Opening Video: God’s Willing Unknowns

Hi, I’m Marvin from City Ministry Network. As a Christ follower, I asked myself and others, what if the greatest thing you ever do for Jesus is something nobody ever knows you did? Would you be okay with that? What if you chose not to put your good deeds on Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, or TikTok?

Nehemiah 11 is full of names most of us have never heard of — priests, gatekeepers, singers, servants. They weren’t famous. They were simply willing. They became what some call God’s willing unknowns. Nehemiah four times in his narrative tells us he prayed, “Lord, remember me for the good I’ve done for your people.” He wasn’t asking people to remember him. He wanted God to.

So here’s the question. Would you still serve in hiddenness if only God knew you did it? Jesus knows every hidden prayer, every unseen sacrifice, every quiet act of obedience. The world may never know your name, but heaven will. And you okay with that?

Quiet service isn’t wasted service. It’s a place where God shapes us into the likeness of his son. So before we move on, let’s keep asking ourselves: Would I still do this if only God knew I had done it? Am I more concerned about building my brand or Christ’s kingdom? Am I willing to become one of God’s willing unknowns? And just like Nehemiah prayed, Lord, remember me for the good I’ve done for your people. Amen.

Introduction: A Question That Follows Me

That’s one of those videos you could be like, “Okay, now you don’t have to listen to me any longer.” I appreciate it because I think that kind of describes what it’s been like this week. This week has been a strange week. I might even say it’s been a difficult week for me. And the reason why is because I found myself sitting with Nehemiah 11, which is what we are going to be covering today. And it’s not a real page turner at first glance. It doesn’t jump off the page at you. It’s Jerusalem, the Israelites resettling Jerusalem, people choosing to live in Jerusalem. And what happens as people volunteer and people are chosen to live in the city of Jerusalem — not everybody is mentioned. I mean, everybody is included in the total count, but not everybody is mentioned in resettling Jerusalem.

And it caused me to wrestle with a question that has kind of followed me around for many years, it seems like. I don’t know why. It just always has. And sometimes it’s following me and it’s kind of like whispering into my ear saying, “Ben.” And every time I say whisper at church — we were talking with our small group this last week, and my wife and I sometimes we’ll whisper in church. I don’t know if I can actually admit that on stage, but we asked some of our small group, “Hey, do you guys whisper in church?” And they were like, “Oh, no, we never whisper in church.” And some of them were like, “Oh, we sometimes whisper.” And so I actually was thinking in my head when they were saying no, I was like, I see you whispering when I’m talking. That’s not true. I didn’t mean to kilter off course there for a second, but I did. But this question — sometimes it’s whispers and sometimes it becomes more of a nuisance and becomes very unsettling to me.

And it’s a question that you’re going to see on your notes. And it’s a question that especially this week has been challenging when it comes to this message in Nehemiah 11. It is such a delight and such a joy to be able to teach God’s word. It is so much fun and a blessing, but it is weighty at times. I mean, it’s God’s word, and you want to do a good job, an appropriate job, and bring comfort and direction and challenge and instruction, but it’s only the Lord who can do those things. But the question is on your notes: Does God find my service valuable? Is my service valuable to God? Is it making a difference?

The Israelites struggled with this question and questions like it. Is what we’re doing for the Lord making a difference? It’s not on your notes and maybe you can write it in your notes, but if you were to read the book of Malachi, the last book of the Old Testament, who really is a contemporary to Ezra and Nehemiah and the things that are taking place in the life of Israel, you’ll see that the Israelites struggle mightily with looking at their service to God and seeing if it is truly making a difference in their lives as individuals and their lives as a country. We heard on the video just now of how Nehemiah said a few times, “God, would you remember the work that I’m doing for you? Lord, don’t let it be in vain, what I’m doing.” And when I ask that question, is my service to God valuable — it’s not as if I am wondering if God values me as a person. And I hope that you don’t hear that today and me bringing that question up, because God truly does value you. You’ll see on your notes in Matthew chapter 6 verse 26: Consider the birds of the sky. They don’t sow or reap or gather into barns. Yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Aren’t you worth more than they? God cares deeply for you. He does. You are important to him. When I’m thinking about that question, I’m thinking about what I’m doing for the Lord. Is it noticed?

