The Greatest Threat to Your Calling

Good morning, Summit family, how are we doing this morning? My name is Gio, I'm on staff here, me and my wife have called the Summit a home for the last four years. I'll be reading from Nehemiah 5 this morning, so lock in with me, it's a lot of verses. It starts off by saying, now there arose a great outcry of the people and of their wives against their Jewish brothers. But there were those who said, we are mortgaging our fields and our vineyards and our houses to get grain because of the famine. We are forcing our sons and our daughters to be slaves, and some of our daughters have already been enslaved. But it is not in our power to help it, for other men have our fields and our vineyards. I was very angry when I heard their outcry and these words, and I brought charges against the nobles and the officials. I said to them, you are exacting interest each from his brother. And I held a great assembly against them and said to them, we, as far as we are able, have bought back our Jewish brothers who have been sold to the nations, but you even sell your brothers that they may be sold to us. The thing that you are doing is not good. Ought you not to walk in the fear of our God to prevent the taunts of the nations, our enemies? Return to them this very day, their fields, their vineyards, their olive orchards, their house and their houses, and the percentage of money, grain, wine, and oil that you have been exacting from them. Then they said, we will restore these and require nothing from them. We will do as you say. And all the assembly said, amen, and praise the Lord. And the people did as they had promised. Moreover, from the time that I was appointed to be their governor in the land of Judah, neither I nor my brothers ate the food allowance of the governor. The former governor who were before me laid heavy burdens on the people and took from

them for their daily ration, 40 shekels of silver, but I did not do so because of the fear of God. Moreover, there were at my table 150 men, Jews and officials beside those who came to us from the nations that were around us. Now what was prepared at my expense for each day was one ox and six choice sheep and birds and every 10 days, all kinds of wine in abundance. Yet for all this, I did not demand the food allowance of the governor because the service was too heavy on this people. Remember for my good, oh my God, all that I have done for this people. This is the word of God for the people of God. Peace be to God. You may be seated. All right, well, if you haven't already done so, I want you to take your Bible and find Nehemiah chapter five in your Bible. If you remember from last weekend, Nehemiah and his people had been making real progress on the wall there in Jerusalem. But then as we came into chapter four, the critics and the haters like Sanballat and Tobiah really started to impede their progress. Not only did they engage in outright sabotage attempts, they also spread lies and gossip, which undermined everybody's confidence in Nehemiah as a leader. They were all most successful in stopping the work, but Nehemiah rallied the people to remember and then redirect and then renew their commitment to the work. Well, in Nehemiah chapter five, a new problem surfaces, one that is far more dangerous than anything they dealt with in chapter four. You see, in chapter four, the dangers came from the outside. In chapter five, they come from the inside. And those internal threats are far more insidious than the external ones. Nehemiah explains in the first few verses of chapter five that a lot of Jewish families, Jewish families, poor Jewish families, were really suffering because they were being exploited by other Jewish families.

Some of these families, some of these poor families had financially gotten upside down through predatory loan practices. Some of them had to mortgage their land just to survive. A few of them, we learn in verse five, even had to sell their children into indentured servanthood just to keep them from starving. And the most tragic thing about all of this, Nehemiah explains, is that none of this is happening at the hands of their enemies. This is not the work of Sambaoth or Tobiah or the Samaritans or the Arabs. It's all happening at the hands of their own fellow Jews. And so in chapter five, Nehemiah confronts these wealthy Jewish families who were doing this wrong, and he labels it for what it is, sin, capital S, sin. He demands that they cease this predatory selfishness. He demands they repay what they have taken and restore what has been lost. And to their credit, verse 12, they do it. This chapter has a happy ending. Nehemiah then points to his own personal example, verses 14 through 18, as a model that he wants everybody else to emulate. He explains that unlike previous governors of Jerusalem, he's refused to live in luxury when everybody else around him was suffering. He'd even declined to take advantage of a lot of the perks that would normally come with a job like his. I've used this position, as your leader, Nehemiah explains, verse 16, I've used it to serve you, not to be served by you. There are so many things that we learn about godly leadership in this chapter that apply to you, whether you are leading a business

