Reading:
Isaiah 58:6-14.
We come now to the
second thing, the vessel of recovery; for it is the
recovery of the full and complete testimony according to
God's mind which is represented by the work of Nehemiah,
especially the recovery of the testimony of God toward
the world and men.
Typical
Significance of Nehemiah and Ezra
Let us repeat this
general word, that what we have in Ezra and Nehemiah is
the testimony of God concerning His Son Jesus Christ, and
that, in a threefold way. The testimony concerning the
Cross, in the altar; the testimony concerning the Church,
in the house; and the testimony to the world, to the
nations; to men, as in the wall. So that it is Christ at
the centre and Christ at the circumference. It is the
fullness of Christ from centre to circumference that is
here; and as to the wall particularly. It represents the
defining as to what is of Christ, and what is not of
Christ; as to what is according to God's Son, and what is
not according to God's Son; for the wall is the boundary,
the line of demarcation as to what is inside of the
testimony of Jesus, and as to what is outside of that
testimony. Those are general remarks to help you grasp
the whole import of this book.
Nehemiah
- the Man
Having said that, we
come to this second factor of the vessel of recovery -
the man, Nehemiah. You will, of course, be remembering
that Nehemiah is a representation. What he was in his day
is what God seeks to be possessed of at the end of this
age; not, perhaps, in one outstanding individual,
although there will be an individual ministry in this
respect, but more especially in a corporate instrument, a
company, by which the Lord will recover this full
testimony concerning His Son. So that what is said of
Nehemiah has its application to such an instrument at any
time when that instrument is brought into being by the
Lord for His purpose.
It is helpful and useful
to recognize the difference that there was between the
two men who represented this movement of God, Ezra and
Nehemiah; and there was a difference. I think we might
describe the difference somewhat in this way: Ezra was
more of the character of a priest, while Nehemiah partook
more of the features of a prophet. If you let your mind
dwell upon the Word in those two connections you will
understand what I mean. Ezra was a quieter man than
Nehemiah, perhaps a more restful man than Nehemiah; you
might say that he was a gentler man than Nehemiah.
Spiritual
Energy
Nehemiah was rougher; he
was a man marked by action - prompt and energetic action.
Ezra seems to have been more marked by thought - not that
he was not a man of action; but if there was a difference
in these two men, Nehemiah was a man of action rather
than of thought, more than was Ezra.
Now Nehemiah, toward the
Lord's people, was kind and considerate; hospitable and
encouraging; and always sought to be helpful; but towards
Divine interests, and spiritual principles, and enemies
of those interests and principles, he was uncompromising;
zealous and jealous; strict and prompt; there was no
getting round him. We mention this because it marks a
Divine aspect of things. The different types are required
for different aspects of the Divine purpose; certain
features belong to certain points of progress in what God
is doing.
For Ezra to be a builder
of the House and an adorner, an embellisher of the House,
demands a quietness. So in him we see a passiveness, if
you like, a love which buildeth up. But when it comes to
the question of foreign, alien, mixed, and inimical
elements having impinged upon the things of God, and
having brought the testimony of God into ruin and
disrepute; and when it is a matter of meeting the forces
which are set dead against the Name and the honour of the
Lord, then you have moved from the first chapter of
Ephesians into the last chapter; you have gone from the
love which buildeth up, to the warring in the heavenlies,
and you have different features developed. Thus a
Nehemiah character comes in for such a phase.
You see that in the
taking up of the Lord's interests in a day when the
forces of evil are dead-set against those interests and
that testimony, the Lord has to develop warring elements
and characteristics in His instrument, and so a Nehemiah
is not such a mild man as an Ezra. Now that lies on the
surface, that is perfectly patent, but it does bring to
us again an emphasis upon what the Lord needs right at
the end, when we are peculiarly up against the forces
foreign to the Lord's interest; which are seeking to
undermine, under-cut and work the destruction of His
testimony; which have already obtained a hold, as we have
seen in those nine things which we mentioned. So that is
Nehemiah. Vigour, downrightness is required in a day like
this.