But then something else interesting happened this week as I continued to sit with Nehemiah chapter 11. Wouldn’t you know it, the same passage that kind of led me to start having this question come up again and again in my life also produced to me the answer or the hurdle to overcome this question that sometimes debilitates, that sometimes leads to apathy, that sometimes leads to discouragement in my life. And I was able to see how the Israelites did something that I must do often, that we must do when we began to question our service to the Lord. And what they did is they began to place their faith and trust in the Lord in a very unique way, which we’re going to look at.

But if we would real quick, let’s read 1 Corinthians 15:58: “Therefore, my dear brothers and sisters, be steadfast, immovable, always excelling in the Lord’s work, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain.” You see, the reason why I find myself wrestling with this question is because I am placing my faith and trust in the wrong person. When I began to place my faith and trust in my own work, my own value, my own abilities, my own gifting for my own glory, that’s when life becomes a problem. And that’s when things become difficult. And that’s when I begin to experience frustration and discontent, because I’m trying to make it about me. And what we see take place in the life of Israel in this chapter — and really, we’ll be only looking at the first 24 verses of chapter 11 — you’re going to see that these people decide to place their whole faith and trust in the Lord. And because of that, they find that their service to God is valuable. And we see it play out in a few ways that we can apply to our own lives as believers, our own lives in the body of Christ.

And so I’m excited. I kind of feel like I’m in bonus time right now even just being up here. Like I feel like I’ve learned so much already just from my own studying and being with the Lord. And I pray and I hope that you guys would find encouragement today, that as we look at Nehemiah 11, you would be able to say, “God, maybe I need to do that in my life or maybe I need to understand those things. And God, my service to you is valuable.” So let me pray real quick. Father, thank you for who you are. Thank you for your word, and Lord, please work in a great way in our lives today. I pray this in Jesus’ name. Amen.

Casting Lots and Radical Trust (Nehemiah 11:1–2)

All right. Nehemiah 11:1–2 is where we’re starting. And it says this: Now the leaders of the people stayed in Jerusalem. Israel — they came back. The first wave came back with Ezra and they rebuilt the temple. Another wave came back with Nehemiah and they built the wall miraculously in 52 days, it talks about. And then they find the book of the law and they celebrate it and it brings joy into their life, and then they confess their sin as a nation, and then at last week Pastor Joel talked about how the Israelites sign their name on the dotted line. And the leaders said, we didn’t just build this temple and this great wall to look at it. We didn’t just say, “Oh, look at this cool thing we did,” and just marvel at it. They decided now it’s time for us to live, to continue to be the nation that God desired us to be in the first place, and that’s a light to all the world, that they may see that God is real and that God is in control and God has the ability to change lives and nations. And so the leaders said, “We’re staying in Jerusalem.”

And then it goes on to say, “And the rest of the people cast lots.” I don’t know what you think about when you hear casting lots. Maybe you think of a game. Maybe you think of establishments. It’s not that. We’ll talk about what casting lots is in a second. It says they cast lots for one out of ten to come and live in Jerusalem, the holy city, while the other nine tenths remained in their towns.

As I shared last year, when it says nine tenths, I can’t help but think of my wife. She’s a second-grade teacher, and whenever it comes to the time of year where she starts to teach fractions to her second graders, she always comes home and she says, “Why can’t the denominator — the denominator’s on the bottom of the line, right? Why can’t the denominator be the same all the time? Why does it got to be like 5/16 and 3/8 and half inch? Why can’t it all be the same?” And I just kind of like, I don’t know, baby. I don’t know. I just don’t know. I know on my tape measure what comes after what, but that’s it. She’s a cutie. She’s great. I love my wife.

But we would be tempted in this situation to think only one out of ten took a chance to live in Jerusalem. But what’s interesting to know is that all of the people of Israel said, we are leaving it up to the Lord to decide who is to live in Jerusalem. They were placing their faith and trust in him. Pretty amazing thing. It goes on to say in verse 2: the people blessed all the men who volunteered to live in Jerusalem.