or a ministry or a family or a group of third graders at a public school, or if you're just trying to simply faithfully steward the calling that God has put in your life. Here they are, they begin in verse one. Again, verse one, the greatest threat to any work of God is not opposition from the outside, it's compromise on the inside. Verse one says, there arose a great cry of the people and their wives against their Jewish brothers. Last weekend, I revealed to you some really transparent, vulnerable, deeply personal, and downright incriminating information about myself. I told you that I've been a lifelong Dallas Cowboys fan. Some of you were like, you've been pastor here for nearly 25 years, how come we have never heard about that before? It's because for as long as I have been pastor here, there's never really been anything to brag about in that realm. If you're a Dallas Cowboys fan, you just kind of learn to keep that to yourself. The Dallas Cowboys have not been anywhere even close to a Superbowl in more than 30 years. But y'all listen, when I was in elementary school, in the days of Tom Landry and Roger Stalback and Tony Dorsett, Dallas Cowboys were America's team, and justly so. When I graduated high school, we seemed unstoppable. Jimmy Johnson was our coach, Troy Aikman was our quarterback,

Emmett Smith was our running back, and Michael Irvin, our star wide receiver. We won the Superbowl, and yeah, I say we deal with it, okay? We won the Superbowl in 1992, 1993, and then 1995, all three of those seasons. And then after 1995, the team basically disintegrated and has not made it to a Superbowl since. Now you're like, well, what happened? Did they lose a bunch of their star players? No. Analysts say there were no significant team changes in 1996. No, the main reason for their downfall, everybody says, was that Jerry and Jimmy couldn't get along. Jerry Jones was the owner, Jimmy Johnson was the coach. Why is it that for some of the mightiest organizations in history, it is not external enemies, but internal problems that cause the downfall? The classic example of this, of course, is the Roman Empire. Rome was not so much conquered from the outside, historians say, as it was it disintegrated on the inside. The same thing was happening in Nehemiah's Jerusalem. Y'all, it's what happens in every great work of God. When our enemy cannot beat us from the outside, he corrupts us from the inside. It is our greatest threat, Summit Church. It is your greatest threat. The greatest threat to the work of God in your life is not usually the attacking demons from the outside. It's your own sinful heart.

It's not usually the New York Times. It's not the documentary crews. It's not even secular entertainment or the big wigs at Facebook or TikTok that pose the biggest threat to you or your family. It is internal compromise, which leads me to number two. Our first compromises are usually financial. The specific nature of their compromises, we learned from verse two, were sins of selfishness and exploitation. The richer Jews were using their money to advantage themselves. They engaged in predatory lending practices, legal but predatory. They took advantage of people through unjust hiring policies. They manipulated the court system just because they could. And beyond all of that, they just generally had a very self-interested, self-centered, self-focused approach to life. They stayed isolated from suffering that was happening all around them. Well, it's not affecting me or my family, they said, so it's just not my concern. It's the free market. Those people should have worked harder. That's just how the world works, survival of the fittest. Let's just be really clear here, Summit, can we? God regards economic injustice, God regards callousness toward others suffering as sin.

And I point that out because there have been times throughout Christian history when Christians in power or privilege turned a blind eye. blind eye to economic injustices as if they had no bearing on our relationship with God, as if the suffering around us is not our problem as long as we're not the ones who caused it. Even today, a lot of us feel isolated from the problems around us. We hear about people in our city here trapped in cycles of poverty and we think, well, that's a bummer, but it's not my problem, I didn't cause it. Listen, y'all, according to scripture, how we treat the poor and the disadvantaged around us is a better indicator of our walk with God than is how much theology we know, how often we go to church, how much we pray, or how high we raise our hands during worship. Is this not the fast I choose, says the Lord. By the way, you wanna do 21 days of prayer and fasting? This is the one I most prefer, God says, that you lose the bonds of wickedness to break every yoke, to share your bread with the hungry, to bring the homeless poor into your own house. When you see the naked, to cover him, not to hide yourself from your own flesh and blood. Bible scholars talk about what they call the quartet of the vulnerable, four vulnerable groups in every society, including our own.

By the way, I'm not making this up, this is straight out of the Old Testament. Four groups you will see referred to as a group, the poor, the widow, the orphan, and the sojourner, or what we would call the immigrant. And God consistently says about them, how you treat them is how I evaluate you. The Old Testament makes statements like Proverbs 14, 31, whoever oppresses the poor insults his maker. Notice y'all, it's not just these things are wrong, but these things are a personal offense to God. He takes it as a personal insult. They drive out God's blessing. By the way, whenever I point this kind of stuff out, some people always get confused, they think I'm trying to advocate for some kind of government program. Look, how the government is involved in all this, that is a totally separate question. In fact, you can argue this passage does as much about government exploitation and corruption as it does the callousness of the rich. My point is talking to the church about what the church's responsibility is to the people around it. The New Testament only intensifies this, by the way. James chapter five, James, the half-brother of Jesus, says those wages you failed to pay the workers, they're crying out against you. You lived on the earth in luxury while they suffered.

