nehemiah had a six point strategy.

You ready for this? Number one listen to God. Listen to God profound isn't it?

But if we understand what Nehemiah was about to do he listened to God. Number two develop a workable plan. Develop a workable plan. Moms and dads sit down together and they say this is what we believe God wants us to do for our son our daughter.

The businessman expanding his business. Listen to God. Develop a plan. A church on the move where God is moving. We need to listen to God and we need to develop a plan. Number three we need to thank God for spiritual leaders. Parents thank God for spiritual people.

We can draw on the spiritual people that God surrounds us with but number four be prepared to lead yourself. That was Nehemiah's strategy. He was willing to lead himself.

He said I'm gonna get stuck in there. I want to say to all the dads here today the Bible teaches that the man is the head of the home. There's no way around that. You cannot get over it.

You cannot loophole through it. Man is the head of the home. Dads are we being the head of the home. If you're going to develop a strategy lead yourself. Number five provide facts and training. Nehemiah did that. He provided them with the facts of the situation.

The walls were broken down. He then provide them with a training what to do about it and number six have very clear-cut goals in mind. What do you want to accomplish? What did Nehemiah want to accomplish? What was his goal? It was not only to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem that had been broken down but it was to gather together the exiles who had returned having been scattered to the four quarters of the earth and he wanted to be instrumental in giving to them hope for the future.

Have attainable achievable goals whether for your children for yourself for your work and so it was that Nehemiah found himself surrounded by a circle of friends. What can we say about them? Let's say several things about them about the circle of friends. First of all they were converted. What a profound statement. They were converted. You can go and read all through Nehemiah.

You know what you're going to discover? You're going to discover that every one of these people that were assigned a specific responsibility whether the old gate, the water gate, the horse gate, the fish gate, every one of them were converted people. By that the Bible means that they had a personal relationship with Jehovah God. The greatest motivation that anybody can ever have to do anything is God himself. Why do we give? Because we love God. Why do we serve? Because we love God. Why do we come to church? Because we love God. Why do we preach?

Because we love God. I'm going to submit to you today my beloved friends that the first and foremost characteristic of this circle of friends that God gave to Nehemiah was that they were converted. I hope that you're going to give your children a wonderful education.

Very important. But I'm going to say to you that even more important than an education is that your children love God. These circle of friends they were converted but number two they were co-labourers.

It's another thing that I noticed about them. They were co-labourers. Look at verse 5 of chapter 3 just as an illustration. Verse 5 of chapter 3.

Here's what the Bible says. The next section was repaired by the men of Tekoa. What were they doing? It's implied by a somewhat negative statement.

Their nobles would not put their shoulders to work. You see this one group might have not been doing that but there were 75 others who were putting their shoulders to the work. They were co-labourers together but my favorite verse is verse 12. Look at verse 12. That's what the Bible says. They repaired the next section with the help of his daughters.

You know what? Just read this verse. He repaired the next section with the help of his daughters. They were co-labourers together.

There was something so special, just something so special about the fact that all these people got together and they worked. That's what the Apostle Paul spoke about in 2nd Corinthians chapter 6. He said we are co-labourers together with God. Note in the third place they were committed. All of them were committed.

You see you can go there and look at verse 20. Next to him Baruch son of Zabai zealously repaired another section. These people were committed. Now I don't know why it was that Nehemiah singled out Baruch as being the zealous one but I think he was just an example. You see friends the word zealous is an outgrowth. Its root word is commitment. Zealousness is a product of commitment.

You and I will never be zealous unless we are committed and what God is calling for is committed people who express themselves in the zealousness of God's army. They were converted, they were co-labourers, they were committed but I want you to note in the fourth place they were coordinated. Now I'm going to show you something very interesting here. You see Nehemiah was faced with having to reconstruct these walls. He didn't know how to do it. He certainly didn't have the means that you and I have at our disposal and so what he did after much prayer you remember in chapter 2 Nehemiah went out at nighttime. Do you remember that? And he did all his survey work and all his analysis and he got all the data together and he began to strategically place men and women by groups, by families, by vocation, by calling, by giftedness in each one of these gates next to their own homes. I want to show you something about how coordinated they were. Listen to this, first of all everyone was in their rightful place but you know that if you take a pen and you go and circle every phrase next to him, next to them, after them, you're going to find that phrase 28 times in chapter 3. In 21 of 32 verses that phrase is used.

Why? Because everyone was in place. Now what did this say? What does this say to Nehemiah? That everyone was in their rightful place in such an unbelievable task as this.

It says six things. Number one, that there must have been a lot of behind the scenes work, don't you think? There must have been a lot of work.

This just didn't fall into place, no sir. There was a lot of behind-the-scenes work but secondly there must have been hours of careful research and thirdly there must have been very careful analysis of available data. I mean Nehemiah and those who were around him must have got down to some serious work. Number four, an extraordinary ability to be able to put it all together. Number five, very careful supervision.

We're going to notice that in just a moment. Do you know that at every gate there was an official? Here in this version we read about the ruler, an official, a deacon, an overseer, a supervisor, a shepherd was given responsibility as an area shepherd over a group of people in a specific place. And number six, they gave them adequate resources. They equipped them to be able to do the work. They gave them Bible studies. They provided them experiencing God and master life. They encouraged them to go to Sunday school. They had worship services together.

They went on youth treats to Panama City. They sang in the choir. They organized to evangelize and to keep the main thing, the main thing. These people got about a specific task with everybody in the same place.

