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DOING OUR PART - by Rev Gilbert Wong
Texts: Nehemiah 3:1-5, MATTHEW 7:21-End
1 June 2008

Introduction

While reading this text of Nehemiah, it reminds me of the rebuilding of Church of the Ascension. There are many similarities of division of labours and each committed to the tasks assigned to them. And how some time, someone along the line of the chain of command did not follow through and how it eventually affected the end result. We witness this in our day to day living where instructions are not followed and the problems are created.

There are a few things to note about this very long message of 32 verses of Chapter 3 of Nehemiah.

First, doing our parts means that there is a clear division of labour

The entire chapter 3 really is a description of assignments given to different groups of people. This division was to enable each group to know their duties and responsibilities. And yet this division does not mean separation as if their work is totally unrelated to the rest of the project. They were kept together with the view of advancing the good of their country. Even females helped out in the work (a rare sight in a male dominated work).

This may be obvious to all of us here and yet this is not entire the case all the time. The usual argument is that we should not use management principles of the world which is essentially secular to govern the affair of the church which is spiritual. I remembered clearly one such tension during the Billy Graham Crusade was in Singapore in the 1970s a particular group of churches would not support him and his ministry. The reason: he was making use of billboards, banners, and flyer with his face on them. These churches believed that only Jesus Christ should be glorified and not men no matter how famous they are. These churches would rather live with inconveniences and ineffectiveness of their ministries than to glorify a human in the limelight.

In our modern day, there are still churches and Christian organisations that would not have any overall plan or direction. They simply have the conviction that the Holy Spirit moves as and when he wills and the church is only to cooperate and obey him and not to set the agenda for God by forward planning.


To them I have two responses:

(1) This division of labour exercised by Nehemiah was first and foremost spent in prayer. Of course we were not told if he spent time praying through every single of those names mentioned in Chapter 3. But we can be certain that Nehemiah had spent time praying and consulting before deciding what should be done. He visited the site of the damaged and decided that a rebuilding had to be done.

(2) Some Christians generally tended to see the division between sacred and secular too sharply. The OT sees the world in at least three categories – that of elected, unelected and non-elected.

God’s people are the elected and set aside by God to be a holy people. This is taught clearly in the NT as well especially in 1 & 2 Peter. And then there is another category called the unelected. These are countries that God wanted to eliminated and has also warned his elected people not to mingle with them such things as idolatry, adultery, and basically summed up in the Ten Commandments. And then there is the non-elected. This group is neither elected nor unelected, they are simply neutrals that could be used either for good or evil.

Like Jethro’s advice to Moses to divide up his work to several groups. Jethro was certainly no elected like Moses was, neither is he unelected that he needed to be terminated or avoided but was non-elected. And God gave that wisdom to Moses through Jethro.

So our Parish Life Review is a process that COA undertakes but those on the team and those participating in this process should be done with a heart of prayerfulness and not merely on a methodological processes.

A clear division of labour is needed but it is the manners by which it is being used that we are judged by God. And this is what we observe in our gospel reading today.

Secondly, doing our parts means that there is clear danger disobedience in Christian ministries

Doing our parts may not always necessary means that we are obeying God. Oftentimes, I have been asked by Christians how come certain leaders who clearly are not teaching according to God’s word and yet could perform many convincing miracles.

The answer may lie in Matthew 7:21-29. The miracles in Matthew 7:21-23 - of prophesy, demoniac deliverance, and many mighty works in Christ’s name - are not necessarily false; it is possible to prophesy by the Spirit’s inspiration and yet be disobedient to God and unsaved

In 1 Samuel 19:20-24, we read that “(20) Then Saul sent messengers to take David, and when they saw the company of the prophets prophesying, and Samuel standing as head over them, the Spirit of God came upon the messengers of Saul, and they also prophesied. (21) When it was told Saul, he sent other messengers, and they also prophesied. And Saul sent messengers again the