I was meeting with Pastor Joel and Katie, and each week we meet together and we discuss the message that we’re going to share, to make sure it makes sense and talk about any type of little changes we need to make. And Katie brought out a great point. She was talking about the part that says “men who volunteered.” She said, “I appreciate how in the English Standard it says ‘people who willingly offered.’” And it speaks to the fact that these people saw it as a privilege to resettle in Jerusalem for the sake of the Lord. These people placed their faith and trust in the Lord. And sometimes that’s what we need to do when it comes to our service to the Lord.

Let’s talk a moment about this casting lots, because it’s interesting. We don’t see this today. It’s not necessary today. It’s mentioned like 70 times in the Old Testament, mentioned just a handful of times in the New Testament. There’s a reason for that. But many believe this process to be — there would maybe be marked stones or marked sticks or pieces of sticks, and they would be placed into a pocket or into some sort of container, and then these items would be revealed maybe one at a time or all at once, and they would produce an outcome. And while it seemed random, the people of Israel believed that the outcome was decided by the Lord. And this is why we see in Proverbs 16:33: the lot is cast into the lap, but every decision is from the Lord.

You see it used for dividing up land in the Old Testament, for how temple worship is to be organized. You see it used for uncovering sin — there’s a great story in the Old Testament on how casting lots was used to uncover sin and what took place. Pretty extraordinary. You see it for administering justice. And here in Nehemiah, we see it used for deciding which family should live in Jerusalem. But at the heart of it, at the heart of this casting lots for Israel, it was a physical demonstration of extreme faith — or if I could use a term from my generation, of radical trust. They were saying, “God, we’re leaving the decision up to you.” Could you imagine that? It’s not just the dudes. It’s them and their families saying, “Okay, guys, we’re going to leave it to the Lord to decide if we should live in this town.” If you went home right now after church and told your spouse and your kids, “Okay, guys, here it is. We’re going to leave it up to the Lord to figure out where we’re moving tonight” — it would be odd. But they were placing their faith and trust in the Lord.

And out of it, we begin to see a few things that they see as valuable. And when we look at our own lives, we can see that these are valuable for us, too. Because what’s taking place as they live in the holy city — they see it valuable to begin to work in God’s temple and around the temple of God. You see, the temple was an important thing for the people of Israel. It represented who God was, and that God was in control and God was leading the nation of Israel. And while we no longer serve at the temple — in fact, the word says that we are God’s temple now, because the Spirit resides within us — we do have a place where we go and we serve the Lord. We do have a place where we go and exercise our gifts and our abilities and our talents. We do have a place to find encouragement and fellowship, and that’s in the body of Christ. And we get to look at these things that Israel did and say, can we do that here? Can we do that in whatever context in life we are? And I believe the answer is yes.

Our Presence Is Needed (Verses 3–7)

We see first and foremost that Israel’s presence was needed. In verses 3 to 7 of chapter 11, it says: “These are the heads of the province who stayed in Jerusalem. But in the villages of Judah, each lived on his own property in their towns. The Israelites, the priests, the Levites, temple servants, and descendants of Solomon’s servants, while some of the descendants of Judah and Benjamin settled in Jerusalem.” And then you’ll see a list of Judah’s descendants. And note at the end of that, in verse 6: 468 capable men. And you’ll see a list of Benjamin’s descendants. And these people saw that it was valuable that their presence was in Jerusalem. And likewise, our presence is needed here.

Now, you may read these names, which I didn’t fully read all of them. I’ll admit to you where I lack in name pronunciation, Pastor Joel excels in name pronunciation. Is that an easy way to say that? And as a side note, I just want you guys to know I am grateful for Pastor Joel and just his love for the word, his love for the church, his direction. We are blessed to have someone who says, this is what the word of God says and this is what we teach.

And while we may not recognize all these names, for the first-generation readers who read the list of names that are here, it would be of great importance. Some of them would understand, I know that person. I know them. Some of them may not recognize the people. They may recognize the family lines and say, oh man, we’re from that family line. It’s important that we made that list. It also is a little important to us that we recognize one of these family lines. It says Judah’s descendants. There’s a pretty important person who comes from the tribe of Judah, right? A lion from the tribe of Judah, it talks about in God’s word. So it’s important for us to see that even after the exile, the line of Jesus was still intact and the Savior would soon come and bring salvation.