There is a mildness,
which passes by the name of love, which may do a very
great deal of harm to the testimony. It allows many
things to abide in secret, under cover; things which are
working positively against the Lord's testimony, and
smothers them over with what we call love and
forbearance, when a Nehemiah is needed to chase them
away. Regarding one who transgressed he says: "... I
chased him from me". He did more than that, as some
of you recall. Ezra and Nehemiah need not of necessity
represent different times, but only different phases of
responsibility in relation to the Lord's interests.
A
Heart-burden
As we look more deeply
into Nehemiah's heart, we find that he was a man who had
a great heart-burden. He carried on his heart very
heavily the interests of the Lord and His testimony. His
brother, Hanani, had come to him in his far-off exile,
and reported the state of things at Jerusalem. That is
how the book opens, and Nehemiah himself tells us how
that report affected him. "And it came to pass, when
I heard these words, that I sat down and wept, and
mourned certain days; and I fasted and prayed before the
God of heaven, and said..." There is a great
heart-burden. That heart-burden is first of all borne in
the presence of God alone.
Then out from the
presence of God he carries that burden, and it becomes
apparent that this man has a concern. In spite of
himself, in spite of what was expected of him, in spite
of what was unlawful before men, his heart-burden betrays
itself. "Now I was cupbearer to the king. And it
came to pass... that I took up the wine, and gave it unto
the king. Now I had not been beforetime sad in his
presence. And the king said unto me, 'Why is thy
countenance sad, seeing thou art not sick? this is
nothing else but sorrow of heart.' Then I was very sore
afraid, and I said unto the king, 'Let the king live for
ever: why should not my countenance be sad, when the
city, the place of my fathers' sepulchres, lieth waste,
and the gates thereof are consumed with fire?'"
(Neh. 1:11, 2:1-3; A.S.V.). That is enough to show us
this further thing as to the nature and the condition of
a vessel to be used by the Lord in recovering His full
testimony, the testimony concerning His Son. That vessel,
that instrument is one, and must be one, upon whose heart
a condition of things so clearly contrary to the thought
of God genuinely lies with very great pressure. We have
shown of what order this burden of Nehemiah's was.
It is one thing,
beloved, for us to get a kind of public concern about
things and then begin to make a great noise about it
amongst men; to advertise, to demonstrate, and to give it
a public form in utterance and effort and organization;
to join ourselves to some cause, or to join some cause to
ourselves, and then in that cause to make a great big
affair of it: that is one thing. And that may have all
manner of elements which just fall short of that which is
essential and necessary from the Lord's standpoint. It is
one thing to come to a situation from the outside, and
link ourselves on with it, and take it up, and make it
our work for life, our life-interest; it is quite another
thing for the Lord to put into our hearts, in secret, an
almost unbearable, intolerable burden which is His own
heart-burden, and for us first of all to bear that thing
secretly in the presence of God upon our hearts in a deep
out-pouring of travailing prayer; quite another thing to
come to the Lord's interests in that way.
There are plenty of
people whom you could get interested in a cause; whom you
could get to take up a piece of work requiring help, but
it is another thing to have that spiritual fellowship
with God which results in God putting His travail into
your own soul. The difference is that in the one instance
the thing is something objective; we come along and
interest ourselves in it, take it up; but it is apart
from us. It has our interest, it has our energy, it has
our resources, but it is something objective to
ourselves. It is a piece of work, a movement, a testimony
- using that word in a technical sense.
The other thing is this:
before the Lord we take responsibility. Do you notice
that "we" in chapter 1, verse 6?
Nehemiah is a part of this and this is a part of him. You
notice how, all the way through, in dealing with this
matter he uses the word "we". He is
apart from the whole thing, that is, he has not accepted
the conditions; he is not responsible for the state of
things; he certainly repudiates the whole thing, and does
not for one moment agree with it, and yet he is in this
thing as though he were responsible for it; as though God
could lay it all at his own door. The thing has come so
near to his own heart that he does not stand here and the
situation there, but he finds himself as one with it. It
is his own burden, and he takes the thing in
responsibility upon his own shoulders before God in
prayer, and prays vicarious prayer over this situation.
That is being on the inside. If the man himself had been
personally responsible for the destruction of Jerusalem,
the wreckage of the walls, and the awful moral condition
of the people of God there; if he had been one who had
brought it all about, he could not have taken this thing
more to heart. He is like a man who is convicted of being
responsible for it all.