That's what it said. But what did this do for them? What did this organization do for them?

Let me share it with you. First of all, it made everyone more personally involved. Secondly, it made every person far more highly motivated. I love that, don't you?

Do you know why? Because around these gates this circle of friends were not only personally involved, but they were highly motivated. Please forgive the interruption. Dr. Wilton insists I remind you that this is a conversation, not just a presentation. We're communicating on our website at www.tewonline.org 24 hours a day. We'd love to connect with you.

That's www.tewonline.org. We're also here and available to pray with you 24 hours a day on our prayer line. Prayer is a communicating process that allows us to talk to God. We believe in the power of prayer. The Encouraging Word has a 24-hour prayer line. You can call 866-899-WORD. That's 866-899-9673 and talk to a live person who would be glad to pray with you. The Encouraging Word is a viewer and listener supported ministry. Thank you for listening today.

Again please know we're here for you both on the phone number 866-899-WORD and online at www.tewonline.org. Now back to today's teaching, A Circle of Friends with Dr. Don Wilton. They had personal ownership in what they were doing, but in the third place there was a less wasting of time. They didn't waste time. They didn't have people from the muster gate having to run over to the valley gate. In fact the muster gate people didn't even bother what was going on at the valley gate. They implicitly believed that those who were in place at the valley gate were doing what the valley gate people needed to do and if there was a break-in at the water gate too bad.

The FBI would catch them. You see they let everybody get on with what everybody was supposed to do. They were more personally involved. They were highly motivated. There was less waste of time, but there's something else that this did for them. It provided protection against attack. You see with everybody in their right place at the right time doing what they were supposed to do when the enemy began to attack. Look what happened folks. Look what happened.

The whole of Jerusalem was fortified even though the walls were still broken down. Isn't that something? Isn't that something? Even though the walls might have come crumbling down it prevents an attack of the enemy from being able to penetrate God's fortress and then the final blessing was that it made use of all available talent. You see everybody was involved even the sons and daughters.

I like that. Everybody was involved even the sons and daughters. See everyone was in place. Commuters were given a special assignment. The Bible says that people came from Jericho and Tekoa and Gibeon and Mizpah in verses 2, 5 and 7.

They were outside. They were given a special assignment. They were assigned by vocation. Look at verse 1 with me. In verse 1 the Bible says that the priests were put at the sheep gate. Why were the priests put at the sheep gate? The reason the priests were put at the sheep gate is that through the sheep gate would follow the animals that would come for the sacrifice. The central focus of worship and so to Nehemiah and to the elders and the leaders they said let's put the priests where the priests would be most interested in serving. That is at the point of worship. So they put them and they matched their giftedness with the work that God had set before them. Paul put it like this to the church at Rome.

He said there are no giftless children and what he encourages us to do is to take our giftedness and to match our giftedness for the cause of Christ. They were assigned by vocation. They were assigned by leadership.

Just as we have in our church the deacons each have an area shepherd ministry. They were assigned to all walks of life. There were the priests and the goldsmiths and the perfumers and the temple servants and the merchants. They were all there. The Bible says they were all there from the highest to the lowest, from the tallest to the smallest, from the roundest to the skinniest. They were all their sons and daughters, grandparents, moms and dads, single adults, college students, teenagers, boys and girls. They were all there at the wall, every single one of them.

There were a few exceptions. There are always going to be some people who missed the blessing. That's what verse 5 tells us. But God's people were in place. Let me remind you, they were converted, they were co-laborers, they were committed, they were coordinated, but let me close with this. They were commanders.

They were commanders. These people were encouragers folks. Do you know that in chapter 375 names are mentioned? Do you know that in chapter 315 groups of people are mentioned and many others from other groups are included in this?

Took a lot of time but the dividends paid off. Bible tells us about Barnabas in Acts chapter 4 and verse 36 that he was an encourager. Listen to what Hebrews chapter 10 tells us, verses 24 and 25. Let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds. Let us not give up meeting together as some are in the habit of doing but let us encourage one another and all the more as you see the day of the Lord approaching.

They were commanders. I can just imagine all those AC Malone's out there just putting a hand on a shoulder. Keep up the work son. Keep going daughter.

Keep going my friend. Good job. Well done. Well done. Keep going. Yes sir. I'm proud of you son for what you accomplished. Good stuff.

Jolly good show they would say in London. Yes it is good that you're doing what you're doing. Let's be reminded that Jesus will say welcome good faithful servant. How we long to hear those words from our Heavenly Father. I pray that you know him as that your Heavenly Father because there's just one decision that's necessary before he brings you into his family.

Dr. Wilton's gonna share that next. Are you ready to give your heart and life to the Lord Jesus Christ? Why don't you pray this prayer with me right now. Dear God I know that I'm a sinner and I know that Jesus died for me on the cross. Today I repent of my sin and by faith I receive you into my heart in Jesus name. My friend I welcome you today into the family of God.

This is exciting news. Welcome to the family of God. Welcome back for some of you that I know prayed with the pastor while ago to give your life to Christ or to rededicate your life. If you've done so we have wonderful resources. Dr. Wilton wants you to have for free but you've got a call 866-899 word that's 866-899-9673. Dr. Wilton would love to hear from you to know what God's doing in your life. How he can pray for you. You also can connect with us on our website at www.tewonline.org. Let's connect today.