It’s the same with our Christian lives. We need models, people who embody for us what genuine godliness looks like. That’s one of the reasons for a day like All Saints Day, which is celebrated on November 1. It’s a day for remembering those who’ve gone before us and are now with the Lord, those who are part of that great cloud of witnesses that the author of Hebrews mentions. Thomas Howard complains about Evangelicals’ hesitancy in giving honor to the saints: “At the Feast of All Saints, the Church remembers and gives thanks for all the faithful who have gone before us.... Thus, as the letter to the Hebrews reminds us, we are surrounded with a great and awesome cloud of witnesses, men and women of whom the world was not worthy. Why, why will we most gladly set days aside to honor the fathers of our nation – Washington, Lincoln, Jefferson – but draw back in dismay from giving honor to the Fathers of our Faith? Believing what they taught is fine, but let us press on to the fullness of faith and give honor to whom honor is due” (Evangelical is Not Enough, pp. 147-48). It’s right that we should honor those who’ve been faithful to the end in following the Lord, who are now in His presence. And one of the ways we honor them is by studying their lives and using them as models. They embody for us something of what it means to follow Jesus Christ in this fallen world.
Nehemiah is part of that great cloud of witnesses; he’s one of our models of godliness. We need to give attention to his life, because he breaks many of our stereotypes. He doesn’t fit the mold of a quiet, contemplative person. As we’ve seen in our earlier studies, Nehemiah was a man of action, a great leader. He wasn’t a priest or a prophet; he spent most of his time in secular employment, first as cupbearer to the King, then as the leader of the rebuilding of the wall of Jerusalem, and then, finally, as the governor. In reading through this book we don’t get the impression that Nehemiah was easy to live with; but over and over again we see his concern to be faithful to what God called him to do.
We saw, in our earlier studies, that Nehemiah was a man of action, but that he put a priority on prayer. He resisted the temptation to rush ahead and start fixing the problem right away. Before he did anything else about the problems in Jerusalem, Nehemiah spent several months waiting on God, calling out to Him in prayer. And now, with all that behind him, he arrives in Jerusalem with a clear vision for rebuilding the walls. The thing that comes across clearly in our present passage is Nehemiah’s wisdom once he arrives in Jerusalem.
First, he’s wise in choosing the right time to speak. Nehemiah is a newcomer to Jerusalem. The people there have been living in hardship and disgrace. All their previous attempts to rebuild the city have been forcibly stopped. They’re discouraged and have lost hope. How likely is it that they will listen to this man, Nehemiah, who’s been sitting comfortably in the king’s palace and who hasn’t experienced what it’s really like to live in Jerusalem? In 1978, I spent six months in Nepal, and one of the chronic problems I kept hearing about in the church there was the problem of disunity. The church was plagued by factions and power struggles. A friend of mine was at a social gathering one evening, where he met a young man who’d just arrived within the past week or so. The man was in his early 20's, and when Al asked him what he was doing in Nepal, he announced, “I’ve come to unite the church of Nepal.” My friend thought the idea was ridiculous. Of course, it would be a wonderful thing to see the church united, but this man really didn’t know much about the church in Nepal; it’s possible that he had a genuine vision from God to work toward unity in the church, but he was speaking too soon; he hadn’t taken the time to acquaint himself with the local situation. By speaking so soon and making such a grandiose announcement of his plans, he undermined his ability to carry out his plans. No one took him seriously.
Nehemiah avoids that temptation. He has, after all, a genuine vision from God, and he has the backing of the king, but before he talks about any of that he takes the time to acquaint himself with the local situation. For the first three days he’s in Jerusalem, no one even knows why he’s there. Then he goes out secretly at night to inspect the walls. He wants to get a clear picture of what he’s asking the people to do.