Y'all, the imagery here is striking. Notice the cries of the people that we ignore act like a prayer prayed against us. God regards the groans of the poor as a prayer prayed against you and me. God's like, here you are on your knees, asking me to bless your family. But over there, there's these other prayers that are rising up against you from the groans of the poor, from the selfish way you live your life. And frankly, those prayers are louder to me than are your prayers for blessing. Here's my question. What if God's generosity toward you came in proportion to your generosity toward others? You see, the Bible teaches that very principle. God gives grace and blessing to us in proportion to how we give it to others. Now, to be really clear, I am not saying that the more you give, the more righteous you become in God's sight, or that you can earn acceptance in God's sight through generosity. No, when you truly repent and you truly embrace Jesus as Savior, you are gifted the full righteousness of Christ, and there's nothing you can ever do that will add or take away from that positionally before the Father. What I'm talking about is your existential experience

of God's grace day to day, the manifestation of this blessing in your day to day affairs. That, scripture teaches, comes in proportion to your generosity. You see, you can be fully secure in God's grace positionally, and yet experience very little of it practically. By the way, maybe that is happening to you right now. You're praying, you're praying, but you're just not experiencing God's blessing. And maybe, maybe the issue is your ungenerous posture toward others. The Apostle Paul says it quite clearly. And listen, I'm just reading to you straight from these texts, so if you're gonna send me an angry note on this, send one to Paul first. The one who sows sparingly will reap sparingly. Here he's talking about giving. If you're sparing in your generosity, God will be sparing in his blessing. Here's how Jesus expressed it. Luke 6, 38, give and it'll be given to you. Good measure, pressed down, shaken together, runnin' over, be put into your lap. For with the measure you use, it'll be measured back to you. I love that verse. The first part, by the way, always made sense to me. Give and it'll be given to you.

But this last part here, it always confused me. Like good measure. Press down, shaking together, running over. I never knew what that meant. And I was always too embarrassed to ask. Always thought it sounded a little bit like a Jewish dance, you know, good measure. Press down, running over. As far as I know, this was not a Jewish wedding dance. Jesus was using a farming analogy. In fact, it was supposed to be a little humorous. You see, if you were a harvester, and that was a common job in those days, the way that you got paid is the land owner would let you keep the final basket of grain that you collected every single day. All day long, you would glean grain, and you would load up these baskets with whatever you gleaned, and you would carry it back to the barn. Well, those baskets full of grain got really heavy. So the typical harvester would only fill his basket to like half or two thirds full. So at, you know, two thirds full at most. So it just wouldn't be that hard to carry. That's what they did with all the baskets of grain that they carried, except for that last basket, the one you got to keep. See, for that one, they would load it to the top. Then they would press it down.

Then it would shake it so it settled. Then they'd fill it up again so that you had in that last basket the maximum amount that it could carry. Does that make sense? When Jesus said that, everybody would have chuckled because it was a known technique, a way to stick it to the man, okay? Kind of reminds me of this little Mongolian restaurant my friends and I would eat at when I was in seminary. You paid $7 and you got a bowl. And then you go to this raw bar where you put whatever ingredients you wanted into that bowl. And then you take the bowl up to the chef so that he could stir fry up your culinary masterpiece. $7, one bowl. They gave no other parameters. So you know what me and my poor, hungry seminary friends did. We would carefully line the bottom of that bowl with thinly sliced meats, making sure there was no empty spaces. Then we'd mash it down. Then you put on a thin little layer of vegetables. Then you'd mash that down and put on a big thick layer of meat. Then mash that down. Then another thin layer of vegetables. And we'd do this until it was running over. And then you'd stack up chicken as high as you possibly could

and carefully walk over to the wok. By the time we were done, it weighed like 9 1⁄2 pounds. But the owner eventually caught on to us. I know that because when we came back for second semester, there was a big, huge sign up over the bar that said, no bowl packing. And he would just stand there and watch us. But our mentality was, listen, I'm allowed one bowl. I will get the maximum amount I can into that bowl. The opposite of that is what the Dorito company does with its bag of chips, right? You pick it up in the gas station because it looks so full. But then you get it back to your car and you open it and this gigantic whoosh of air comes out. And I swear there ends up being like four Doritos total in there. But the Doritos company is like, listen, you paid for a bag. What's the least amount we can put in that bag and still have it qualify as a bag? Here's Jesus's question. Which of those two best describes your approach to generosity? Are you the Doritos company? Or are you like me and my friends at the Mongolian restaurant? Yeah, well, Jesus requires a bowl. Think of that by the way, it's like a tithe. Jesus requires a bowl.

