Building for God - Catching the Vision

They say that a building project can be very stressful to a congregation. A building project stretches us to our limits—the limits of our resources; the limits of our patience; the limits of our creativity and flexibility in adapting to change; and the limits of our faith.

As we embark on our building project, I thought it would be good for us to go back to the Scriptures and examine some of the great building projects of the Bible to see what God wants to teach us as we set out on this great adventure.

So today we are going to turn to the book of Nehemiah. Nehemiah was perhaps the most famous builder in the Bible. He was the man God used to rebuild the walls of the city of Jerusalem. He was a great leader, a great manager, a great motivator, and a man of personal courage and integrity. But above all, Nehemiah was a man of vision.

The key to Nehemiah’s life was that he captured God’s vision. He knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that God wanted the walls of Jerusalem to be rebuilt. He believed deep down in his heart that God had a job for him to do, and he made himself available for God to do it. And that sense of calling and conviction was what kept him going through times of discouragement, times of opposition, times when the workers grew tired, and the work seemed too great.

Prov. 29:18 (KJV) says “Where there is no vision, the people perish.” God always gives vision to meet our needs. In the year 445 BC, when Nehemiah lived, the need was for the walls of Jerusalem to be rebuilt. In Neh. 1:3 we read…

Nehemiah 1:3 Those who survived the exile and are back in the province are in great trouble and disgrace. The wall of Jerusalem is broken down, and its gates have been burned with fire.

Here was a city—the capital city of God’s people—that was in distress. It was not able to function as a self-contained, self-reliant city. In those days, if a city didn’t have walls, or gates, it was a laughingstock. It was totally vulnerable to its enemies, and unable to protect its own citizens.

So here was the city of Jerusalem, a place that was supposed to be the light of God to the nations—a place where the worship of the one true God was focused—and it lay in ruins. It wasn’t able to carry out the purpose God had for it. Something had to be done. And that’s where vision comes in.

Vision can be defined as “that which God has uniquely called us to do in order to accomplish His purpose.”

When a church has no vision—no idea, no understanding of what God wants it to do— people will perish. That church will just flounder along aimlessly, going through the motions, having services, running programs, with no real idea of what it is they are trying to accomplish. That church will be ineffective in its witness.

The unsaved will not hear the Good News about Jesus Christ. They won’t be reached. And if they’re not reached, they’ll perish.

And the believers themselves will begin to turn inward and lose their focus. They’ll become carnal, and stagnant, and unfruitful. They won’t be doing what God wants them to do. So it’s important for us to capture God’s vision for what he wants us to do as a church.

Now how did Nehemiah capture God’s vision? After all, Neh. 1 tells us that Nehemiah was a servant in the court of a Persian king who lived about 700 miles away from Jerusalem. How did he end up being the man that God used to rebuild the walls of the city?

Well, first of all, God’s vision took time to develop in Nehemiah’s life. He didn’t gain a full understanding of what God wanted him to do overnight. In Nehemiah 1:1, we are told that Nehemiah first heard the bad news about Jerusalem in the month of Kislev in the twentieth year (that is, the 20th year of the reign of King Artaxerxes) while he was in the citadel of Susa, the capital of the Persian Empire, which was located over in present day Iran.

Nehemiah’s reaction was one of grief and anxiety. He was burdened by the needs of God’s people and the situation they were facing.

Nehemiah 1:4 When I heard these things, I sat down and wept. For some days I mourned and fasted and prayed before the God of heaven.

And by the time we come to chapter 2:1, it’s now the month of Nisan on the Jewish calendar. Approximately four months have passed since Nehemiah heard the bad news about Jerusalem. And how does he feel? Has he forgotten about it? Has he gotten over it? No!

Look at 2:2

…the king asked me, “Why does your face look so sad when you are not ill? This can be nothing but sadness of heart.” I was very much afraid, (he was afraid because it was against the law for a servant to be sad in the presence of the king) but I said to the king, “May the king live forever! Why should my face not look sad when the city where my fathers are buried lies in ruins, and its gates have been destroyed by fire?”

God’s vision takes time to develop. During these four months, Nehemiah had been praying and fasting and thinking about the situation over in Jerusalem. God was burdening his heart with the need to rebuild the city. And that burden was becoming greater, not less. Up to this time, Nehemiah had been able to conceal his feelings before the king. But now, four months later, the burden had become too great.

