"And I sent
messengers unto them, saying, I am doing
a great work, so that I cannot come down: why should the
work cease, whilst I leave it, and come down to
you?" (Nehemiah 6:3).
"And I arose in
the night, I and some few men with me; neither told I any
man what my God put into my heart to do for
Jerusalem" (Nehemiah 2:12).
These two fragments -
"l am doing a great work", "what my God
put into my heart to do" - give us the entrance into
the great matter which is historically set forth in the
book of Nehemiah.
Three
Things Essential to a Fullness of the Christian Life
There are three things
which are essential to an adequate life with God, to a
fullness of the Christian life.
Firstly, the realization
that God is concerned with the accomplishment of
something worthy of Himself. We shall not get very far
toward a full Christian life, or a life with God, until
it breaks upon us and takes hold of us that God is really
concerned with the accomplishment of something worthy of
Himself.
The second thing is that
people shall become aware of what that great something in
the heart of God is, what it is that God is so concerned
with, and then that they shall be moved to co-operate
with Him in it. That is an essential to a life of
fullness with God, that we His people shall come to see
what it is that He is really set upon, what it is that
will really be worthy of Himself, and, more than that,
that we shall become so deeply moved about this matter as
to co-operate with Him in it.
And then, in the third
place, that we recognize that this object in the heart of
God and this co-operation with Him by His people involves
very real conflict and cost, and that His people must
face that and be ready to accept it.
These three things
comprise the elements and features of a full life with
God, and not one of them can be lacking. The very
conflict and cost will themselves be the evidences of the
value of the thing into which the people of God have been
brought, and the thing which is so dear to God's heart.
Where there is no conflict and no cost, there may be
reason to feel that the outcome is not worth while. I
think that the view of the Apostles, at any rate, was
that the conflict was the complement of the calling so
great and so high.
So that here in this
book of Nehemiah we have those three things brought
before us in a very full and a very powerful way. They
are: a great Cost, a great Work, and a great Conflict.
The book of Nehemiah, as
you will know, and indeed Nehemiah himself, is a great
historic illustration of a much greater spiritual
reality. What we have here on the earth in literal
history is but a reflection of what is going on in this
dispensation in the spiritual realm, and what in this
dispensation is so much greater than anything that ever
was in days gone past on this earth.
Now we have these three
features here. They are: the wall or its rebuilding -
that is the object, that is the purpose, that is the
thing in view. Then we have the work of rebuilding, and
the workers; and then we have, going hand-in-hand with
the purpose and the work, the warfare. The Wall, the
Work, the Warfare; or; in other words, the Calling, the
Conduct and the Conflict. These comprise what we can now
call, in present-day or present-time language, the
recovery and completing of the Lord's testimony, for that
is really what is before us at this time. And so we may
set over this whole matter, this little fragment: "a
great work" - "I am doing a great work";
and it is with this great work that we shall be occupied,
as the Lord leads us.
God's
Reaction in a Day of Spiritual Declension
Nehemiah is the last
great character of the Old Testament and his book the
last historic book of the Old Testament. Those who do not
study the chronological arrangement of the Old Testament
books may not be altogether alive to these facts. Because
the book of Nehemiah comes in our Bibles so much before
the end of the Old Testament, it is taken by many to
relate chronologically to a very much earlier period; but
it really ought to be alongside of the prophecies of
Malachi. When we come to Nehemiah we are contemporary
with the prophet Malachi.
Haggai and Zechariah
uttered their prophecies and passed on. Zerubbabel the
governor, and Joshua the high priest, had accomplished
their ministry. Ezra had fulfilled his part of the work,
as the prophets mentioned had inspired the people to
finish the rebuilding of the Temple. And then there set
in a course of spiritual decline. Great things had taken
place under Haggai, Zerubbabel, Joshua, Zechariah: but
that glory faded; that promise seemed to be short-lived.
We come to Malachi - and you know the content of
Malachi's prophecies. Indeed, a 'radiant morn had passed
away'; indeed things had become overclouded; deep shadows
of spiritual declension filled the sky over Jerusalem;
and all those sad, yes, terrible things mentioned by
Malachi are found, after all, amongst the people of God:
so that only within the remnant that had returned from
the captivity was there found a remnant of the remnant -
"they that feared the Lord" (Mal. 3:16) - and
it was into those conditions, in the midst of such a
state, that Nehemiah came to fulfil his ministry.