What's the least amount I can put in there and have it still count as a bowl? Because here's the deal. With the measure you use, Jesus said, that's what will be measured back to you. Or to use Paul's words again, those who sow sparingly will also reap sparingly. The opposite is also true. Those who sow abundantly will also reap abundantly. The greatest threat to any work of God is not opposition from the outside, y'all. It's compromise on the inside. And the first form that compromise usually takes is financial. You see, that kind of posture grieves the Holy Spirit and it drives out his presence and his blessing from whatever it is you're involved in. So here are my questions for you. Do you give generously? Do you give abundantly? We always say here, live sufficiently and give abundantly. Don't give sufficiently and live abundantly. Do the opposite. Save sufficiently and give abundantly. Because if you do that, then God will give abundantly to you in pursuit of your calling. Do you isolate yourself from suffering around you? Or do you run toward it? You find excuses why it's not your responsibility?

Or do you voluntarily take on responsibility? If you isolate yourself from suffering around you, God will isolate his blessing from you. By the way, a great way to apply this is to come to one of our Serve Saturdays. Whole point of Serve Saturdays, third Saturday of every month, is helping you get exposed to some of these groups so that you're not isolating yourself from them. A substantial part of our ministry budget here at the Summit goes to ministry. to these groups. It's the quartet of the vulnerable right here in our own city. This is a way that you can acquaint yourselves with them. Are you asking the Holy Spirit to open your eyes to suffering around you of people in your life? And then when he does, are you responding when he puts something in your path? Because if you do so, God will respond to you when you pray. The greatest threat to the work of God's people or the greatest threat to your own calling is not threats from the outside, it's compromising the inside. And the first form that threat usually takes is financial. Here's the third thing we learn from this chapter. We learn that true leadership is servanthood. True leadership is servanthood. In verses 14 to 18, Nehemiah sets up a contrast

between him and the other more self-interested leaders. He says in verse 15, those governors who came before me laid heavy burdens on the people. They took a daily ration of 40 shekels of silver. Meanwhile, he says, I'm feeding 150 staff every day at my own expense, and I'm not even using the stipend that's provided for me as governor. You see, true leadership, godly leadership, doesn't use those God has given you influence over to accomplish some personal goal. Godly leadership pours itself out to serve them. And what I do as your pastor, I often remind myself, God does not give churches to pastors. God gives pastors to churches. God has not given me this church to build up my ego or to give me a place to actualize my gifts, a platform to establish my teaching ministry. He didn't give it to me to help me accomplish my personal dreams. God gave me stewardship over this church so that I could serve it and lay down my life for it like he did for me. By the way, maybe you've been at a church where the opposite was the case, where it became clear the pastor or the leaders were using the church for their own ends. There was financial mismanagement.

There were abuses of power. Maybe you suffered under those. If that is you, I just wanna say that I recognize how difficult it can be for you to even come back into a place like this. You being here this morning, we do not take that lightly at all. I know it is a huge step for some of you. I genuinely hope over time we can earn your trust. We do our very best here to operate with transparency and integrity, and we have set things up so that neither I or any other leader here is able to manipulate or misappropriate the church's resources. That is how I'm applying this. But here's my question for you. In what God has given you stewardship over, are you leveraging that for your kingdom or for His? If you make a bunch of money, by the way, praise God for that. Make more if you can. You don't need to feel guilty about that at all. But are you using it primarily to enlarge your lifestyle or expand His kingdom? Have you used that prosperity to increase your standard of living or to increase your standard of giving? In whatever talents God has given you, have you even asked God what purposes He has for them in His kingdom?

