Many Hands Makes for Gospel Growth

This morning we're talking about Nehemiah 3.

Now, listen, when we are here in the context of the story, we see the people of Israel start to rebuild, right?

They're starting to rebuild the wall and see Jerusalem restored to its former glory.

Now, I remember when we first came into this church building, and this is such a blessing that we get to have a place that we call home.

But if we're honest, when we came into this church building, it was a wreck, right?

It had had several years of deferred maintenance, water damage.

There was a raccoon infestation I hear stories of at some point in time.

And we had electrical issues and building issues, roof issues, all these different things, right?

And what we had to do is we had to get our hands dirty and work to be able to restore this place back to its future, its former glory in some ways.

And to make a home where people could uh really worship the Lord and be a part of a biblical community centered around the gospel.

And that took us getting our hands dirty.

I remember we filled up uh like six of the biggest dumpsters Rumkey could uh give us uh with just stuff.

Stuff of like building materials, old Baptist, like weird puppet animals and stuff.

Just like old stuff.

We just got rid of so much stuff, cleaned it up, painted.

We've done all this hard work.

And you know what?

What's cool about this building?

This is the first church that was ever built in Mason, Ohio.

So the original structure was built in the uh mid-1800s, and then they added on this structure in about 1954.

So what we've been doing is we've really been laboring in a lot of the same ways to restore this place so that we could have a place that we call home.

And we came up here to plant a church uh for the glory of God and the good of his people, and we didn't know if this was gonna work.

We didn't know if we were gonna get people to come or anything uh to actually be a part of this community.

And look where we're at.

Look where we're at three years later, uh, where we went through not just planting a church, but a global pandemic, restoring this building up so that we can create more space for you and your family, and we get to look and celebrate on the fruit of hard labor.

That's an amazing testimony to celebrate and to witness all of our hard work together.

But it wasn't just me, it wasn't just uh Pastor Jordan or Mr.

Paul or any of these other players that played big, crucial parts.

It was all of us that were willing to come and get our hands dirty in different ways because work needed to be done.

At the end of the day, work had to be done so that we could create a place that we could call home, that we could be proud of, that we could hand off to our children and see generations of people reached with the gospel and be brought into the family of God that they might raise up homes centered on the gospel of Jesus for the glory of God, and his name would be made great amongst our city.

That's what we're working toward.

And see, we're seeing that kind of same thing here in Nehemiah 3.

We're seeing a list of 32 names that to you and I don't mean anything.

32 people or people groups that if we just read through this, we're not gonna see the beauty and work.

Do you know what these 32 people created?

32 people, groups of people created?

Legacy.

They created legacy because they got their hands dirty and the work that needed to be done.

You see, last week we saw that Nehemiah had gone to Jerusalem and discovered the walls are in the exact same state as was reported to him, right?

The walls are crumbled down and the gates are burned with fire.

And he found the evidence of that as he got up in the middle of the night to inspect the wall and walk around Jerusalem.

He saw that it was in the condition that he was told.

But what does Nehemiah do?

We saw last week he goes down to the people of Israel and he gives a vision.

He he casts for them vision of what could be, of what they could build and what they could create with their own hands if they just got to work.

You see, when he first confronted them, he saw a people in apathy.

A people who had allowed for the condition of their city to be a reproach to the name of God of which they served.

A reproach biblically is a ridicule that has credibility.

It's disgrace, it's shame.

The condition that they allowed Jerusalem to stay in and remain brought a reproach against the very name of God and his people.

But after Nehemiah had inspected the wall and casted the vision of what could be a vision of future glory, where their reproach and their derision are no more, and the glory of God is landmarked among the nations, we see in Nehemiah 2.18 their response.

Let's read that again.

Nehemiah speaking, I told them of the hand of my God that had been upon me for good, and also of the words that the king had spoken to me, and they said, Let us rise up and build, so they strengthened their hands for the good work.

They had sat for decades in apathy, amongst ruin and rubble.

They got used to the mess.

We were talking in our mission group this week.

How many of y'all my guilty pleasure is the show hoarders?

Y'all like hoarders?

No?

It's hard to watch sometimes, I'm gonna be honest.