Not
a Profession but a Passion
We shall have more to
say about that later, but that is enough for the moment
to see what kind of vessel the Lord must have to do
things. He does not want "workers" to take up
His work; He wants travaillers to travail with Him for
His spiritual interests. He does not want employees, He
wants sons. He does not want experts, He wants those who
have a passion; those to whose heart the whole thing
comes so clearly that it bends them down before Him in an
anguish; who are so much in the matter that it is their
matter before God; it is theirs. It is no mere mental
apprehension of teaching and of truth; it is a
heart-burden, a desperate concern for the Lord, because
of things as they are spiritually amongst His people.
Are we exercised like
that? Are we moved like that? Are we in things like that?
Have we taken up work for the Lord, associated ourselves
with some cause; or have we come with God's own burden
and travail in our souls - this thing to us is a thing
which saps our life; for which we are pouring out our
very blood, the thing which costs everything, and yet we
can do no other; there is no question of resigning,
giving up, the thing is ourselves? God must have
something like that at the end for His purpose, and I
think if we said no more, that is a challenging word to
our hearts.
Oh, let us wipe the
slate of all these other ideas of organizing something,
running something, getting a movement going. Let us see
that God brings this into being out of travail. He
baptizes a soul into an anguish; He throws upon some one
man, or some little company, the mantle of His own
terrible disappointment, dissatisfaction and grief
because of things as He sees them spiritually amongst His
own people.
That is how God brings
things into being. Men do it in other ways, but that has
always been God's way. It has cost the instrument its
life every time. That does not necessarily mean that the
instrument has died a sudden death, or even laid down its
life in martyrdom; but it has cost the instrument its
life. Are we in things like that?
Such is Nehemiah. We are
seeing into the inner secret history of this thing; it is
before God, not before men. Oh, may the Lord save us from
having the preponderance before men, and the lesser
measure before Himself. May all that is before men come
out of what we are before God. That should be a matter of
exercise for us; for you, for me; and we should ask the
Lord that our secret life with Him over these matters
shall be kept well abreast of all our public ministries
and our outward activities. If the balance is on the side
of what is public, and toward men, there will be weakness
and failure. Strength and effectiveness will be according
to the measure of our secret history with God. Then out
from the secret place Nehemiah carried his heart-burden
before men; but not initially that men might take account
of it. He would fain, I think, have covered it up, for
there is fear here when he realizes that it has been
detected, has betrayed itself; perhaps unconsciously -
certainly unwontedly.
And yet the
manifestation of the burden has a right place when it
comes that way; when, outwardly, others are able to take
account of us and say: 'There is nothing put on in this
matter; this is no mere professional thing; this is not
some habit, something they are interested in; this is
something which to them is a matter of life and death;
this is a matter which goes right to the heart with
them'. And men are able to discern whether it is
like that or not. Oh, people know, better than perhaps we
think they do, whether we are real or whether things are
put on; whether we are speaking out of a book, or whether
we are speaking out of our hearts; whether the thing is
something we have collected, or whether it is something
born of anguish.
I am speaking to
brethren and sisters now to whom ministry is committed in
a more public way. May I urge this upon you, that you
ever seek to have your own heart deeply exercised in
everything that you have to say publicly. Yes, it will
cost; it will mean anguish, it will mean sorrow of heart,
it will mean a price; but, beloved, it is the way of
spiritual fruitfulness and effectiveness; only thus can
the Lord make you His messenger, in His message, that is,
a sign unto the people of the thing that you are saying.
Thus are men able to say: 'Yes, that is not something
they have read or studied or prepared; that is something
that has had a working in the life, and it has cost
something'. It will cost, but it is the way of
effectiveness and fruitful service.
And what is true as to
public ministry will be true in relation to any
instrument that the Lord will use for any special
purpose; the thing must be wrought into it, and not be
something that it has adopted. The Lord keep us from
adopting things, but work the thing right into us. Well,
that is Nehemiah; a man with a burden, and a man with a
concern; one whose heart is deeply wrought upon by God to
the end he might share His own Divine travail.