But it was important because when they would look and see those names, they would understand: here are people who have seen the great moments of Israel when they were repopulated in the city once again. But at the same time, they are a group of people who saw the hard, difficult moments — the people who lived in exile away from God’s promised land, and they experienced heartache wondering, when do we get to be back in the city that God gave to us?

And it makes me think of a group of people here in our church who have been here for a long time and established a great legacy of faith and trust. They maybe experienced some of the high moments of life and some of the low moments of life. Some of the great moments in Big Valley, some of the not-so-great moments in Big Valley, because in every church there are highs and lows, right? And we call these people Prime Timers at our church, right? The 55-and-older crowd. I’m almost there, man. I’m so excited. I got five years. I’m in the 55-and-older crowd. Do I get to order off the back side of the menu in that time, too? I’m trying to figure it out. I’m getting ready. I’m prepared to be there.

But these folks — listen, if you are a Prime Timer, I just want to say I am so grateful that you see that your presence is needed here. Not only is it needed for you and your encouragement and your learning, but it is needed for those who are sitting next to you, for your families, for the generations that will come after you. I was talking with a gentleman named Sam a couple weeks ago, and I was like, “Hey, Sam, how long you’ve been coming to Big Valley?” And he thought about it for a moment. He looked at me and said, “Since 1978.” And I was trying not to act stunned. But in my head I’m thinking, I was 3 years old when this man started attending Big Valley. But there’s names like Lee, Sandy, Carolyn, Marvin, Diane, Peggy, James, Heidi. Your presence at this church is so very important. The legacy of faith and trust — just as the legacy of faith and trust that the Israelites were establishing in the city of Jerusalem — it is needed. It is necessary.

But not just for the Prime Timers, for everybody else who is here. Your presence at this church is so important. It is. And it’s of great value. I was thinking about this the other day. My wife and I were — I can’t remember the town we were in — and we were looking for a place to eat, and there was a couple restaurants right next door to each other, and we were like, “Which one do we go to?” And the determining factor was which place had more people, because that means the food’s probably better. And I think about all the people that drive by our church and they may glance over in our parking lot and they might say to themselves, “There’s always people there. There’s always cars in the parking lot. There must be something happening.” I mean, even when it’s raining, even when the sun is shining, even when the clocks move forward, even when the clocks move backwards, there’s always people there. Something must be happening. They must be getting fed in some way or another. And there may become a moment in their life when they begin to have certain questions like we started off with: Is my service to God valuable? Is my life making a difference? What’s the purpose of my life? What is the purpose of everyone running around trying to accumulate? And they might think, there’s that church that always has people. Maybe they know the answer. Your presence is needed — not just for you, but for the people you are rubbing shoulders with, for your families, for your friends.

Our Involvement Is Useful (Verses 10–16)

We also see something else take place in the people of Israel. We begin to notice that their involvement is useful. Verses 10 to 16. And again, I won’t be reading all these things — the priest Jedaiah son of Joiarib, Jachin, and on down the line. And it starts in verse 12, “and their relatives” — catch this — “who did the work at the temple.” They saw it was useful to be involved in the temple. And then if you go on to verse 15, the Levites — Shemaiah son of Hasshub, and Hashabiah son of Bunni, from the heads of the Levites who supervised the work outside the house of God.

Now let’s understand some things about the priests and the Levites. The priests: these were physical descendants of Aaron from the tribe of Levi, and they alone had the authority to administer sacrifices at the altar, to be at the most holy parts. And then you had the Levites, who were from the tribe of Levi, but they were not physical descendants of Aaron. And so they would administer different things in and outside the temple. They might be gatekeepers, treasurers, teachers, other things. And you might look at this, as I do at times, and think, well, I’m not a priest or I’m not from the tribe of Levi. And I might have to argue with you on that, because we no longer need priests to intercede on our behalf to offer sacrifices, because we have a great high priest, right, from the tribe of Judah, who has offered the ultimate sacrifice. And now, according to 1 Peter chapter 2:9, you are of royal lineage. You are part of the royal priesthood, because the Spirit resides within you and Christ has died for your sins and he’s your Lord and Savior. And so we have opportunity and the calling on our life to administer our involvement inside the church and outside the church.