It’s important to know that there is no conflict between a God-given vision and the hard, sometimes boring, work of study and investigation. A vision for God’s work, a sense of calling, may come to us in a supernatural way. More often, an idea will slowly form over time as we wait on God and seek direction from Him, but sometimes He’ll give us a clear sense of vision more-or-less instantly. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, who was pastor of Westminster Chapel in London for 30 years, told once of receiving a sermon series in this way. He had a practice of putting together sermon skeletons from his daily reading of Scripture. Whenever a passage was speaking to him, he would stay with it and pray over it, and then he’d put together a rough outline of a sermon, which he then put into a file. One morning, he said, God came to him in an extraordinary way and called him to preach a series on Spiritual Depression using some of these outlines in his files. He saw the whole series in an instant, and he just needed to go to his file and pull out the skeletons that God had called him to use. But then, when it came time to preach the series, he still had to do the hard work of sermon preparation. He had to study the passages and pray for direction; he still had to trust God and look to Him for help as he developed these skeletons into finished sermons. A vision may come to us supernaturally, but then God calls us to use all our gifts and resources in carrying out this vision. There is no conflict between a God-given vision and the hard, sometimes boring, work of study and investigation. Nehemiah takes the time to acquaint himself first-hand with the problem before he speaks publicly about the vision God has given him.
The second point is that Nehemiah is wise in the way he presents his vision to the people. When the time comes to speak, he resists the temptation to overemphasize the negative. He identifies the problem – “you see the trouble we are in” – but he’s not obsessed with the problem. His purpose in talking about it is to point to a solution: “Come, let us rebuild the wall of Jerusalem.” Why is this important? In order to confront the situation, Nehemiah has had to take a long, hard look at the sorry condition of the nation. He’s been dwelling on it for months. His calling, at this point in his life, is tied to the problem. If the problem goes away, what will he do with his life? There’s a subtle temptation that comes to people in this situation. They begin forming their own identity in relation to the problem they’re concerned about, and over time they become, in some sense, dependent on the problem. It’s the only thing they have to talk about. Their whole life revolves around this antagonistic relationship.
Several years ago I stopped listening to one radio preacher because he seemed obsessed with fighting the culture wars. Every time I heard him he was talking about some aspect of this problem; he seemed to be reveling in it. He seemed to be getting some pleasure out of pointing to all the things that are wrong in our culture. He was right in most of what he was saying, but his spirit seemed to be wrong. His whole ministry was increasingly formed in this sense of opposition to the direction of our general culture. I began to wonder whether he ever talked about anything else, and I just got tired of hearing him.
I think he’d probably defend himself by pointing to the Old Testament prophets. And it’s true that the balance is much more heavily on the negative side in the prophets. The prophets were speaking to people who persistently refused to acknowledge the problem. The nation was in a state of advanced spiritual decline and was headed toward disaster; and though the prophets addressed the problem again and again, the people refused to listen. So the balance is much heavier on the negative side. But even in the most negative prophecies, their reason for pointing to the problem is to issue a call to repentance and an invitation to grace and mercy. They’re not reveling in the negative; the longing of their hearts is to see the nation turn to God. Their identity is not tied to the continued spiritual decline of the nation. They’re confronting the negative, but they’re not secretly enjoying it.
Nehemiah confronts the problem: “Face it: we’re in a bad way here. Jerusalem is a wreck; its gates are burned up” (The Message). And he identifies himself with the problem. Even though he’s a newcomer to Jerusalem, it’s his problem. He’s one of them. One of the things that has often wearied me in the folk music movement is the tendency to point to other peoples’ problems: “when will they ever learn?” Nehemiah could easily have said, “you people really dropped the ball and now you’re paying a heavy price for it; it’s time to get with it.” But he doesn’t do that. He doesn’t just point out their problems and failures. He unites with them: “we’re in a bad way here.” “We need to do something about it.” And then he goes on to tell them about all the things God has done already: “‘Come – let’s build the wall of Jerusalem and not live with this disgrace any longer.’ I told them how God was supporting me and how the king was backing me up” (The Message). He points to the problem, but he identifies himself as part of the nation and tells them what God has already done. God has already begun acting on their behalf, so “Come – let’s build the wall of Jerusalem.”
The third thing is that Nehemiah is wise in the way he responds to criticism. Even when the opposition begins, Nehemiah remembers that God is the One who is in charge of the whole operation. He doesn’t become discouraged. Things have been going very well. He’s received support from the king, and now the people have responded enthusiastically to his challenge: “They said, ‘We’re with you. Let’s get started.’ They rolled up their sleeves, ready for the good work” (The Message). When things start falling in place like this, it’s easy to become discouraged by setbacks. Since God has called us and has begun prospering the work, it’s tempting to expect that everything will run smoothly.