One of the tests of God’s vision in your life is that it becomes greater, not less over time. God was forming that vision in Nehemiah’s heart, and that process takes time.

About eight or nine years ago, many of you began to think about the day when FBC would need to expand its facilities. The Lord was blessing and the church was growing. In recent years, that growth has made it obvious that something has to be done. We cannot continue to reach out and welcome new people from our community into our fellowship if we don’t have anywhere to put them.

So we either have to build a larger facility, or we have to stop growing—we have to say, “No, we’re not going to reach out and invite any more new people in. We’re not going to have a growing ministry to children, youth, and families. We’ve reached our capacity, and that’s all that God wants us to do.”

But many of you were not willing to say that. Many of you had greater faith than that. And so the vision for new building began to grow. But it took time for that vision to develop. It took time to ripen. And it took prayer to deepen.

God’s vision always takes prayer to deepen. Nehemiah tells us that he prayed. He prayed fervently and earnestly about the situation in Jerusalem. He mourned and fasted. He was really serious!

Did God answer his prayers right away? No, he didn’t. Why does God not answer our prayers right away? Three reasons:

1. To deepen our longing

2. To determine God’s timing

3. To discipline our living

If you are praying for something that God has not answered yet, consider the possibility that God may be using the delay to work on you. There’s a little saying that we sometimes use “Prayer changes things” and that’s very true.

But what is even more true is that prayer changes me so that God can use me to change things. As Nehemiah was praying during these four months, God was changing him. God was building into him the qualities of character that he would need to be the leader of this great project. He was making him a man of prayer.

There has been much prayer that has already gone into our building project. Our Board has literally been on its knees about this. We have prayed together as a congregation about it. And we have seen God answer prayer. We have seen him open doors. We have seen his hand in the timing of things.

And the time for prayer is not past. We need to constantly be praying about this project. Nehemiah prayed not only in Susa, before the project began; he prayed in Jerusalem while the project was underway. And that’s what we need to be doing as well.

God gives vision to meet our needs. God’s vision takes time to develop. God’s vision takes prayer to deepen. And God’s vision takes planning to deploy.

I am impressed with the thoroughness of Nehemiah’s planning. Look at what happens in chapter 2:4

The king said to me, “What is it you want?” Then I prayed to the God of heaven, and I answered the king, “If it pleases the king and if your servant has found favor in his sight, let him send me to the city in Judah where my fathers are buried so that I can rebuild it.” Then the king, with the queen sitting beside him, asked me, “How long will your journey take, and when will you get back?” It pleased the king to send me; so I set a time.

I also said to him, “If it pleases the king, may I have letters to the governors of Trans-Euphrates, so that they will provide me safe-conduct until I arrive in Judah? And may I have a letter to Asaph, keeper of the king’s forest, so he will give me timber to make beams for the gates of the citadel by the temple and for the city wall and for the residence I will occupy?” And because the gracious hand of my God was upon me, the king granted my requests.

Nehemiah asked the king for three things. He asked:

1. to be sent

2. to be safe

3. to be supplied

It’s obvious that he had put a great deal of thought and planning into what it was going to take to get this job done. God had not only laid this burden on Nehemiah’s heart, he gave wisdom to Nehemiah as he thought this project through.

And I think that it is interesting to note that Nehemiah had no hesitation about asking a pagan king to help him with this project. Nehemiah asked the king for letters to the governor of Trans-Euphrates and the keeper of the king’s forests to use Persian money and Persian wood and Persian resources to get God’s work done. Isn’t that interesting?

There are people today who say that a church has no business going to a secular institution to finance a building project. Well, I don’t see that Nehemiah had such a problem.

And he didn’t have a problem setting a time-frame for this whole enterprise either. He promised the king that he would get the job done and he would be back in Susa at such and such a time. There are some people who say that a Christian should never take on a long-term obligation, because that would be to presume upon the future. Didn’t seem like Nehemiah had a problem with that, though.

And when Nehemiah went to Jerusalem, look at what he did…

Nehemiah 2:11 I went to Jerusalem, and after staying there three days I set out during the night with a few men. I had not told anyone what my God had put in my heart to do for Jerusalem. There were no mounts with me except the one I was riding on. By night I went out through the Valley Gate toward the Jackal Well and the Dung Gate, examining the walls of Jerusalem, which had been broken down, and its gates, which had been destroyed by fire.