If you're a manager, if you're a boss, do you think of your employees primarily as cogs in your machine, instruments for profit making, or do you think of them primarily as people God has given you stewardship over so that you can grow them and bless them and help them and their families prosper? If you're married, do you see that marriage as a little institution to help you meet your needs? Or do you see that marriage as a place where you get to pour yourself out for somebody else's needs? If you're a parent, what's your posture towards your children? Are you like, you little budget drainers are really messing up my lifestyle. I mean, it's like Ray Romano says, having children is like living in a frat house. Nobody sleeps, everything's broken, and there's a lot of throwing up, right? Do you live with bitterness on how they're messing up your lifestyle or is your attitude what? A privilege to have this gift of God entrusted to my care. What an honor to serve these children and to pour my life out to help them learn to thrive in God and thrive in the world. If God has given you a position of influence over others, if you're an influencer, whether it's the social media variety or what, do you spend more time concentrating

on what others think about you or on what they think about him? How about this one? If you enter a season where God sets you aside or puts you on the shelf, somebody else starts getting all the attention or the recognition, right? You kind of start fading in the background. You're no longer the big cheese. You okay with that? I've always been deeply convicted by the story of how John the Baptist responded when he entered a season where he started to fade in popularity. He got put on the back burner, so to speak. See, there was a time in his life when John the Baptist was the most popular thing around. Everybody podcasted John the Baptist. Everybody followed him on social media. He trended on every platform. He got the interviews on The View and Good Morning America. He got features on CNN, but then Jesus came along. Jesus started to get more attention than John, and a bunch of John's followers are like, hey, are you okay with this? All these people who once sat in your audience are now going to hear him. Your crowds are way smaller, John, than they used to be. John said those famous words. He must increase, I must decrease.

See, I've often thought, would I respond that way if that happened to me? Have I responded that way when it's happened to me? And it has. I've told you my story about praying for God to send revival to the triangle. This was like 15 years ago. I took a day of prayer and fasting, and I was praying for God to send revival. I'm talking about the kind of revival that just changes a city. Kind of revival, but when they write the history of America 100 years from now, they talk about the change that came from this. And I was praying, God, would you do that in the triangle? God, please let us see that. Now, I've been your pastor for a long time. You know I'm not one of those guys who's always hearing God whisper in his ear, and I get this running dialogue with the Holy Spirit. That's not me. But I'm telling you, this is one of those times when the Holy Spirit spoke to me, not in an audible voice, but in this voice as clear, maybe clearer than had it been audible. The Holy Spirit said, okay, let's just say that I do answer this prayer. And let's say that I send a revival that really changes the city. It rocks North Carolina and it changes the nation.

But let's just say that the church you pastor doesn't get any bigger as a result of it. In fact, that other church right down the road, the one who's attendance you're always checking, see how it compares to this church. What if that church really grows? In fact, what if a bunch of people from your church leave to go to that church because that's where all the excitement is. And 100 years from now, when they write the history, they don't even mention you in the footnotes. You still want me to do it? Now y'all, I know the right answer. Oh yes, Lord, you must increase and I must decrease. I know the right answer. Even though that's the right answer, I knew that wasn't the real answer. The real answer was no, I'm not okay with that. Somehow in all this talk about thy kingdom come, what I actually meant was my kingdom come. After saying he must increase and I must decrease, John goes on in John three to say, listen, man, I'm just like the best man in a wedding party. You know, traditionally the role of the best man is to serve the groom, to make sure the wedding goes off without a hitch and to make sure the groom looks good. He's kind of supposed to be invisible. Imagine you're watching, imagine you go to a wedding and the entire weekend,

the best man is trying to hog attention for himself. And the rehearsal dinner, he's always trying to one up the groom. Groom tells a story, he tells a slightly better story. The groom makes a toast, he makes a longer toast. When the wedding party walks in to start the ceremony, it's obvious that Mr. Best Man wants to be the center of attention. He's got a really loud tie and cummerbund on, right? He's wearing it really tight, he's kind of flexing on everybody. He's kind of hamming it up with the crowd, keeping people from, you know, taking in the solemnity of the moment. But then you think surely when she comes, at the moment that glorious part of the ceremony where those back doors swing open and there she stands in all her resplendent glory and everybody in the whole wedding starts cutting eyes between her and him, like looking at how she's looking at him, is he getting a tear in his eye, blah, blah, you know, all that kind of stuff. And you're just swept up in this moment, but then you notice the best man pops his head around the groom, starts making eyes at the bride, you know, winking at her. What's the groom going to do? He's going to turn around and punch him in the throat, right? How dare you direct the attention of that bride