But you kind of watch it through, you know, um, like when you're a kid watching horror movies.

Uh but here's one thing about every show of hoarders.

The hoarder doesn't believe their situation is as bad as it really is.

Why is that?

They've gotten accustomed to the mess.

They've justified why it's this way over and over and over again in their mind.

They've gotten used to status quo.

And the disruption of status quo always makes them angry, anxious, fearful.

Even though on the other side of all that hard work is what?

You and I know, a better life.

A better life where their family becomes a part of their life again, where they can establish something that will build legacy for generations to come.

We know that that's the truth, but they fight back against it, tooth and nail, because they've gotten used to status quo.

But the beauty of what we see here in Nehemiah 2, 18, is when the people caught the vision of the future glory that could be, they rose up to build and they strengthened their hands for work.

They no longer remained in apathy or laziness any longer.

Here in Nehemiah 3, we see the people responding to the call to get their hands dirty in the work.

We get introduced to these 32 verses of names.

These names may seem unimportant as we said at first glance, but each one represents a person or a group of people who are committed to getting their hands dirty in the work of redemption.

Each name represents people taking responsibility in doing this, seeing the glory of God and the good of his people established in the city that they call home.

So we can read through these names and browse through them and glance over them, but we're missing the point of why they took the time to record this.

We're seeing people who are saying, I'm gonna stand up and take responsibility to see the glory of God and the good of his people established in the city that I call home.

Jerusalem was their home.

It was the place that they had loved and been, and many had been raised up in.

It was a place where the presence of God dwelled.

It was where they belonged.

Were they gonna allow it to continue to stay in ruin and rubble, or were they gonna stand up, take responsibility with strengthened hands, and get to work?

They got to work.

And the first people we see get to work is the high priests of Israel.

I love this.

Let's read this in Nehemiah 3, verse 1.

Nehemiah 3:1

He says, Then Elishabib, the high priest, rose up with his brothers, the priests, and they built the sheep gate.

They consecrated it and set its doors.

They consecrated it as far as the tower of the hundred, as far as the tower of Hananel.

So let's talk about what the sheep gate is.

Right?

You'll see as you read through these 32 verses, all these different gates.

There's ten of them that they actually name.

The sheep gate is where they would actually bring the animals that were going to be offered as sacrifices of worship to God.

It was a consecrated, dedicated area where they would bring them in to be able to perform sacrificial worship to Yahweh.

And so who are the first people that Nehemiah allows us to understand got busy in work?

It was the spiritual leaders of Jerusalem.

It was the high priests.

Now they could have said, hey, look, guys, we're way too important.

We've got all our special garb and our ornate, you know, uh dressing, and we we can't really get dirty.

We have to kind of do more important things than that.

No, that's not what we see in Nehemiah 3.

We see they got dirty.

They rolled their sleeves up, they got their hands in the dirt, and they started building.

And they built what first?

The gate that led to the worship of Yahweh.

How beautiful is that.

The spiritual leaders of the community are the first to get to work.

They built up the sheep gate that brought in the sacrificial worship of Yahweh their God.

The leaders of our community should always be the first to say, let's rise up and build.

We should be the first ones who get our hands.

Look, if we ever get to a place where we sit back and we say that we're too important and you guys got to do all the hard work for us, you know we've created a place of great unhealth.

We should be the first ones to be quick to get busy and working.

In fact, in our elder process, as we're looking at candidates, we want to see people who are quick to respond, get their hands dirty and work, and start building because I'm going to lead you in doing what I expect you to do also.

A great king, a great leader was always what?

The first one out to war.

He rode on a horse out into battle first because he was never going to expect his people to do something he refused to do.

They demonstrate that they are leaders by being the first to get to work.

They built up the sheepgate.

They work to build toward the vision, and they begin first with the worship of God.

From here at the sheepgate, we're taking around this kind of two and a half mile wall reconstruction or brought into the details of the ten gates that have been reconstructed in the process.

We see the sheep gate, the fish gate.

What the fish gate was was this gate where uh people in the market would bring their goods, predominantly fish, right?

So they would kind of bring their goods into the city to be able to sell as merchants.

Uh we see the horse gate.