This man came to
Jerusalem and set about the undertaking which is
indicated at the beginning of the book which bears his
name - the rebuilding of the wall. I think that that
carries with it a wonderful, yes, inspiring significance:
that in a day, such as that day in which Malachi
prophesied and uttered his terrible words from the Lord,
the Lord has not abandoned - the Lord acts again; and
this rebuilding of the wall is God's action in a day of
spiritual declension. It almost shouts to us that God,
after all, and in the worst times, is still committed to
the recovery and completion of His testimony. It is most
impressive that the book of Nehemiah - the last historic
book of the Old Testament, with Nehemiah the last great
man of the Old Testament - is marked, in a day of
terrible spiritual decline, by God acting again in
relation to His testimony. Sometimes we are tempted to
feel that the time has gone and conditions are too bad,
and we can hope for nothing very much in view of the
situation; but this book and this man administer a very
sound rebuke to any such pessimism.
Travail
in Prayer
Now, before we take up
the three main features of the Wall, the Work and the
Warfare, we must begin with an essential factor which is
embodied in Nehemiah himself. We have to go back a
little, because the beginning of this thing was many
years before, more than seventy years before, and it
began in the heart of the prophet Jeremiah. Jeremiah was
a man with a broken heart, a man of a sorrowful spirit -
a man whose heart was broken and whose spirit was
sorrowful because of the conditions amongst the Lord's
people; and Jeremiah in that travail fulfilled his
ministry, and gave utterance to a declaration, a
prophecy, that the people would go into captivity for
seventy years. That, as we know, came to pass; and then,
as the seventy years were expiring, another man right in
the heart of the situation in Babylon took up Jeremiah's
travail. Jeremiah fulfilled his ministry of travail:
Daniel took up the travail in prayer. Daniel tells us
(chapter 9) that he came to know, "by the
books", that the captivity was to be for seventy
years; and now he sees that the seventy years are coming
to an end, and so he gives himself to intense prayer.
Note: a ministry of travail by Jeremiah, an enlightened
intercessory travail by Daniel - or he has become aware
of the time in which he lives. He has come to realize by
the books that the time is fulfilled, and so he takes
up the travail in this tremendous prayer in the ninth
chapter of the book of Daniel.
God's
Sovereign Reaction
Now we have the next
move. Because the time has come and God is on the move
again for the recovery of His testimony, He sovereignly
stirs up the spirit of Cyrus, who makes a decree, and the
remnant return to Jerusalem. The last two verses of the
second book of the Chronicles, as you know, state the
fact, and then the very first verses of the book of Ezra
following repeat the words exactly. "The Lord
stirred up the spirit of Cyrus king of Persia", and
Ezra was one of the fruits of that sovereign movement of
God. When Ezra fulfilled his part of the ministry, we
come to Nehemiah, and we find again the taking up of that
essential factor which has led to this co-operation with
God.
In the first chapter of
Nehemiah and into the second chapter, we find Nehemiah
gripped, deeply and terribly gripped, by this travail -
this travail which commenced with Jeremiah, this travail
which was born in the heart of Daniel away in Babylon.
Here it is in Nehemiah - travail which is an echo of the
very heart of God concerning His people. We have to fit a
great deal of prophetic utterance into this situation, to
hear the cry of those prophets, all of them, as they
express God's mind and God's heart about the state of His
people. Now that cry - shall we say, that sob - in the
heart of God is born into this man; it finds its
culmination, so far as the Old Testament is concerned, in
the heart of Nehemiah.
Note, before we go
further, these two factors, these two main aspects.
Firstly, God acting sovereignly. That is where the
movement begins. God stirred up the spirit of Cyrus and
you have all that wonderful movement of sovereignty as
recorded in the book of Ezra. Those of you who are
familiar with that book will recall at once the
marvellous facilities which God brought about through the
Persian ruler for the rebuilding of the temple: every
provision made, everything seen to that the thing should
be done; God acting sovereignly. That is one side.
