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Nehemiah and Paul: Apostolic Builders
In Part 1 we considered the context, character and purpose of apostolic ministry. God is renewing the foundation of the church in our day, not so that leaders can lead, but so that all the people of God can be released into the world to serve Him and to offer their lives as sacrifice to Him. The Lord is building a people.
In Part 2 we will consider two examples of apostolic builders. "Wise master builders" are those who build, and don't merely bless. They have a fathering ministry, and pursue "presence" and not merely "power." They are interested not just in the walls, but in establishing firm foundations.
Then I said to them, "You see the distress that we are in, how Jerusalem lies waste, and its gates are burned with fire. Come and let us build the wall, that we may no longer be a reproach…..
So it was, from that time on, that half of my servants worked at construction, while the other half held the spears, the shields, the bows and wore armor; and the leaders were behind all the house of Judah.
Those who built on the wall, and those who carried burdens, loaded themselves so that with one hand they worked at construction, and with the other held a weapon. Every one of the builders had his sword girded at his side as he built. And the one who sounded the trumpet was beside me.
Then I said to the nobles and the rulers, and the rest of the people: "The work is great and extensive, and we are separated far from one another on the wall. Whenever you hear the sound of the trumpet, rally to us there. Our God will fight for us." Nehemiah 4:17-19
In May of 1999 Graham Cooke spoke locally in a series of meetings. He referred to "wise master builders" as those who build, and don't merely bless. Too many leaders prefer to merely "bless" the work of ministry around them rather than invest their lives in building solid foundations. We want results quickly and don't want to spend the time investing our lives in a solid foundation. Too many are not willing to pay the cost of rebuilding foundations.
There is a biblical picture of the work of rebuilding that islike a prophetic parable for our time. Nehemiah is an apostolic builder. His name means literally, "Yahweh comforts." His story begins in the book of Ezra and then continues into the book with his name.
The period covered by these two books, Ezra and Nehemiah, is roughly 110 years. The period of rebuilding the temple under Zerubbabel, inspired by the preaching of Zechariah and Haggai, was twenty-one years. Sixty years later Ezra brought a revival and proper teaching on worship. After thirteen years Nehemiah came to work on the walls. (Some scholars think that Malachi also lived and prophesied during these years).
"You see the distress we are in, how Jerusalem lies waste, and its gates are burned with fire.
Come and let us build the wall of Jerusalem,
"And they shall rebuild the old ruins,
These verses in Nehemiah picture the church in our time, and the passage in Ezra speaks to the apostolic work of laying new foundations and rebuilding the wall. The wall, as we know from the New Testament, is composed of living stones. (Ephesians 2:19-22).
In our time the church has largely lost alignment with the purposes of God, becoming a defensive structure against the world, rather than an offensive army on the move, taking back ground from the enemy. Unfortunately, because the church has been mired in ways of doing and being that are more grounded in culture than in Scripture, leaders have unwittingly encouraged passivity and "church" has become a spectator sport. We are in desperate need of a new reformation. Rick Joyner comments,
"Spectator sport" Christianity is another cause for much of the lukewarmness that now prevails in the church. It is also a primary reason for many of the problems that churches experience with people becoming disgruntled, or even worse, bored.
Every Christian has been given a calling, a ministry. They were known before the creation of the world and called with a purpose. The frustration of not being equipped or given the place to fulfill what we were created for is causing many of the church splits and other problems many experience today.
The LORD desires to rebuild the foundations and build the wall! For this purpose He is raising up apostles and prophets who will declare the word of the LORD and restore alignment, releasing His people from captivity.
The angel answered and said to me, "This is the word of the LORD to Zerubbabel; 'Not by might, nor by power, but by My Spirit, Says the LORD of hosts.' Zechariah 4:8
Nearly eighty years before Nehemiah returned to the land, the Lord raised up the first apostle of restoration in Zerubbabel, who was appointed by King Artaxerxes of Babylon as the governor of Judah. As governor of Judah, Zerubbabel was responsible for rebuilding the Temple. But the word of LORD to him was not to trust to his own resources or abilities.
7 Who are you, O great mountain?
8 Moreover the word of the LORD came to me, saying:
9 For who has despised the day of small things?
The first word of the LORD cautions Zerubbabel to depend on the LORD. The second word declares that it is only by grace that God's work is accomplished, and also that it is God's intention to be gracious in this work. He has not forgotten His people ("Zerubbabel" means literally, "God remembers.")
Who Has Despised the Day of Small Things?
"Who has despised the day of small things?" In our time the LORD is shaking all things that can be shaken, and many churches are experiencing profound discomfort. The wine of renewal that the LORD has been pouring out is bursting the old skins, because it is the LORD's intention that no structure that limits His purpose shall stand.