This is where uh they would bring the royal horses in for uh the king and for his men to be able to ride out on or for processions.

Uh and then we see the dungate, right?

You ever seen the dungate?

Nobody do you have a dung gate in your house?

You do not.

You should.

In some ways you do, but we're not going to talk about that now.

Anyway, what the dungate was was not just where they would take out the garbage and dung, but the pieces of the uh animal that was actually not qualified to be used in worship of Yahweh, they would take those pieces and burn them outside of the city.

So it was just kind of an all-inclusive trash gate that they would take stuff out of.

But we're brought into all these different gates, this these fountain gates and these water gates, these valley gates.

But where we need to set our gaze is not on the different gates and their purposes.

We need to set our gaze on the people who got to work.

This effort, this two and a half mile radius wall that was on average 40 feet tall and eight feet thick, got built in 52 days.

52 days it accomplished it.

How?

Let me say this very clearly.

This is how it got accomplished fundamentally.

No one saw themselves or the task that was in front of them as too insignificant or too important.

No one saw themselves or the task that was in front of them as too insignificant or too important.

They got to work.

And in 52 days, they reconstruct this wall and its gates.

As we navigate the names, we see men of honor, rulers, governors, goldsmiths, perfumers.

They got out there.

No one expected a perfumer, right, to get out there and build a gate.

He was busy making Uday toilets and making sure that they all smelled great.

No, he's like, I'm gonna get out there.

Why?

Because I've got a reason to get out there.

I can put my hands to the purpose.

We see fathers, sons, and even I love this part, as a father of three daughters, even a ruler of half the district of Jerusalem, and it says, with his daughters.

They got out there and they got to work.

They got their hands dirty.

Each person working to see the mission accomplished.

And look at who rebuilt that old dungate.

It was Malkai, the son of Rakab, ruler of the district of Beth Hakaram, repaired the dung gate.

A ruler of a district.

What did he do?

He repaired the dung gate.

Well, that nobody else wanted to probably do, right?

He's like, I'm gonna get in there and I'm gonna make sure that this is built.

There was no person that we can read within these names and the task that was put in front of them that ever had the posture of, look, this is beneath me, or I'm way too important, or this job just doesn't really fit my criteria of what I should be doing.

They said, There's jobs to be done, there's work to accomplish, and we're gonna get busy.

A ruler, a man of power and honor, got his hands dirty in the work of mission.

There's no person or work too insignificant or too important.

The people of Israel stepped up when work needed to be done.

They didn't drag their feet in the matter, they strengthened their hands for good work, it says.

The good work of the mission of God, to see his glory established in the earth and the good of his people be known and experienced.

This is about God's glory.

This is about conviction and passion.

This is about the work that's worth its weight.

You see, for us, what we have to realize, what we see in Nehemiah 3 is boiled down and understood as this many hands make for gospel growth.

Many hands make for gospel growth.

Accomplishing all of God's work requires all of God's people.

We're not here to make something specifically for you just to enjoy.

We're here for all of us to get our hands dirty and work because God has called us something bigger than ourselves to accomplish.

God has called us to see his glory fill this city.

God has called us for our neighbors and our coworkers and the families on our sports teams to be able to hear the gospel and respond in faith.

God has called us to build something that we hand off to our children's children.

We build legacy here.

We're not here for this right now.

This expression of what we see right now.

If you love this and you idolize this and you want to trap this in time of what we are right now, you're missing the bigger picture of what God's called us to.

Accomplishing God's work requires all of God's people.

And what we see in Nehemiah 3 is the diversity of the people marked and encapsulated in the unity of the mission.

Look at all those different trades: the perfumers, profumas, goldsmiths, rulers, governors, a father and his daughters.

All of this diversity.

And some of them probably came and said, you know what, I don't know how to do this, but I can lift stuff.

I can help, I can clean off stuff, I can do this, I can do that.

And they got to work.

There was diversity marked by unity, and the unity was around the mission.

They have the big picture in mind as they labor in their particular areas.

Each person taking responsibility to do something.

Sacred mission is a kind of a big uh thing already, you know, as far as our understanding and the work that it takes to put on uh the mission and accomplish the mission of what God calls us to do.