Divine
Facilitations
Now a word as to the
procedure of the man. First there is the man himself;
then his concern for the testimony; and now his procedure
in recovery. There was some history before he came out to
take up his work definitely, and it is well just to note
it because it has a place; a preparatory history we may
call it. There were those signs of favour from the Lord
which were basic to what followed. The king had discerned
his inward state; had diagnosed his trouble as sorrow of
heart; had put to him a question as to what he would
have; and you notice what follows: "Then the king
said unto me, 'For what dost thou make request?' So I
prayed to the God of heaven" - instant, prompt,
brief touch with heaven - "And I said unto the
king..." I believe, beloved, that in those touches
of response from heaven, which represent Divine favour;
those helpful little things, we might call them, in this
whole matter; where God just gives indications that this
is His way, that He is in this - favourable signs - I
believe in these things there is represented what very
often obtains when the Lord is going to do something new
in relation to His testimony.
The Lord prefaces what
He will do by, shall we say, certain indications of
favour. Presently we shall be up against the grim
realities; presently faith will be well tested; the
difficulties increasing, accumulating; but there have
been those little favourable indications from the Lord
that He was with us; that this was His way. They may not
continue, but there is just that little space where the
Lord seems to bear witness in various little helpful
ways. He constitutes something which, in days of
difficulty and darkness and adversity, we always remember
as the Lord's way of showing us that this was our
life-work, this was the way of His will for us. I think
some of you know what I am talking about, and we can look
back to a time when at the commencement of some new piece
of life experience, service; some new movement of God in
us and through us, there were marks, clear marks of
Divine favour, and things just moved beautifully and
wonderfully; it was all very romantic, all very
wonderful; we were filled with wonder at the way the Lord
was doing things, facilitating and helping. That was a
phase: that passed, and the grim realities followed; but
we do not forget that time. Thus it was with Nehemiah.
For this short period everything seemed to be on his
side, with him; there were these favourable touches of
the Lord.
Well, that is very good,
and that is a preparatory period which should be
cherished; but if that passes do not think that things
have gone wrong. The Lord was just getting you on the
way; but He is not going to keep you on the way by sight,
He is going to cause you to walk in the way by faith. It
is like that. Remarkable things happen at the beginning,
and those remarkable things do not always continue. One
says that because it is so true to life and experience,
and it is a thing not to be overlooked here as we take a
survey of this movement of God. Very often the heart
looks back upon those periods, and craves to have them
all over again and says: "Where is the blessedness I
knew when first I saw the Lord"; it craves to have
the early seals of God repeated again and again; but no,
you advance beyond that.
Now the Lord's
facilitation is to get you on the way, not to get you
into a trap and leave you. You have that life in the
background, and you know it was all the Lord, the Lord
did it. We are not in this way by our own urge, effort,
endeavour, scheming, planning; the Lord brought us in,
and favoured us with marked indications that it was His
way. At that time the signs of this way being the Lord's
way were unmistakable; there is no doubt about it, the
Lord marvellously put our feet on this road and, although
there came a point where we ceased to have those
conspicuous signs of Divine acts and undertakings, yet
there was no doubt about it that our coming into this way
was of the Lord.
Nehemiah met grim things
later, but doubtless he always remembered the wonderful
way in which the Lord facilitated the initiation of that
into which he was Divinely brought. It may be the Lord
will continue to give you much in the way of such tokens,
but it will be the exception and not the rule if He does;
do not expect that you are going to find your path strewn
with flowers all the way. Very likely you will find an
end of the roses, and the beginning of the thorns; but
the Lord has indicated that it was right, it was His way,
by helping at the beginning, and now you have to go on in
faith. That was a preparatory stage with Nehemiah.
Two
Sides of Prayer-life
Now I want to draw your
attention to Nehemiah's prayer-life. How basic this
prayer life was to everything. You should read through
the book again just to take account of this matter. You
will find that Nehemiah's prayer-life was a very real
thing, and a very persistent thing; you might almost say
a continuous thing, but it was not always of the same
kind.
In this first chapter
you have the deep, secret outpouring of his heart to God.