Man
Suffering in Fellowship With God
But here in Nehemiah you
have the other side - man in suffering fellowship with
God. Ezra is the sovereignty of God; Nehemiah is the
fellowship with God by man. Ezra is God acting directly
and independently; Nehemiah is man acting with God, or
God acting through man. Those two things always go
together - remember that. We must never think, because
God is sovereign and His purposes are fixed and settled
and He can do as He will, act independently, He is
self-sufficient, that He will in fact act like that. He
never has done so. Since the creation He has always
brought men into fellowship with Himself in His sovereign
purposes - into deep fellowship and travailing
fellowship. So however great may be the need, whatever
may be the demand, the call, the tragedy, which makes it
necessary for God to act sovereignly in the first place,
He is not going to do it until He can find an instrument
which shares His heart feeling, carries His heart burden,
enters into heart co-operation with Him.
Nehemiah was such a one.
So far as the practical side was concerned, in this final
movement of God in that dispensation, everything had its
beginning in the heart of Nehemiah. That man's heart is
revealed in the very first chapter of this book. It is
therefore very necessary for purposes of today - for I am
not stopping now to try to make a parallel between our
time and the time of Nehemiah: that I take it is patent
and obvious to anyone with spiritual perception - but if
God is going to do something today with regard to the
recovery and completion of His testimony, which needs
recovering and needs completing, He will have to have the
counterpart of Nehemiah - a vessel with a great concern,
the very concern of God Himself, born in its heart.
For a few minutes, then,
let us look at Nehemiah's concern.
Nehemiah's
Concern
This man had a true
appreciation both of how things ought to be and of how
they actually were. We will never get anywhere as
instrumental in the purpose of God until those two things
are clear in our hearts - how things actually are, and
then how things ought to be, how God would have things if
He had them according to His mind, His heart, what things
would be like if they did reflect and express the purpose
of God. You and I will never get very far, if we get
anywhere at all, in our relationship with God, until we
are seeing something of the real state of things in
contrast with the mind of God - until we have seen really
what God wants, what God really has His heart set upon,
exactly how things would be if they were according to His
will.
Then, of course, we must
see the contrasts, the conflicting factors, the nature of
the situation as it is not according to God's mind.
Nehemiah was such a man. He looked, he formed his
judgment upon the data: he saw - on the one hand, what
God would have; on the other hand, how different things
were from what God would have. There are, of course, many
people who can be very critical of Christianity, very
critical of the Church, who have quite a lot of mental
appraisement and judgment of the situation, who in a very
superior way talk down about the bad conditions which
exist among Christians and in the Church, and who can
give themselves quite cheaply to deploring the state of
things.
Nehemiah was not of that
kind. Nehemiah was not just negative; Nehemiah was
positive, he was constructive. He was not only the one
who could say, 'Now, look at the situation - look how
different it is from what God intended and what God
willed - see this and see that and see the other thing'.
Not only was he able to do that, but he was able to bring
forth a positive remedy and to show how the thing could
be changed to provide a way for recovery. He was a man of
positive vision. There are so many people who take a
negative line, and when you ask them what ought to be
done, what is the thing we must do about it, they have
nothing to bring forward. It is all negative - and very
plentiful, at that! - but there is nothing to present or
provide. Nehemiah was not that kind of man. He was fully
acquainted with the situation; he knew just how
deplorable it was. You notice several times he speaks of
it, but he had the remedy. He was a positive man and a
man of action, because he was a man of vision. He was not
just 'visionary', in the negative sense: he was a man of
action in relation to what he saw.
And that, dear friends,
does present us with a challenge I have no doubt but that
most of us could point the finger at things which are not
according to God's mind amongst His people, in His
Church; could point out how different things are from
what we can see they ought to be - how bad this is
and how bad that is. Oh, that is easy and that is very
cheap - to criticize and to listen to criticism and to
agree with it, to take it in, and to nurse the
complaints, to keep them alive. But it is another thing
altogether to be able to come forward and say, 'Look
here, this is not good, this is not as the Lord would
have it, and this is what we ought to do. This is
the thing that the Lord would have done, this is the
thing to which we must give ourselves, to change this
situation'. I venture to say that we have no right to
criticize and judge and condemn if we have not got a
remedy, if we have not got something positive to put in
the place of what we see. So let us be quiet if we cannot
provide something better, but the Lord save us from
having to be quiet just because we are negative,
and make us active because we have got vision.