There's diversity of all kinds of responsibilities here laid out within this church building, but it's going to take all of us to do something.

You might not be specialized in a certain area.

You may not be have a particular gift set in something that needs to be done, but at the end of the day, many of us just need to get our hands dirty and work to see the mission accomplished.

The time, the abilities, the resources, and the gifts that the Lord has given you is so that you can sacrificially labor in his kingdom.

Think about this.

Think about all the blessings that God's given you.

Think about the giftings that he's given you.

Think about the health that he's given you.

Think about the finances that he's given you.

Think about everything God's given.

Why do you think he gave you those things?

For your comfort?

For your contentment?

For your boasting in society?

For you to make more friends?

God has given you everything that He has extended to you by grace and mercy so that we might labor in his kingdom with it.

For his glory and the good of his people.

What I love too about Nehemiah 3 is that we see that they build in the context of community.

Each person takes responsibility, but each person is strengthened by those next to them.

31 times in this passage, in 32 verses, 31 times we see some type of expression of next to, after them.

It shows us a portrait of the people of God working shoulder to shoulder to see his glory established and the reproach of his people removed.

I love that about Nehemiah 3.

It's not just a list of names, right?

But it's a list of purposes.

This brother, and then next to him, it was these people, and then next to them, or after them, it was this group, or next to him it was this ruler.

And you can kind of see this picture, right?

You ever watch 300?

When the Spartan army starts to move forward in that Roman phalanx and they're shoulder to shoulder, like you ain't getting through here.

You can see these men and these women stepping up shoulder to shoulder to get the job done.

They worked in the context of community.

There was no hero labeled here.

There was no person that stood out as the rock star of Nehemiah 3.

Can you believe what they did?

They were amazing.

We could have never done this without them.

Every person was put on an equal playing field to see the mission accomplished.

And they did it in joy for the glory of God in the context of community.

They were people who cared more about the work of mission than the glory of the job or the glory of their name.

Because they were working for the glory of God.

Hard work done by strengthened hands.

It was hard work for the short term to create fruitful life for the long term.

Side by side, they labored together to show many hands makes for gospel growth.

Can you imagine some of them thinking they didn't want to do that?

You ever looked at a project in your home and you're like, nah, I don't even want to do that, right?

I don't even want to start this thing because I know if I start this thing, it's going to be so difficult and so hard, and you're already tired and you're already busy and you're already whatever, whatever, whatever.

Can you imagine if they started approaching this?

But you know what they saw?

They didn't see just what was in front of them.

So many times we are so short-sighted on our vision because we can only see what's in front of them.

We don't see what could be.

And then you know on the backside of that hard work is something beautiful.

Something that really proclaims the dedication that hard work brings, the fruit of short term hard work that brings long life on the other side of it.

As Sacred Mission, we're we're growing and we're getting to a place where we're gonna ask even more of you.

Some of you are thinking, I didn't know that was a possibility.

No, it is, trust me.

We're gonna ask more of you for what?

Because we're gonna put in some short-term hard work with the belief and faith that we're creating a long life of gospel growth.

You know how hard it was to get this building even to this state?

Man, we spent days and nights.

We filled up dumpsters, we painted in our off time, we we cleaned, we did everything, we set up rooms, we knocked down walls, we we did all this kind of work and work, and we got to a place where it's like, man, now we can just fill the building with people.

And guess what?

We've been able to baptize people, we've been able to dedicate children, we've been able to see people discipled in the gospel of Jesus, mature in their faith.

We've seen their giftings expressed, we've seen their generosity demonstrate.

We've seen the fruit of hard short-term work.

And it's beautiful.

But there's more to be done.

There's more to come.

And many hands make for gospel growth.

But many of us, we don't believe this.

Because we get stuck in one of two things.

Number one, we get stuck in the desire to build our own kingdom.

We desire to build our own kingdom.

If we're honest, today's culture might be the easiest in all of history to build your own kingdom.

Right?

Everyone has a platform, everyone has a voice, even though many of them should just be quiet.

Social media, YouTube, content creation, influencers.

Who are those people?

Influencers might be the most obscure people in all of wildlife.

