Nehemiah 12: Take Time to Look at What God Has Done

Introduction

"The danger is not only forgetting God in the trial, it is also getting used to God in the blessing." Patrice Martorano, pastor of Église Momentum, preaches this message on "Happy Momentum," the anniversary of the network's churches, as they celebrate fifteen years of ministry.

The pastor lists what God has given: more than a thousand baptisms, the opening of Momentum Sans Frontières in 2018, Brussels in September 2022, Paris in 2024, Momentum Academy six years ago, and albums whose songs are sung "in every corner of the French-speaking world." Then he asks a simple question: are we still able to stop and see it?

To answer, he opens Nehemiah 12. After the rebuilding of the wall of Jerusalem, God does not give the people a new building project. He gives them a feast. The title of the message fits in one sentence: look at what God has done.

Message Outline

1. Getting Used to God in the Blessing

• At the start of a dream, we pray, we fast, we hold committee meetings, and "our hearts race." Then God fulfills the dream he placed in our hearts.
• The strange thing happens a few years later: what used to thrill us becomes "completely ordinary." You opened a church? "Yeah." The songs are sung everywhere? "Yeah."
• We are so focused on what is left to do that we no longer see what God has done. The pastor admits that he himself is often "head down, charging ahead."
• Yet there are new projects: a larger venue in three or four years, an app for Momentum Sans Frontières, the coming milestones in Paris and Brussels. But God says: before you chase a multitude of things, look at what I have accomplished.
• "The urgency of the next chapter must not rob us of gratitude for the chapter God has just written."
• The preacher recalls a saying he attributes to David: count God's blessings, set them all before your eyes, and you will see how great their number is.

2. Nehemiah: After the Building Site, a Feast

• Nehemiah is neither a prophet, nor a priest, nor a Levite. He is a cupbearer who works in a king's palace and who has a heart for the city of Jerusalem, left without a wall and given over to shame.
• The king sends him with letters of recommendation and supplies. Once in Jerusalem, Nehemiah walks around the city and notes everything: the collapsed walls, the burned gates.
• He then rallies a people who had lived in disgrace for decades. He changes their vision, lifts them out of fatalism, and they all say: "Let's rise up and build." (Nehemiah 2:18).
• In 52 days, they rebuild the walls (Nehemiah 6:15) and the gates, and restore dignity and honor to the people.
• In chapter 12, God does not give them a new building project: "he is going to give them a feast." There is a time to build, and a time to turn around and say: look at what God has done.

3. Don't Forget to Celebrate What God Has Done

• At the dedication of the wall, the Levites are brought in from every place where they live (Nehemiah 12:27). Not to rebuild, nor to solve a problem or hold a strategy meeting, but to celebrate and say thank you.
• For most of us, gratitude does not come naturally. You have to decide on it. Our eyes are "radars" that pick up everything that is wrong.
• The pastor's example: he invites twenty people over. Nineteen tell him it was wonderful, and only one finds the evening "meh." When everyone leaves, he thinks only about that one. You can decide to look at the nineteen.
• Momentum is not perfect, and the pastor knows it. "But the Church is built on Jesus' sacrifice on the cross. And the one who gave his life for us is perfect."
• Nehemiah says in essence: "Today, we are not fixing anything. Today, we remember."
• This is not about celebrating ourselves. The Corinthians had every spiritual gift and were proud of them. Paul answers them: what do you have that you did not receive? (1 Corinthians 4:7). The one who builds his Church "is named Jesus."
• If we think we are the reason for the blessing, we compare our performances and jealousy takes root. If God is the reason for the feast, the other person's victory becomes my joy.

4. What God Builds in Us Before What He Builds Through Us

• Just before the celebration, "the priests and the Levites purified themselves; and they purified the people, and the gates, and the wall" (Nehemiah 12:30). The order strikes the pastor: first the people, then the building.
• We often want to know what God will do through our lives: become a great preacher, bless the whole French-speaking world. But God is first interested in doing things in our lives. "Who you are becoming is what matters."
• "For God, what he builds in us is always more important than what he builds through us." The wall matters, but the people matter more.
• God's dream is not the microphones, the lights, the curtain or the four walls. It is the people inside. Projects matter, but you matter more than the projects: God's project was to die on the cross for each one.
• If the projects, the technology and the organization grow but we do not grow, "we have missed something in the mission."
• The pastor sees a beautiful people: people who pray for one another during the time of fasting and prayer, who encourage and bless one another. "Happy Momentum" is not only looking at what we have built, it is also saying: "Lord, look at what you have built in us."