I ask you: How true is
this in your own case? What vision have you? Do you see
what the Lord has ever meant, has ever intended? - what
really is in His heart, what He would have, and how He
would have things? Do you see just exactly how things
would be if the Lord had His way and reached His end? Do
you? Are you able to see how different things are from
what the Lord would have, and then are you so exercised
in your heart, as were these men and as was this man,
that you say, 'Something must be done about it, we must
get to work, by the help of God we must change this
situation' - believing that it is God's will that it
should be so? Are you of that kind? Well, that is the
appeal of this book.
The
Features of Nehemiah's Travail
Let us spend a little
while in looking still more inwardly into this travail of
Nehemiah's. What were the features of his travail? I have
been trying to understand him, to read him, to get into
his heart, to get behind his cry, behind his sorrow, his
burden in his distress. As I have done so, it has seemed
that these are some of the things which lay behind this
travail of his.
Nehemiah saw how things
ought to be, and how things really were; and then he saw
his own position. There he was, away there in Shushan the
palace, cupbearer to the king. He was an exile, and he
was virtually a slave, one who had been taken on as a
servant in the palace. From the standpoint of that
palace, and from the standpoint of Babylon, it may have
been an honourable position; but from his own standpoint
he was like a slave in the world: he was spending his
time in the world, the business of this world, and
his whole soul was groaning. 'Here am I in the business
of this world, having to go to work every morning and
finishing late at night, and this is repeated day after
day, week after week, month after month, year after year
- and my soul cries out to be doing something about the
purpose of God and the situation of the Lord's people'.
This cry against his own position was a feature of his
travail.
God is sovereign even in
that. Perhaps that touches you who are reading these
lines. You are going to work every morning and coming
home every evening, and by far the greater amount of your
time and strength is occupied with serving this world.
You feel like a slave to this world, and you say, 'Oh,
that I might be free to do something for God!' My dear
friend, there is value in travail like that. There were
many in Babylon who had settled down and accepted the
situation, who were taking up business and earning wages,
and were making this now their life. They saw nothing
more than that, or other than that. But not so Nehemiah.
His soul revolted against his position in the world. 'Oh,
to be free to do something for God!' That travail meant
something to God. That travail was the birth pangs of
something for God.
If you are not knowing
something of that - the drudgery of the home-life,
perhaps you might call it 'the trivial round, the common
task', the going to work by morning and coming home by
evening - and there is at the same time in your soul no
cry for the interests of God, you are a tragedy indeed.
But it may be that all the time, in and through it, you
are longing to be able to do more for the Lord. Let me
say that that is the kind of travail that is going to be
fruitful. It is going to be fruitful in some way or
other. It will out - it will out in some way or
other. Something will come of that. I am not going to say
that the day will come when you will be released from
your worldly occupation and set free for what you call
'full-time service'. I think it is a very real mistake to
talk about the service of God in that way, for you may in
your own travail be serving God in a potential way where
you are. There may be tremendous potentialities in this
travail in your heart as you go about your daily work,
all the time more concerned for the Lord's interests than
for this world.
I think it must have
been like that with Nehemiah. 'Here I am, the king's
cupbearer!' You can almost hear the revolt in his heart.
How little he thought of this - because how much more the
Lord's interests had become to him! That man, that ruler,
that king, was a great man, the greatest man in the world
at that time. It was no small thing to be his cupbearer,
and to be in the palace of Shushan, the same place where
Esther and Mordecai were. You know all about them from
the book of Esther, and all that was represented there.
Yet when Nehemiah came to the point of answering the
king's question as to why he was sad of countenance, his
prayer to the Lord was not couched in language of great
respect and honour for the king. "Prosper, I pray
thee, thy servant this day, and grant him mercy in the
sight of this man" (Neh. 1:11). A great king
- 'this man'!
Oh, this was all so mean
compared with the Lord and His interest! He could not
accept this, he was in travail. You see, the greatest
honours that this world can give, the highest position
that we may occupy here, are just nothing to men
and women who have seen what the Lord is after. All
honours, all degrees, all positions, are as nothing when
once you have seen the . 'I count them as
very refuse', said Paul (Phil. 3:8), 'these things of
honour and glory in this world'. He had seen the Lord and
the heavenly calling. Nehemiah's position was, I am sure,
one great factor in his travail.