I read a report on Omnicore from just January that there's over 500,000 influencers in North America just for Instagram.

500,000.

They get paid to show you what they ate that day for lunch.

It is so easy for you to build your own kingdom in this society, in this day and age.

Now, many of us, we might not be tempted with becoming an influencer on Instagram.

We might not be tempted to build our own kingdom in that way, but if we're honest, we get caught up in the trappings of trying to build our own kingdom.

Many of us might not relate to such strivings of personal glory, though we seek to build our own kingdom in more subtle but still significant ways.

We work tirelessly for the paycheck, for the house, for the car, for the position, for the family portrait that we get to post.

We work relentlessly and tirelessly for those things because we love the attention.

We love people fawning over us.

We love the likes and the comments because we love to build our own kingdom.

We do all of this.

We work tirelessly just to impress others.

Just to have people comment, oh my gosh, you guys are so great.

And we sit in that for what, 30 seconds, and then our hearts want more.

So that our glory may be known in our office, so our glory may be known in our social circles, or the family that we desire to stand distinct from, right?

Some of you all come from some jacked up families, and you're like, I'm gonna prove how successful I am.

I'm gonna prove that I'm not cut from that cloth.

I'm gonna prove that I'm nothing like them, and so I'm gonna set myself apart by working tirelessly to build my own kingdom so that others will look at me in jealousy.

You see, one of the things we see in the narrative of God's people getting to work is a strong sense of anonymity.

There's 32 verses of names and people groups, but the vast majority of them go nameless.

They weren't seeking to build their own kingdom.

They weren't seeking to have their names be known for thousands of years to follow.

While there are many named in this passage, there are many more unnamed people who got to work.

They didn't set out to make a name for themselves, but to make God's name great among the nations.

Priests, merchants, brothers, daughters, men of certain areas.

Their names may not be remembered, but their work and labor would never be forgotten.

Because they built toward a mission.

They built for legacy.

I love this in John 4, 34, we see the words of our Lord say this.

He said to them, My food is to do what?

The will of him who sent me and to accomplish his work.

Even Jesus Himself, the second person of turning, the Son of God, comes into earth.

And what does he communicate to his disciples?

My food, what I feast on, what fills me up, what nourishes me, is not to make my name great, is not to accomplish my will or to get my work done, but it's to do that of the one who sent me, the will of my Father.

Jesus didn't even work for his own glory.

He worked for the glory of the Father.

Others of us, though, we want others to build for us.

We want others to build for us.

We might not be seeking to build our own kingdom.

We might not be getting caught up in the hustle or the grind, but we are caught up in our own laziness and our desire for others to build for us so that we might enjoy the comfort.

Many of us in this church today have more of a consumer-oriented mentality than we do a kingdom servant-oriented mentality.

We want others to build for us our own comforts, build for us according to our preferences, build for us according to our pleasures and conveniences.

Many of us, we refuse to do the work necessary to build what we're actually looking for.

And that's one thing I want to call out for us.

Sacred mission is not what I desire it to be.

It's not what our elders desire it to be in its fullness.

There are places where we are found wanting and lacking, places that we want to mature and grow, new places that we haven't even thought of yet, of where we want of where God might take us.

And this is what we need.

We don't need people coming in here and saying, hey, why don't you guys do this?

Or why don't you have that?

Or why don't you, why don't you, why don't you?

You know what you're doing?

You're coming in seeking for someone to build for you what you desire.

You know what we need?

People who say, hey, I realize you guys don't have this.

Let me get my hands to work to see it fostered and developed in this community.

That's what we need.

We need people to say, hey, I realize that this isn't a part of our community, but the Lord has burdened my heart, and I'm gonna have my hands strengthened for the work set before us, and I'm gonna get busy seeing it cultivated.

You see, we refuse to do the work necessary to build what we're actually looking for.

We want others to build it for us.

And so what do we do?

We wander around from place to place until we find someone to serve it to us on a silver platter.

Rather than being willing to get our hands down in the muck and mud.

The church suffers greatly today because the people of God fail to take responsibility for the kingdom to be known in here and now.

We fail in our mission to make disciples, and we bring in a reproach on ourselves.