I think about people like David and Cliff and Donita, Angie, David, Scott, another Scott, Josh B — so many people that I have rubbed shoulders with my time here at the church who have been involved serving, and my life has received benefit because of it. Your involvement here in the church is so useful, so important, just as it was for the Israelites serving in the holy city at the holy temple. You are important.

I think of our Good Sam ministry, all the people that are helping with food and different items each week. I think about some of our HIS Serve team. I think of our neighborhood groups, the people who are volunteering their homes, people who are facilitating the groups. Each week I walk down this hallway — the HIS Serve team, as I mentioned, is right there, and we go and we pray in the prayer room as a staff. But I look at the HIS Serve team, and these guys and gals there, they have this look on their face. It’s a look that I used to see on Friday nights with my team. There would be these guys in the locker room and they’d have this look in their eyes and they’re ready. They’re ready for anything. Some are ready to do whatever it takes. Some are ready to tackle anything that comes in front of them. And this HIS Serve team has that same look — not in order to tackle people, but in order to serve in whatever way is necessary, because they see that it is of great value and importance.

I think of our childcare workers. There are some incredible people who care for other people’s kids so that we can come in here and worship the Lord. That fascinates me. Like, I love my kids — they’re 24 and 21 now. And when they were young kids, it was challenging for me. Just was. I’ll be honest. I kind of always wished my kids would be born and then all of a sudden be like 14, because it’s hard. It’s hard when they’re kids. It just is. And some have a certain makeup about them that they love kids. And so we have people that are caring for young ones. And it’s such a blessing, such a privilege. And I know it’s a sacrifice, but when we are doing those things for the Lord, it’s an incredible thing. Your involvement is useful.

Our Gifts and Talents Are Valuable (Verses 17–24)

But we see another thing when it comes to the people of Israel. We see that their gifts and talents are valuable. Their gifts and talents are valuable. Listen to verses 17 and 22 of chapter 11: Mattaniah son of Mica, son of Zabdi, son of Asaph, the one who began the thanksgiving and prayer. The prayer leader, the leader of the Levites in Jerusalem, was Uzzi son of Bani, son of Hashabiah, son of Mattaniah, son of Mica, of the descendants of Asaph, who were singers for the service of God’s house. Now listen to this. These people were able to utilize the way that God designed them in their gifting and their talents and their abilities. And all throughout the Old Testament, you will see instances where God has endowed certain men and women with abilities, gifts, and talents in order to be used at the temple, in order to be used to serve the house of the Lord. It’s pretty extraordinary, and you can read about it if you have the time — which you should make the time.

Now, for us as believers in Christ, you have been endowed with certain gifts and abilities. As I’ve mentioned a couple times already, when you receive the Holy Spirit as the guarantor of your salvation, you have at least one spiritual gift. Ta-da! It’s Christmas already. Okay? You have at least one spiritual gift. Pastor Joel mentioned these a couple weeks ago, and on your notes you can write these down. If you were to read 1 Corinthians 12, Romans 12, Ephesians 4, you will find a list of some spiritual gifts. And it would be a worthy task to figure out: God, how have you gifted me? Because just as Israel would use these gifts and talents in the temple in service of God, the spiritual gifts that we have and the abilities we have are to be used for the building up and the edification of the church. That’s why you were given spiritual gifts. That’s what it talks about in those passages. And we get to use those for the Lord’s glory.

And there come times where we serve according to our gifting. And sometimes we serve the Lord out of necessity, out of our abilities and out of our talents. These people were using their giftedness for the Lord as they served at the temple. But not long before that, some of them were holding a trowel. Some of them were helping to set a gate or a door while they were rebuilding the wall. It wasn’t their giftedness, yet they saw that it was a need. It was necessary at that moment. And sometimes we serve in the church and we serve in other places because it’s a necessity at times, and we understand that it is also for the Lord.