away from me and onto you? See, isn't that how Jesus feels when I focus more in my position to influence on what you think about me more than what you think about him? As a pastor, I'm supposed to teach you to love, to admire, to depend on him, not on me. That's true for you too, in whatever area God has given you to serve in. God gives you what he gives you. Christian, he gives you what he gives you for the sake of the bride and not for yourself. And when it comes time to be set aside, when it comes time for me to be put on the back burner, we'll see, then you're just okay with that because it's really never been about you, it's always been about him. Whatever he's given you stewardship. or are you using that primarily to serve yourself or to serve Christ? That brings us to number four. The fear of God is the heart of leadership. Twice in this passage, Nehemiah connects the way he leads with the fear of God. I could have used my position, he says in verse 15, to serve myself, but I did not do so because of the fear of God. In verse nine, he urges the other leaders to do the right thing for the same reason. So I said, this thing that you're doing is not good.

Ought you not walk in the fear of our God? That's pretty clear here, that fear of our God in this context doesn't mean that you live terrified of God. In fact, Nehemiah shows no evidence of that. He feels profoundly safe with God. That's the source of his fear. It means you live in the awareness of how real God is. You live with the awareness of how awesome God is and you live with the awareness of how God's opinion is really the only one that actually matters. In fact, a better word in English, perhaps to translate this word here, would be awe, A-W-E. One of Nehemiah's secrets of success, y'all, the secret of success of any true Christian leader is they live their life for an audience of one. They are constantly aware that God is constantly present, that God sees it all. He sees even the smallest things. He sees even the motivations. He knows what's going on in your heart when everybody else is praising your actions and God's opinion is the only one that matters. Being in awe of God is what enables the leader to avoid captivity to everybody else's opinion. Because you're like, well, all I care about is God's opinion. I don't care about your opinion. The fear of God is what enables the leader to resist the allure of money or compromise.

The fear of God is what enables the leader not to be intimidated by people on the outside threatening them because they're like, well, God's bigger than all those people anyway. And his opinion is the only one that really matters. If he's for me, who can be against me? John Wesley very famously said, the guy who preached the great awakening, first great awakening in our country, he famously said, the man who fears God needs to fear nothing else, right? I mean, for example, take the apostle Paul. Have you ever thought if you were a Roman official, how frustrating it must have been to try to threaten Paul? Paul, if you don't shut up, we will kill you. Well, for me to live as Christ and to die as gain. Fine, we won't kill you. We'll just ruin your reputation. Well, no matter in every way, whether in pretense or in truth, Christ has preached. Therein I rejoice and will rejoice. All right, then we'll just put you in chains. Great, I'll just convert the guards you chain me to. Oh, by the way, those in Caesar's household from the last place you chained me up, they send their greetings in Christ to you. Well, then we'll just throw you in a dungeon and lock away the key. Perfect, I got some letters I've been meaning to write. One to Galatia, one to you Romans.

They're gonna be called the Bible one day. See, Paul says, I'm really confident that all things are working together for good for those of us who love God, who are called according to his purposes. Paul says, I wouldn't have that confidence if I were living for my purposes, because I'm living for his. You can't touch anything that I'm doing. There is an incredible freedom that comes from fearing God alone. This is how I wanna be. And by the way, if you pray for me, and I hope you do, I would love for you to pray that specifically for me as your leader. It's what I desire, to be so in all of God that other people's opinions just don't really matter, that other threats don't feel that threatening. In fact, over the years, I've told you a story that captures how I wanna be with Jesus. It's a summit classic, but I checked my notes and it has been at least six years since I told that story, so it's time. One of the many jobs that I had in college was soccer coach for a middle school age boys team. Partly how I funded my non-extravagant lifestyle was coaching this team. It was my first experience coaching and the team was pretty good. The coaching was spectacular, right?

If I do say so myself. First season I had ever coached and we went undefeated for the entire season. We made it all the way to the Harnett County semifinals. And you're like, well, that doesn't sound like a big deal. It was to me, okay? And we got paired up against this team in the tournament that we had never played before. This team had this one exceptional player, the most skilled player, hands down, we had encountered all season and catch this detail, she was fantastic. And my little 12 year old boys did not have a category for this. She was like Magic Johnson with a soccer ball. She just sliced to the defense whenever she wanted and she kept getting shot after shot. after shot on goal. And I knew there was no possible way we even had a chance at winning the game until we figured out a plan to deal with her. So a few minutes into the second half, I pulled our sweeper, his name was David, out of the game. And I said, David, I am sick and tired of that girl getting all those shots on goal. He's like, me too, coach, I hate that girl. I'm like, David, we don't need to go there yet, okay? But then I leaned down in his little 12-year-old face and I got right in his face and I said, David, for the remainder of this game,