The people of Israel moved to action at the call of Nehemiah.

They got to work and building.

The sacrifices they made were no small thing, and we're going to look at this in the following chapters.

They made great sacrifices to be able to accomplish this vision and mission.

It was no small thing that they got to work to do.

It was hard work for the short term to create fruitful life for the long term.

They didn't work with the now in mind, they worked with the future generations in their sight.

Do you remember the call to Israel from Jeremiah?

Come, let us build the wall of Jerusalem that we may no longer suffer derision.

Church, let us get busy in gospel work so that we no longer suffer under this reproach also.

We have to be a people who refuse to wait for someone else to do it.

We have to be.

We have to be.

Look at what's happening even in our world.

You're gonna see people constantly in our culture and globally, uh men who sit there and let whatever happens happen.

They're lazy, they fail to get to work, and at the end of the day, when you boil it down, they're looking for someone else to do it for them.

There was a story that went out just on Thursday of 13 Ukrainian soldiers who died on Snake Island because they took on fight uh artillery from a Russian warship.

Those men decided, even though every one of them died, they decided they weren't gonna wait for someone else to do what they knew needed to be done.

They said, we're gonna take responsibility to make it happen.

We're gonna take responsibility to know what we know should be done and what is right to do.

So they picked up arms and they fought.

Man, many of us, our homes are in ruins.

Our marriages are in ruins, our relationship with our children is in ruins, our job is in ruins because we are honestly waiting for someone else to do the work for us.

We have to stop being so sinful and lazy, and we have to get our hands dirty to know what we know is right to be fostered and cultivated in our lives.

We have to refuse to be a people who wait for someone else to do it.

If we operate in that mindset, then let me tell you this: we are fundamentally rejecting Jesus' call to come and die.

Luke 2.10 says this about Jesus speaking to his disciples before he sends them out.

He says this, he said to them, the harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few.

Therefore, pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.

Look at what Jesus says.

The problem is not, hear this church.

The problem is not that the world is filled with people who will not believe the gospel.

The problem is there aren't people out there preaching the gospel.

That's fundamentally what Luke 10 2 is saying.

The problem isn't that the world is against us and there's nothing that we can really do.

Light pushes back darkness.

The kingdom advances through the victory of the king.

And the problem is that we are sitting on our butts and we're too scared, too terrified of what it will do to the relationship, or how it will establish us in the workplace, or what the consequences are on the other side of it, than to open our mouths and proclaim the gospel as workers, laborers in the harvest to see that harvest come forward.

That's the problem.

But thankfully for us, Jesus, we see this.

Jesus makes a kingdom of many hands.

Jesus makes a kingdom of many hands.

The gospel's call is to come and die.

It's not to come and be be blessed, it's not come to and live your best life now, it's not come and be comfortable, it's not come and enjoy all the pleasures of the community that you desire.

The gospel call is come and die.

Die to self-pursuits, die to self-indulgences, die to self-gain, to die in the work of mission.

Jesus came to die in the work of mission, in the project of redemption.

When we were too apathetic or too self-seeking to see it happen.

You see, we were people who walked around with weak hands, unable to accomplish what was needed to be done.

Jesus inspected the rubble of our lives and sought to remove the reproach that was against us.

Through his death, he bore our reproach on our behalf.

And in his resurrection, he is building a better dwelling for the glory of God.

And now through Jesus' glorious resurrection, the Spirit of God not only makes us alive, but strengthens our hands for gospel work.

He calls you and I to get to work.

He brings us to life, but he also brings us into mission.

We say all the time at Sacred Mission, you are not just reconciled to Jesus by grace through faith.

When you are reconciled to Jesus, you are also reconciled to his people and to his mission.

God is on mission to seek and save the lost.

God is on mission for the redemption of his creation.

God is on mission.

We join him in that when we are reconciled to him through grace, by faith, in the finished work of his son Jesus.

We are co-laborers with him.

To see the gospel growth flourish in the lives of others.

In case we forgot, church, this morning, the gospel's call has not changed.

The gospel's call is still come and die.

So that others might have life.

Jesus makes a kingdom of many hands.

You and I, we need to get to building.