I think about a man who is a great man, and he has now gone home to be with the Lord. But one of the abilities and talents that he had was to repair cars. And as he retired, he went to the church — not this church, another church — and he said, “Listen, I want to help serve. And all I know how to do is fix cars.” And so what he began to do is he would open his garage and he would allow people who needed help on their vehicles, because they weren’t running or something was happening to it, who couldn’t afford to pay for a shop or a mechanic, and he would fix their cars. Occasionally he would turn a receipt into the church for some sort of supply or a part on a car. And that’s what he did. That’s how he served the Lord. Maybe you have certain talents and abilities — fixing cars, fixing homes, fixing figurines. I don’t know what your talent is, but when we have a heart that’s coupled with faith and trust, God can do great things. God often does great things.

When We Question Our Service

Now, I began to think about this question of is my service to God valuable, in Nehemiah 11 and the Israelites and my own life. When do I begin to question my service to God? Well, I think it comes up first and foremost, as it did for me this week, when I compare my life to others. When I compare what other people are doing versus what I’m not doing, that’s all of a sudden when I can begin to enter into an area of discouragement and start to think about, does God really see what’s happening? You see, when I compare what I know about me to what I do not know about another person, that’s when problems and discontent begin to arise. And this takes place often with the social media that we have, right? We’ll look and be like, “Well, my marriage is not like that marriage. My family’s not like that family. My bank account’s not like that bank account.” We even do it with church: my church is not like that church.

And when we begin to compare ourselves, we need to understand that things are not always as they seem. Just looking at things from the peripheral might seem great. We need to understand that God has us in the right place. He does. You are the right person in the ministry you’re serving. You are the right husband in your marriage. You are the right wife for your marriage. You are the right dad. You are the right child in your home. You are the right student in your classroom. God did not make a mistake. Don’t run away and skip out just because all of a sudden it comes hard. I’m not saying that change doesn’t need to occur. Certainly, change probably does need to happen. And maybe you can be a catalyst to that change. But don’t just escape because we begin comparing ourselves.

We also begin to question our service to the Lord when the excitement goes away. Certainly for the Israelites, they dealt with these things. Israel was always comparing themselves to other countries. And this is why often they would find themselves in difficult moments in the different countries. Israel would often have the excitement go away. Yes, they rebuilt the wall in 52 days and they decided to live in Jerusalem. Imagine — we get to live in Jerusalem! After a couple days, the excitement goes away, right? Same thing with every other area of our life. I got a new job — it’s so great! Then after a week, you’re like, this job is terrible. We got a new kid. Then after you stay up with the kid for a couple nights, you’re like, we have a child. I got married. I got married. I got married. I’m married. You know, you fill in the blank. The excitement always goes away.

And while it’s important to know and identify our feelings, we cannot be run by our feelings and emotion. That’s when problems begin to take place. That’s when apathy begins to set in. And we’ve all been a part of a marriage, a family, a church, a job that’s run by emotions. It’s never fun. Sometimes all we have to hold on to is the calling that God has placed upon our life. God, you have called me here. Therefore, I will serve you, and that’s enough. It should be enough.

But there’s also another time when we begin to question our service to the Lord, and it really is one of the things we have talked about in Nehemiah 11. We saw in the video: it’s when we might go unnoticed. When we go unnoticed and maybe our name is not mentioned in a certain list, we can feel discouraged and we can begin to question, is my service valuable? Even when I was talking about these names of people that I’ve rubbed shoulders with here in ministry, some of you guys are like, I wish you mentioned my name — and I wish I would remember to mention your name too, or whatever. Did you know that in the list of people mentioned in Nehemiah 11 who resettled in Jerusalem, there are more people that are not named than people that are named? And they might begin to feel discouraged maybe. Well, does my service to God have value? Does it matter? Is it making a difference? And that’s when we must begin to remember what our service is about and who it’s for. And we are serving the Lord. We are serving him. And when I began to question it, that’s when I need to exercise my faith and trust in him.