Nehemiah personally surveyed the situation. He took stock of what needed to be done. He went along the wall, inspecting the damage, assessing the need, determining exactly what needed to be repaired. And he did this before he went public with the vision that God had given him.

Two and half years ago, we established a Building Study Committee. And their very first job was to assess our needs as a church. They went about doing just that, going through the building, surveying each classroom, each meeting space, each part of our facility. They didn’t make announcements, they didn’t ask for proposals or ideas, because all of that would have been premature at that point. They just went quietly about their business. They even met at night.

And that work was necessary in order to establish what sort of new building and renovation we ought to do. And the design that resulted came directly out of that process. They didn’t pick the design for our new building out of a catalog, or copy it from another church. The building we are going to build is a direct result of our needs.

God’s vision takes careful planning. And I’m glad to say that careful planning has been a hallmark of our Building Committee’s work.

Finally, God’s vision arouses enemies to defeat. Look at…

Nehemiah 2:10 When Sanballat the Horonite and Tobiah the Ammonite official heard about this, they were very much disturbed that someone had come to promote the welfare of the Israelites.

Now who were these characters, Sanballat the Horonite and Tobiah the Ammonite, and down in verse 19, Geshem the Arab? They were officials of the Persian government in the region of Jerusalem who were supposed to be looking out for the welfare of the Jews. In fact, we learn later in Nehemiah, that some of their families had in fact intermarried with Jewish families, so that they were actually related to the people of God.

Yet they didn’t want to see any of this rebuilding take place. They were dead set against it—they took every opportunity to try to criticize and intimidate and delay Nehemiah and the people from getting the job done.

Whenever God gives his people a vision to move and to build, Satan mounts opposition to the work. You can count on it. And often times, that opposition comes from the most unlikely sources.

You would think that Tobiah, Sanballat, and Geshem would have wanted the city of Jerusalem to be rebuilt. After all, it was in their territory. I’m sure that it didn’t make them look especially competent as administrators to have a city in their territory lying in ruins.

But from a spiritual perspective, they were quite happy with the status quo. They didn’t want to see God’s people or God’s work prosper. Because they were on Satan’s side.

And it can be that way in a church, too. Often times, when a congregation begins to take steps of faith to become more effective in ministry—whether it’s in a building project, or in the launching of a new ministry—you will find that a number of people will lag behind. They will raise their voices in opposition—they’ll seek to distract and delay and discourage the congregation in that endeavor. And sometimes, it’s the most unlikely people who do so.

Why is that? It’s because sometimes Satan can get hold of us. We can become backslidden, complacent Christians who are just satisfied with the status quo. We lose our vision—we lose our burden for the lost. We lose sight of what God wants us to do.

How did Nehemiah defeat these enemies? He kept praying. Every time the enemy turned up the pressure; Nehemiah turned up the prayer. In chapter 4:9, the enemy was threatening to attack. And Nehemiah says “we prayed and posted a guard”. When you pray, you are posting a guard.

In chapter 6, the enemy was trying to frighten Nehemiah into stopping the work. So he prayed, “Lord, strengthen my hands.” Prayer gives you courage to keep on going.

And then in chapter 11, when the work was done and the wall was rebuilt, Nehemiah prayed again—this time a prayer of thanksgiving. He prayed before the job started. He prayed while the job was underway. And he prayed when the job was finished.

I’m thankful that so many of you are excited about our building project. One of the things that really excites me is that many of our senior citizens are so gung-ho for this project. You would think that maybe seniors would be a little more cautious, a little more reluctant to commit to something this big. And yet I’ve had many of our seniors come to me and say “Man, I just can’t wait until we get this thing built.”

And I know they are saying that with the right motivation. They are not looking at this new building as a monument to our resourcefulness as a church. They see it as an instrument that we can use as a congregation to better minister to people for the glory of God.

1. God gives vision to meet our needs

2. God’s vision takes time to develop

3. God’s vision takes prayer to deepen

4. God’s vision takes planning to deploy

5. God’s vision arouses enemies to defeat, but we can defeat them through prayer.