When we depend on the forms and neglect the function, we have reached the institutional stage of decay. The old forms are encrusted with centuries of tradition. We may not even know what they were intended to accomplish.
But the heart of the issue is that we are dependent on the forms. We are attached to temporal things, that were not meant to stand to eternity. Consequently, we defend as "divine" things that were intended to serve a defined and time limited purpose, and then die. We are comfortable and secure, and we don't know how to move beyond the limits of the dead forms. Jean Vanier comments on the dangers of security.
"It is important for communities to discover the focal point of fidelity which enables the spirit to stay strong, and what makes for deviation from it. There seem to me to be two essential--and linked--elements which lead to deviation: the search for security, or a weariness of insecurity, and a lack of fidelity to the initial vision which gave the foundation its spirit.
"When a community is born, its founders have to struggle to survive and announce their ideal. So they find themselves confronted with contradictions and sometimes even persecution. These oblige the members of the community to emphasize their commitment; they strengthen motivation and encourage people to go beyond themselves to rely totally on Providence. Sometimes only the direct intervention of God can save them. When they are stripped of all their wealth, of all security and human support, they must depend on God and the people around them to understand the witness of their life. They are obliged to remain faithful to prayer and the glow of their love; it is a question of life or death. Their total dependence guarantees their authenticity; their weakness is their strength.
"But when a community has enough members to do all the work, when it has enough material goods, it can relax. It has strong structures. It is fairly secure. It is then that there is danger." In Community and Growth
The Lord is shaking the old foundations. To the eyes of man these may seem to be small things. When old foundations are crumbling and new things are being birthed they can seem small and insignificant. The old things have great stature in our eyes because they were structures that the LORD indwelt in power. The old things were good things for a time, until the cloud began to move. But as the old walls crumble, the LORD is releasing new vision and new leaders - Moses passes the torch to a Joshua generation. Joshua represents the new leadership that will take the land, slaying giants and taking cities.
"For these seven rejoice to see the plumb line in the hand of Zerubbabel."
The seven eyes of the LORD are also mentioned in verse 9 as seven eyes that are on the stone that the LORD has laid before Joshua. Zerubbabel stands upon the wall with a plumb-line in his hand, to evaluate it, and see where it is bowing or bulging. The plumb-line will discover exactly how the work is going. Where the wall is crooked it must be pulled down, and where it is straight it will stand. Zerubbabel represents the Spirit of God in this, for when God assesses His work, it is with exactness. "The time has come for judgment to begin, and God's own people are the first to be judged" (1 Peter 4:17).
One of the astonishing things about chapters 3 and 5 is that virtually EVERYONE is involved in the work of rebuilding. There is no apparent distinction between leaders and people.
In fact, even Nehemiah and his servant worked together on the wall. Nehemiah himself did not take the portion that was rightly his (5:15) and personally fed 150 at his table daily (5:17). In the process of working together the people of God rediscovered community.
"Community" may become the watchword in the rebuilding work that God is doing. One of the things about community that make some uncomfortable is that it can be difficult to tell who the leaders are.
In community authority is not restricted to a few specially anointed leaders, creating huge bottlenecks in the work of building the kingdom. Leadership is shared and functional, rather than positional. Submission is mutual, to "one another" (Eph. 5:23). Authority will flow down like anointing oil from the beard of Aaron, a fathering and releasing work that is a hallmark of the true apostolic.
One day last fall I was out walking with my wife in the hills near by our home. As is typical for a late fall day, some Canadian geese were forming a huge V above the hillside, heading south.
From our vantage point we were almost at eye level with the formation. I watched with fascination as I saw something take place that I had only previously heard about. The lead goose dropped from the front of the V to the rear, and another goose took his place.
I felt the LORD speak to me that so it should be in His body. Leadership must be flexible, and should be shared. Breaking the trail for the entire V formation is tiring. The lead goose bears the brunt of the forces in the air.
Eventually the goose in the lead gets tired, so he moves to the back and allows another goose to be on the cutting edge. Trading off this position with another goose allows each goose to rest, since those behind the leader don't have to work as hard. It also allows each strong goose to experience the exhilaration of being out in front.
This sharing of leadership sends a strong message that EVERY goose in the formation is capable of doing the work of leadership, and in fact it is the responsibility of each to have a significant place in breaking the way for others. Geese seem to have no need for control, and no lack of humility!
This is a challenge to us, because leaders are accustomed to control. If God is in control, what are WE to do? We thought that was OUR job. If anyone can bring a word in our services, where does that leave our sermon? We are accustomed to being valued for our highly visible giftings. Will the church still need us? We need to remind ourselves that our task is not to DO the work, but to equip others to serve. We need to recover Eph.4:16, where the body is built "as each part does its work."