5. Unity Does Not Mean Everyone Takes the Same Path

• Nehemiah has the people go up on the wall and forms "two great choirs" (Nehemiah 12:31). The first goes to the right. The second choir sets out in the opposite direction (Nehemiah 12:38).
• They celebrate the same God, the same wall, the same victory, the same day, yet they set out in opposite directions. Nobody says, "This is terrible, we are divided." Both know where they are going.
• Then "the two companies of those who gave thanks stood in God's house" (Nehemiah 12:40). For the pastor, this is a beautiful picture of unity.
• When the church began planting, he told the team: no franchise, like McDonald's where everything is identical from A to Z. A shared DNA and a shared culture, yes. But Brussels is another country, Paris is a different people from Bordeaux, and in each soil the color is different.
• Wherever he goes, the churches do not look "completely" alike, and yet he feels at home. "Unity is not uniformity."
• "The same God can write many stories without dividing the family."
• The danger is comparison: who sings the loudest, who has the nicest lights, the best Instagram account, the most baptisms. In Nehemiah 12, the people do not sing about their success, they proclaim God's faithfulness.
• "When God is the object of the celebration, my brother's success no longer threatens mine, because one person's victory increases the other's joy." If another person's victory makes you jealous, "there is a problem." The more a work grows, the easier it is to create silos.

6. The Greatest Miracle May Not Have Been the Wall

• "They offered great sacrifices that day, and rejoiced; for God had made them rejoice with great joy; and the women and the children also rejoiced, so that the joy of Jerusalem was heard even far away" (Nehemiah 12:43).
• The text does not say they were pleased to have worked well. It says God had given them great joy. While they were building the wall, God was building joy in his people. "The wall was their work. The joy was God's gift."
• This is not a feast reserved for Nehemiah, his team and a few leaders congratulating one another. Women, children, the whole people celebrate. Grace is for everyone: the children, those in the nursery, as well as the elderly.
• A wall normally stops sound. But no wall could contain the joy of what God was doing among the people. They had built walls, but they did not let their joy be shut in.
• By working hard, you can have your joy stolen. What you do makes a difference: even if you are sorting carrots, you do it for the glory of God.
• In chapter 6, the people around them had heard about the wall that was built (Nehemiah 6:16). In chapter 12, they hear what God has produced in his people.
• The pastor's prayer: that people would not only hear about a beautiful building, a nice YouTube channel or fine instruments, but about the joy Jesus produces among us. Marriages rebuilt, healings, like the woman who told him how God had acted powerfully in her husband's life, as he was close to death, while she prayed from a distance.
• The goal is that the joy found behind our walls would become audible beyond the four walls.

7. The Building Is Never the Dream

• About twelve days earlier, the pastor gathered the office teams, the pastors and the support ministries. In Bordeaux, the church is at four services, and one day they will need to find another building. They are not going to "string services together like pearls on a necklace."
• What he told them: "The building is never the dream." The dream is the people who will come: families and faces we do not know yet, caught in alcoholism, pornography or addictions, couples tearing each other apart, children living through abuse. May God heal them, forgive them, set them free and make them new creations.
• Each person took a sheet of paper with this instruction: imagine it is 2036, a Sunday morning at Momentum. What do you see? The pastor wrote: "I dream of seeing a Church that honors and celebrates Jesus. I dream of seeing families reunited."
• Out of 25 or 30 people, 95% had written the same dream. For the pastor, if God placed the same dream in each person, it is because it is God's dream.
• The message ends with the Lord's Supper. The two processions that set out to the right and to the left ended up in the same place. "Because there is one loaf of bread, we, who are many, are one body" (1 Corinthians 10:17). Each fragment is unique, and yet all come from the same loaf.

Key Takeaways

• The danger is not only forgetting God in the trial, it is also getting used to him in the blessing.
• Gratitude is a decision: there is a time to build and a time to stop and look at what God has done.
• For God, what he builds in us matters more than what he builds through us.
• Unity is not uniformity: different paths can lead to the same house of God, and the other person's victory becomes my joy.
• The wall was the people's work, the joy was God's gift, and no wall can contain it.

Personal Application

1. What has God done in your life that thrilled you at first and has become ordinary in your eyes?
2. In your week, do you look more at the person who said "meh" or at the nineteen who were blessed?
3. Are you more interested in what God wants to do through you than in what he wants to do in you?
4. Is there someone whose success makes you jealous rather than joyful? What would change if you celebrated God's faithfulness in that person's life?
5. Take a moment this week to write down the list of what God has done for you, and thank him for each line.

Verses Cited

• Nehemiah 12:27-43
• Nehemiah 2:18
• Nehemiah 6:15-16
• 1 Corinthians 4:7
• 1 Corinthians 10:17
• Psalm 103:2

Frequently Asked Questions

What happens in Nehemiah 12 after the wall is rebuilt?

After 52 days of work, Nehemiah does not launch a new building project: he organizes a feast. The Levites are brought in from every place where they live to celebrate the dedication with joy, thanksgiving and songs. For Patrice Martorano, there is a time to build and a time to turn around and say: look at what God has done.

Why does Patrice Martorano say that unity is not uniformity?

In Nehemiah 12, two choirs set out along the wall in opposite directions, then both stop in the house of God. Nobody speaks of division, because everyone knows where they are going. A Church can keep a shared DNA and let each place have its own color: the same God can write many stories without dividing the family.

What is the danger of getting used to God in the blessing?

What thrilled us at the beginning becomes ordinary a few years later, and we see only what is left to do. The preacher sums it up this way: the danger is not only forgetting God in the trial, it is also getting used to God in the blessing. The remedy is to stop and celebrate his faithfulness.