that girl is your assignment. You understand me, David? No more shots she gets, no more shots on goal, not even one. I don't care what else is going on in the field. The only thing I want you focused on is stopping her. You understand me, David? Yes, sir, coach. David, seriously, I don't care what happens on the field. I don't care if the guy next to you burst into flames. That is not your responsibility, you understand me? Am I clear, David? Yes, sir, coach. He turned to run back onto the field. I said, David, he's about 10 feet from me. I said, David, do it all legally. We'd worked on this kind of stuff in practice, right? Slide tackles and such. Okay, a few minutes later, here she comes down the right side of the field. She jukes our left fullback, leaves him in the fetal position, crying for his mama. I don't know where our stopper was, but he wasn't even in the picture. And so now it's just her and the goalie. And she pump fakes, I kid you not. She pump fakes with the foot. He just goes diving. So now it's just her and a wide open net, game over. And then out of nowhere, in my peripheral vision,

I see a blur, a little David shaped missile coming right at her. And y'all, he just leveled her. Not a slide tackle, like a full on football tackle. They both go down. There's like a little mushroom cloud of dust where they've been standing. And the whole field just like, the whole field just goes silent. I mean, dumbfounded. Like, did that just happen? Then after a few kind of seconds of silence, the whole place just explodes into chaos. Everybody's angry. Their team is angry because they thought that he tried to take out their star player. Our team is angry because they know that he's just handed them a penalty kick and they're likely going to score on that penalty kick and they're gonna win the game because of it. The ref is angry trying to decide if this kid needs a red card or a court date. Our parents are angry because they think psycho coach sent in this kid to take this girl out. I'm angry because I'm thinking I might be going to jail. The only person on the field who is not angry and is oblivious to all of this is David. David stands up really slowly, right? Dusting himself off, reaches down and helps her up like a perfect little gentleman, right?

Helps her up. And he turns around 180 degrees. I'm about 50 yards away. He turns around and goes like this. And I'm like, this just went from bad to worse. I pull him off field. At this point, this is theater. I'm trying to perform for the parents. I'm like, David, what was that? What is wrong with you, son? Where's your brain? Point to your brain. He points to his brain. I said, David, what in the world were you thinking? And he looks at me with dead serious, this defiant look in his face, little 12 year old innocent face. And he said, coach, you told me to take her out illegally. I said, no, I said, do it all legally. He thought I'd said, do it illegally. Now she was fine. They got the penalty kick. They won the game. And by the way, just to make the story more awesome, David has now grown up. He's married and he and his wife attend our Summit Apex campus, okay? Somehow he still trusts my leadership, which is amazing. And concerning by the way about him, but here's what always has been impressive to me

about that story. Even at 12 years old, David knew the rules of soccer well enough to know that he was gonna get in trouble for doing what he did. He knew that they were gonna get a penalty kick. He knew he would probably get a red card. He knew he'd probably get grounded after the game. And yet David didn't care about any of that. In his little warped 12 year old brain, David had one consideration. If coach is happy with me, then everything's gonna be all right. Now we should, of course, teach our 12 year olds to make better decisions than that. But that is a great attitude to have towards Jesus. All that matters is if he's happy. The one who fears God needs to fear nothing else. Some of you need to start thinking about God like that. You need to live your life for an audience of one. Now, of course, let me point out, some of you find it impossible to think about God that way. Because you're scared of God the other way. You feel uncertain about how he feels about you. So you're constantly wondering if he's angry with you. You feel like you're never good enough to earn his approval or good enough to earn his love. And that's because you've never really grasped the heart of the gospel. You've been in church all your life, You've never understood the heart of the gospel,

at least not on a heart level. God doesn't love you. He doesn't approve of you because you're good enough. God gives his love freely to you as a gift. Christ purchased it for you. It's not about what you do for him. It's about what he has done, D-O-N-E, for you. God doesn't love you because you love him enough. His love for you is not measured by your love for him. He loves you first, freely as a gift, and you just love him in response. The kind of fear that changes the world starts with the assurance of the love and acceptance that God has given you as a gift, and once you are assured to that, what else have you got to be afraid of? If God is for you, who can be against you? What could the future possibly present to me that my God cannot handle? I'm convinced that nothing, Paul says, not height, not depth, not death or life or angels or things present or things to come or the Roman Senate or the Roman army or any of these crazy emperors, I'm convinced that nothing can separate me from the love of God in Christ. There's no need he will ignore, no obstacle he's not gonna overcome. There's no provision he won't supply. He did not spare his own son for us.