And then there was the
long delay. 'Oh, the time is so long! Oh, that we could
do something!' The Lord is demanding such patience; we
kick against the delays of the Lord. We are so deeply
tested by deferred opportunities. Is it not true? Nothing
opening up; no way. But the point is - are we really in
travail about this thing? I am sure that the Lord uses
delays and deferments in order to test us as to our real
concern. Some people have not to be put off very much
before they give up altogether. Some people can have only
a little discouragement, a little trial of patience, and
they say, 'Well, it is not worth it', and they quit. Here
is a man who went on all these years in deep trial of
patience, tested by the long-delayed opportunity to do
something; but he held on to the end, and the fact is
that he was most vigorous after all in his quest for the
Lord's interests.
How is this long delay,
deferred opportunity, affecting you? Is this purpose of
God so deep in you that it is stronger than all other
deferred hopes, disappointed expectations? This man's
soul was starved - his soul was starved. I mean by
that he was always anxious and eager to do something;
in doing something he would have found his real
gratification and satisfaction and pleasure. His soul
would have gone out at liberty to do things, but he was
starved in his soul and brought more and more to the
place where, if ever anything was going to be done at
all, it would be God who did it - 'I will never be able
to do this'. That is a great place to come to. 'God has
to open this door, God has to provide this opportunity,
God has to see that this thing is done. I can do nothing,
I am helpless!' But that soul starvation, what it costs
us! If only we could do something, how much easier it
would be, or if we could do more, how much more
satisfaction we would have! But that is a part of our
preparation. Indeed, it is out of that that real
spiritual values come.
Nehemiah had the report
from his brethren who came back as to the state of things
in Jerusalem. The walls were broken down, the gates were
burned with fire, and the people were in a deplorable
position. He had the report, he knew all about the need,
but he was totally unable to do anything. Only God could
do it. Do believe, dear friends, that that is a position
which gives great promise. That is a position to which
God works. Those who are going to be most used of the
Lord and most fruitful in fellowship with the Lord will
come to the place, not once nor twice, but again and
again, where they know they can do nothing; only the Lord
can do it. But their soul is in travail over the whole
thing. It is not a matter of throwing up the hands and
sitting back and saying, 'I can do nothing, therefore I
do not care'. That is not Nehemiah, not at all. He turned
his travail into prayer; and you know when travail
becomes prayer and prayer is travail, things are very
real, things are very pure - because that kind of prayer
and travail deals with all the self elements.
How often there are
elements of ambition in our wanting to do something, that
we should come into the work, that we should
come into the picture, that we should come into
the satisfaction of doing something, that we should
be in some position; and when the Lord deals with us like
this and the whole agony turns to prayer, in that prayer
all these self elements are dealt with very thoroughly
and go out. The very fact that it is travailing prayer
when nothing else can be done proves that there is no
self in this. Our praying is travail. It is not asking
for something for ourselves - it is agony for what is of
God.
Presently Nehemiah will
be charged with having personal interests. His enemies
will say that he is wanting to set himself up as the
king, and he is appointing prophets to preach him. What a
subtle assault of the devil to bring an accusation upon
the man to undo him! If it were true, how he would be
undone by that assault of the devil! If the devil ever
has real ground to say, 'After all, it is Number One that
is governing this whole thing: it is your own ambition,
it is yourself!' - if he has ground for saying that, we
may well be floored and undone. But it had to be so with
Nehemiah that such accusations had no ground. He was able
to say: 'You feigned this out of your own mind' (Neh.
6:8). 'This is not true. God has dealt with me in the
depths. He has sifted my soul of all such interests for
myself'. The ground had to be undercut from the enemy so
that he had nothing personal upon which to work.
Now, Nehemiah's
countenance was sad before the king, and the king noted
it. But his countenance did not speak of self-pity or of
personal frustration. It spoke of grief concerning
spiritual conditions.
The Lord knows how
things are at the present time. The Lord sees how
different they are from what He intended. He knows all
about this. He must bring some people to see as He sees,
and feel as He feels, and commit themselves to that which
He shows them, at any cost. This introductory word is the
challenge. We cannot go on with the work or the warfare
until we are like this, really like this - people after
the kind of Nehemiah. The Lord make us that.