Something like this happened to the prophet Elijah. He stood firm against the whole nation assembled at Mt. Carmel. He stood alone as a prophet of God against 450 prophets of Baal and issued a challenge: they would both prepare a sacrifice, place it on the altar, and whoever was answered by fire was a prophet of the true God. The prophets of Baal had prepared their sacrifice first and had called out to Baal all day with no response. In early evening, Elijah had prepared his sacrifice, and when he prayed, God had answered dramatically with fire. The whole nation had seen a graphic demonstration of God’s power and they had cried out, “the Lord – he is God! The Lord – he is God!” (1 Kings 18:39). Then, when Elijah got home, he received a message from Queen Jezebel: “The gods will get you for this and I’ll get even with you! By this time tomorrow you’ll be as dead as any one of those prophets” (1 Kings 19:2, The Message). It caught Elijah by surprise. Everything had been going so well; everything had been falling into place. It caught him off guard, and he fled into the wilderness.
It’s easy to become discouraged when we’re following God’s leading and experience setbacks. It’s especially discouraging to find that everything is falling into place, then experience opposition and hatred from others. That’s what is happening to Nehemiah, but he doesn’t become discouraged. He remembers that God is the One who is in charge of the whole thing: “I shot back, ‘The God-of-Heaven will make sure we succeed. We’re his servants and we’re going to work, rebuilding” (The Message).
The things Sanballat and Tobiah and Geshem are saying don’t sound that threatening at first glance. “‘What are you doing?’ they asked. ‘Are you rebelling against the king?’” In reality, though, it’s a very serious charge. In Ezra 4, King Artaxerxes (the same king who had given Nehemiah permission to rebuild the wall) had ordered the work on the temple stopped. The officials who opposed the Israelites had written to him, reminding him that Israel had once been a powerful nation and that the people there had a history of rebellion. King Artaxerxes wrote back to these officials: “a search was made [in the royal archives], and it was found that this city has a long history of revolt against kings and has been a place of rebellion and sedition” (Ezra 4:19). Sanballat and his friends are renewing this charge, the same charge that had earlier led the king to order the work forcibly stopped.
It’s a serious threat, but Nehemiah doesn’t become discouraged. It’s not his work, ultimately. God is the One who is in charge of the whole thing. So Nehemiah ignores the charge of rebellion and answers wisely: “The God of heaven will give us success. We his servants will start rebuilding, but as for you, you have no share in Jerusalem or any claim or historic right to it.”
We need models like Nehemiah. Every day, in our society, we’re bombarded by more information than we can possibly make use of. The sheer magnitude of it dulls our sensibilities and cripples our ability to think clearly. T.S. Eliot, writing before the Internet, said this in one of his poems:
The endless cycle of idea and action,With all our advances in knowledge and information, we’ve lost sight of the wisdom of how to live in God’s world. How do we learn to live wisely, like Nehemiah? In much the same way that he did: by immersing ourselves in the corporate worship of God’s people, where we together offer worship to God and cultivate habits of godliness; by soaking our minds in God’s Word, which is full of pictures of godly living in a fallen world (some of them are listed in Hebrews 11); and, most of all, by cultivating the presence of Jesus Christ, “in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” (Colossians 2:3); we learn to live wisely in God’s world by cultivating His presence and seeking to order every area of our lives in obedience to Him. May He increasingly enable us to be people who do this.
Endless invention, endless experiment,
Brings knowledge of motion, but not of stillness;
Knowledge of speech, but not of silence;
Knowledge of words, and ignorance of the Word.
All our knowledge brings us nearer to our ignorance,
All our ignorance brings us nearer to our death,
But nearness to death no nearer to God.
Where is the Life we have lost in living?
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?
The cycles of Heaven in twenty centuries
Brings us farther from God and nearer to the Dust.
(“Choruses from ‘The Rock,” in T.S. Eliot: The Complete Poems and Plays, p. 96).
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