How will he not also freely give us with him all things? If God is for me, he'll supply whatever I need for my parenting. He'll supply what I need for my marriage. Jesus didn't die on a cross so that he could abandon me in the time of need when I need his help for things. He'll help me in my job. He'll help me in my leadership here. He'll help me overcome this sinful heart of mine or whatever else I need. The fear of God is the heart of leadership. And see, that leads me to one last one. Jesus is the truer and greater Nehemiah. Y'all, we see some amazing character traits in Nehemiah, things that we can and should emulate. Oh, but there's a hint. There's a hint in this chapter, somebody greater even than Nehemiah, somebody who's gonna embody servant leadership way more than Nehemiah ever did. See, like Nehemiah, Jesus, the builder of the true Jerusalem, he's gonna leave a position in the palace to come and rebuild our ruined city. Like Nehemiah, Jesus will refuse to exploit the people that God has called him to serve. He never gets rich during his time of service. He didn't even have a place to lay his head, he said. But see, unlike Nehemiah, Jesus did more than simply refuse to take from his people.

Jesus actually laid down his life for his people after they had betrayed him. Jesus didn't just pay for their food at his table out of his own expense, he provided his own flesh on the table as the bread of life. Nehemiah laid aside his rights as a governor. Jesus laid aside his rights as the son of God. Nehemiah came into Jerusalem riding on a horse. Jesus came in on a donkey, the transportation of a servant. Nehemiah would go and sit in a governor's chair and lead a building campaign. Jesus would take up a towel and wash his disciples' feet and then die for their sins. Nehemiah used his position to lift burdens, Jesus used his position to carry them by taking them onto himself. What Nehemiah was for us in shadow, Jesus is in substance. Maybe most striking of all is the last verse of this chapter and the last verse of the whole book, they're the same. Nehemiah prays, chapter five, verse tightening, remember me, oh my God, for good, for all I have done for this people. But Jesus prayed, remember them, oh my God, for good, because I suffered in their place. Nehemiah was a great leader who refused to exploit his people. Jesus is the perfect leader who let himself be exploited by his people. That's the kind of leader we follow. He's not somebody who uses us for his purposes,

but somebody who laid down his life for ours. Hallelujah, what a savior. And because of that, because of that, it is a joy to fear him. It's a joy to fear him and him alone in all things. And I am compelled to pour out my life for others the way he has poured out his for me. This is how you're living, this is how you're living. Is this the kind of leader that you are? And whatever it is that God's given you influence over, let's return to where we started. The greatest threat to God's work is not opposition from the outside, it's compromise on the inside. Where's this happening with you right now? Could it be some secret sin that you just refuse to confess? Maybe, maybe a lack of generosity. Is that the number one sin of the Summit Church? A refusal to tithe? A fixation on only your needs or a callousness to the suffering around you? Maybe an ungenerous spirit towards your other brothers and sisters here in the church that comes out as jealousy, a refusal to forgive, gossip, backbiting, bitterness, holding on to grudges? Summit, what if the greatest threat to the activity of God here and in your family was not attacks from the outside?

What if it's selfishness on the inside? By the way, I actually considered this weekend just taking a break in the MI and doing a message specifically about Palm Sunday, but the more I got into this, I was like, no, this is the perfect way for us to go into Holy Week. Are you prepared to follow Jesus in holiness, in humility, and in pouring out your life to serve others? Where's God this morning? Where is he telling you to repent? In just a moment, our worship team's gonna come up here and we're gonna sing a song together at all campuses that begins with the words, seek me, search me, and know my heart. Why don't you allow God to search your heart right now and to root out any places of compromise? There comes a point in every message, but especially one like this one, where I got nothing else to say, because it's really not between me and you, it's between you and the Holy Spirit. I need you to let him search your heart. So bow your heads at all campuses if you would. Come, come, come, Holy Spirit. God, my own heart is so dull of hearing. But I'm asking you right now on behalf of all of us, God, would you search us and would you show us the places that grieve you, the places of compromise, the places that will drive out your blessing?

Speak clearly, Lord. So I'm at church, would you just listen? I'm gonna ask our worship teams as they come just to delay leading the song for just a moment as you listen to the Holy Spirit and then you respond and do whatever he tells you to do. And then when it's time, they'll stand us up and they'll lead us.