So what do we do?

My vision, I hope, our elders' vision and hope for this church is that we would get our hands dirty in the work of gospel growth.

We would get our hands dirty in the gospel growth, in the work of gospel growth.

Let me pause real quick and say something.

The hard work you have put in does not go unappreciated, undervalued, or unnoticed.

There are many of you in this congregation that would hate if I called you out by name, that have labored hard to see the glory of God and the good of his people established in this city through Sacred Mission Church.

I don't want to ever take lightly all the hard work that has been put into place.

I am not unappreciative.

I am joyfully appreciative of all the hard work that's been done.

What I'm trying to tell you this morning is we have not arrived.

We're not at a place where we can we can freeze this in time and say, hey, look, we did it.

No, you and I have to get more to work.

And we have to address the reality too.

While we want to be appreciative of those who have worked hard and labored hard, we have to address the reality.

There's some people who have been here for too long and done nothing.

You've sought to consume, you've sought you love the preaching, you love the worship, you love the atmosphere and the ambiance, but you haven't gotten your hands dirty in work.

This is a call.

This is a call that there is no people who are able to just sit in seats in this congregation and enjoy the fruit of others' labor.

This is a call that we stand shoulder to shoulder to see legacy be built up, that generations will be reached with the gospel, and that all of us come out of here not with names on placards, but with hands filthy in mission.

Church, we're going to do short-term hard work for long-term, fruitful ministry.

And I hope that this excites you.

I hope that you're encouraged by this because I see something bigger than what is now.

I remember when we first came into this building, the Lord has gifted me with something, craziness or audacity or whatever it is.

But I can see past ugly.

My wife's way better at that than me.

She married me.

She saw past the ugly.

But when we first came into this building, our pastoral team said, do not take that building.

It was a mess.

There was like a hundred-foot extension cord that went from there to somewhere over yonder to power something, but there was just a wire disconnected.

It's like you could have just uh but um our leadership team said, Don't take this building.

I said, You don't see what I can see.

You don't see what could be, you don't see the future of what could happen in this place.

And so with craziness and audacity, I said, we're gonna do it.

We're gonna step forward, and you guys followed in such generous and loving and hardworking ways, and I'm so thankful to see that.

What I'm telling you though is we're not done.

We're not done because our mission is to reach 1% of the Mason Westchester area in the next 10 years.

We want to reach a thousand people with the gospel of Jesus.

We want to see churches planted.

I want to see at least four churches planted in the next 10 years that we raise up leaders to preach the gospel.

We send out some of our best to be able to be on their music teams and kids' teams, that they are have some of our best mission group leaders where they're raising up new people and discipling new people and reaching them with the gospel.

By God's grace, we'll even reach people of different ethnicities and people groups that speak different languages than we do, because we want to see the gospel go forth in this area.

Why?

We're not building a kingdom for us.

I love this uh uh statement from an old count, uh not like uh Count uh Dracula like or Chocula or like Sesame Street, just an old, old, powerful dude.

He just said this.

He said, My desire is to preach, die, and be forgotten.

I know maybe five years after I'm gone, people will stop even talking about me.

I've resolved that that's fine.

This isn't a pity party.

I just want you guys to come on board.

Like nobody's talking about you after you're dead.

Let's just be honest.

After five years, they won't even remember, like, oh, it's his birthday.

We should probably.

We're not gonna do that.

So what should we do?

Let's work hard.

Because you know what?

Why this building stands?

This building stands because in 1846 a group of nobodies that we'll never know their names of, that we're never gonna be able to remember uh uh who they were and what they did in this city.

But what we're gonna do is we're gonna be able to walk these halls.

We're gonna be able to sing the glory of God in this room.

We're gonna be able to greet people who don't know the stop it, preach the gospel uh that that haven't heard the gospel of Jesus yet.

We're gonna see people be baptized, we're gonna see children dead.

Do you see what these group of nobodies built so that we could have a future generation of gospel growth and the glory of God established in this city?

And I pray that in a hundred years from now, people are able to sit here in this place to do the same thing and not remember any of us.

Church, we're gonna get busy.

Short term hard work for long term fruitful ministry.

Let's pray.