Building Inspector
God is coming to the Church like a building inspector; to see if the things we have built will measure up to His code. A house can be built in many ways, and it's not uncommon for contractors to cut corners. What we deem adequate can completely fail inspection. When a building inspector determines that a house isn't up to code, the work stops. Nothing else is done until the work conforms to code.
Much of what we know as God's building has been built upon weak foundations, foundations that in fact are not up to code because they were not built as the LORD prescribed. The easy answer is some simple adjustments. But just as "no one puts a new patch on an old garment," so small adjustments are not the answer. "Band aid" solutions don't help the victim of a cataclysmic event. In the same way, shoring up the old building will only make the whole structure unsound. Rather, we need to start anew.
In volume 7, No.4 of Living Water magazine Randall Kittle recalls an old Cary Grant movie called Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House. He relates the story like this:
"In this movie he buys an old house that is in need of some major repairs. He has a building contractor come out to give him an estimate for remodeling. To his surprise, the contractor hangs a rock from a string and looks at the house (makes a plumb-line) then matter-of-factly says "Tear it down." The shocked look on the owner's face causes the builder to explain. "We can't repair it; the foundation is crooked. It's leaning. You've got to tear it down and start over."
"Everyone knows that if you put up a building on a crooked foundation, your building is in imminent danger of falling. The higher you build the more certain will be the collapse. Is the Holy Spirit trying to tell us that our spiritual house is faulty? It will not last if the foundation is out of plumb - not in alignment with God's true and undeniable measure!"
A few days before I began writing this article the front page of our local paper shocked me with a word from the LORD. There on the cover was a church steeple, with a huge backhoe in the foreground, and the crumpled remains of a wooden building spread out before it. The caption read, "Out with the old." The picture showed a mess of tangled and broken wood. Graham Cooke, in A Divine Confrontation, comments that, "Order is always birthed out of chaos. When chaos surrounds us, the Holy Spirit broods over us...and God is creating a new masterpiece."
Passing Inspection
"Unless the LORD builds the house, they labor in vain who build it." Building things up to code can be a little more costly, but there is almost always a good reason behind the building code - even if we don't know what it is. Doing it the right way may seem more difficult or expensive until you have to tear things down and redo them. Only after the building inspectors have approved each department-structural, plumbing, electrical, masonry, heating and air-conditioning can you get a certificate of occupancy.
Similarly, God has been giving the Church great seasons of visitation, but we will not function effectively until we are "up to code." Each and every area of church-life must be in alignment with God's design if we would hold the wine of the Spirit. And that is His desire far more than it is ours -- to fill us up to overflowing!
During times of renewal many ministries grow very prominent because they were part of the old order establishing the new. But those ministries must pass away in order for the new to be fully released. Was there a time like this in the Bible?
John the Baptist represented a transition time in God's purposes. He was sent to prepare the way for the Messiah. But when the Messiah arrived, John said, "He must increase, and I must decrease." John understood that when a new paradigm is being born, there is no place for the old ways. Rick Joyner comments:
In the same way many ministries which have been prominent in renewal will begin to decrease as God reestablishes His church in new ways of being. The church in the new millennium won't look like the old church. Some of the old leaders will transition to the new thing, but many will not. God is raising up Nehemiah's who will build a new foundation, calling His people out of captivity and building on new foundations as He reveals the plan.
However, there is about to be a clear distinction between those who have received their authority from above, and those who have promoted themselves, or been promoted by institutions. The latter authorities will be increasingly revealed as operating in the control, political and religious spirits.
This is Satan's "cord of three strands" that he has used to bind the church. That cord will soon be broken, and the true liberty of the Spirit released in the world, and the church which will fall into increasing tyranny and bondage to evil. "Where the Spirit of the Lord is there is liberty" (II Corinthians 3:17).
Freedom is coming. A new breed of leader is going to arise who will fulfill the mandate of true New Testament ministry to equip the people, and allow them to do the ministry. This will probably come in many forms, but it will come. It must. A true New Testament church leader is only successful if he or she is raising up others who can do what they do. Is that not the model that the Lord gave us for leadership? Then we will also have true church growth, which is not just growing fat, but growing strong as well. From Megatrends in the New Millennium
Go to Part III
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• © 2005 Len Hjalmarson.•
Last Updated on September 9, 2005
In our time the church has largely lost alignment with the purposes of God, becoming a defensive structure against the world, rather than an offensive army on the move, taking back ground from the enemy. Unfortunately, because the church has been mired in ways of doing and being that are more grounded in culture than in Scripture, leaders have unwittingly encouraged passivity and "church" has become a spectator sport. We are in desperate need of a new reformation. We look first to the book of Nehemiah.