Over 600 Serving: God Sees You

I was thinking about all the people who serve here at this church. And I sent a message to some of the office gals and I was like, “Hey, how many people serve at our church?” And they said, “Just a minute, Ben. We’ll get back to you.” They’re really great about responding to things. It’s amazing. And all of a sudden I started getting a message back from them, and they’re like sending a message out to a lot of the different ministry leaders, and then all of a sudden there’s like this crazy amount of messages on my phone, and I’m working and I’m like, “Oh my gosh, I didn’t think it was going to be like this.” And all of a sudden I began to realize there are so many people doing great things at our church and serving here. Listen to this. Our HIS Serve ministry, which I just mentioned: 112 people serving there. Kids and our students: 100 people. Our office volunteer team: 25. Good Sam: 52. The café: 70. CR, counseling, and premarital: 130. Women’s: 44. Men’s: 80. That’s like over 600 people serving in our church. And yes, I know there’s crossover between different volunteering. And when we have that many people, there runs the risk of some folks feeling unnoticed at times, because there’s so much great ministry that’s happening. But as we watched in the video and as we’ve already discussed, I want you to know that God sees you. God knows your name. God knows the things that you are doing and the ways that you are serving him. I’m so grateful for the people that are serving and volunteering here at this church. It’s incredible.

Some time ago — and I’ve shared this before — God allowed me to step down from ministry for a couple years. One of the greatest things that happened to me. Although it wasn’t great at the time, but looking back now, I’m like, that was exactly what I needed. My wife and I started attending a church. And you know, we don’t know tons, but we know that when you go to a church, you need to serve. And so that’s what we decided. And so we went to the leadership and we’re like, we need to serve. And they’re like, how do you want to serve? And we’re like, I don’t know. Which is odd, because you think I should know, working at a church for so long. But we’re like, however you want. And so they kind of put us outside and said, “You’re part of the welcome team.” And so that’s what we did. We would welcome people to church every Sunday. We’d be like, “Good morning. How are you doing? Nice to see you. Hope you had a great week. What’d you do?” Whatever you want to say when you welcome people. And I think that’s why I enjoy just shaking hands and seeing people when they’re coming in.

And when I think about over 600 people serving in ministry — incredible people giving of their time and their talents and their treasures. Because not only did we start being a part of the welcome team, all of a sudden we got asked to do more and more and more. And I was like, I don’t have time to do all those things. I had to provide for my family. I can’t. But then I look at the people who are serving here, and they sacrifice so many things. Really, I look at this list of people and it’s not an exhaustive one. And I think, man, these are the people that need to be applauded. The heroes of the ministry. And God sees what you’re doing. God sees the hard work and the effort you’re putting in.

God’s Story: An Audience of One

I think about the story of Nehemiah. Not the story — the account of Nehemiah. And the book is titled Nehemiah. But it’s not just the story of Nehemiah, is it? It’s the story of the Israelites. But it’s not just the story of Nehemiah and the Israelites, is it? It’s God’s story unfolding to all the world to see, that the people of Israel have something great to share with them — that there is a God who loves them. And when I think of Big Valley Grace, it’s not just a story of the leadership that are here. It’s a story of all of us, right? And the work that God’s doing in and through our lives. But it’s bigger than that. It’s God’s story unfolding to this great big valley, as Pastor Joel says, right? So that all people might see that God loves them, that God’s grace and mercy far exceeds the difficult moments in their life that they might be experiencing, and he can intervene in a good way.

When we begin to question our service to the Lord, if it’s valuable or not, we again need to be reminded of that phrase that used to be very popular: we are serving an audience of one, right? God knows our name. You’re written on a pretty important list. If you know Jesus as your Lord and Savior — a list one day that allows us to enter into eternity knowing that there’s a God who sacrificed his all for us, and we get to sacrifice as much as we can here in service to him. Big Valley, I’m grateful for your service to the Lord and the benefit that we receive as the body of Christ, that I get to receive just from rubbing shoulders with you on a weekly basis here. What a great thing to serve the Lord and to be able to listen to the calling he has placed upon our life.

Closing Prayer and Announcements

Father, thank you for these folks. Lord, please watch over them. Bring them encouragement. Bring them challenge and whatever they need to hear today. Lord, would you allow us — when we doubt at times, when we find discouragement — to place our faith and trust in you, and to serve with joy, to know that we are making a difference because you have called us. Lord, watch over us as we go about our week, and allow us to serve our families, to serve our co-workers, to serve our friends, to serve our church. We love you, Lord, and we thank you for serving us. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

As Heather said, we have a baptism class that’s right through these doors. If there is any way that we can be praying for you, the prayer room is also open. If there’s any questions that I can help answer, I’ll be right up here. I’d love to shake your hand and say hello. So, blessings to you, Big Valley.