He is away with the Lord alone, and in a strong
heart-emptying prayer, he pours himself out. He can do
that, remember. That is a phase of his prayer-life; he can
do it and he does. But as you read on you find that
it is not always like that. His prayer is frequently what
we may call ejaculatory: "So I prayed to the God of
heaven". It is like an ejaculation, a sudden lifting
up of the heart. There is no time for the outpouring of
the heart. Here is a situation, an emergency, a difficult
situation, something arising which allows of no getting
away to God and pouring out the heart, but only permits
of a lifting of it to the Lord on the spot in a moment, a
touch with heaven; but he is in touch with heaven. Those
two forms of prayer must go together.
We hear many people say,
'Yes, well I can pray anywhere; I can pray in a bus or a
tram, or walking along the street'. Very often those
people say that to excuse themselves from secret
outpouring of heart before the Lord. Beware of that! I do
not believe that we shall get heaven's sudden responses
to sudden ejaculatory prayers unless we have a background
of prayer. I do not believe that we can have an emergency
touch with heaven if we have not a deep background-life
with heaven.
Nehemiah's prayer-life
brings these two things together; that because he had
that prayer-life in secret with God where, as he could,
he did pour himself out to God, then in the time of
emergency he was already in touch with heaven, and heaven
responded. It is important to see that. But when we have
said that we must note the general fact, that an
instrument, a vessel, or a work like Nehemiah's in an
end-time in relation to the Coming of the Lord, is
essentially a vessel and instrument with a strong
prayer-life in secret with God, and for the bringing in
of heaven in emergencies it is essential that there be a
background of prayer ministry.
It seems to me that
Nehemiah did nothing without prayer. It seems that in
every turn of the way he lifted his heart to the Lord; in
every situation, question, difficulty, he was in touch
with the Lord about it. He was a man who made prayer his
ground of action, on every point, in every direction.
Now whether this
interests you or not is not the question. The question
is, are we going to be an instrument for the Lord for His
deepest heart purpose? If so, there must be a life of
prayer. There has to be the place with the Lord apart and
alone in heart outpouring, and there has to be, from
that, a constant touch with the Lord as we move in His
interests from point to point. The prayer life of
Nehemiah is something to study.
Taking
Action
Then there is the matter
of taking action; the action which Nehemiah took. He did
take action, and that is something to take account of.
There are many people who have burdens and concerns, but
who never do any more than bemoan the situation as it is;
who never get beyond deploring things. They are
everlastingly talking about the bad conditions. Their
whole conversation is concerning how wrong things are,
and so they go about bemoaning the state of affairs;
talking and never doing any thing.
Nehemiah was not like
that. Nehemiah was very keenly alive to the situation and
took it very much to heart, but he did not simply bemoan
it, and he did not merely preach about it. We must not
fall into a way of criticizing the Lord's people who are
not where we think they ought to be; who do not know what
we think they ought to know; who have not arrived at the
place at which we have arrived, and therefore we consider
them as being down there, and we talk about them thus:
'They have not the light, you know'. 'They have not
entered into the truth, you know'.
Yes, we might even go
beyond that, and denounce them for their backwardness;
denounce them because they have not the light. It is easy
to get into a way of condemning, to develop a spirit of
condemnation, of judging. All that does not cost
anything. The real question is: 'What are we doing about
it?' Nehemiah with all his perception and discernment of
things, and all his heartache, did not go to the people
and say: 'Look here, you are all wrong, you are all out
of the way, you are in a bad state'; he went to them and
said: 'We are in a bad state; we are in a bad
way'. He got down by the side of them as though he were
where they were, and he was going to help them up to
where he saw they ought to be, and to the place where he
himself in spirit, already, was.
Now this is a matter we
must recognize. You see here one of those laws of what is
called the Church, the Body, and the physical body is
taken in the Word as an illustration of the Church, which
is Christ's Body. Now, suppose a hand and an arm have
gone wrong, perhaps out of joint and the whole of one
side is affected, and things are not working right; there
is disorder, perhaps disease; maybe a very painful malady
in those limbs, in that part of the body. Now if the
other hand and arm should get up and say: 'You are all
wrong over there, you ought not to be like that; we do
not belong to you at all, we have no association with
you, no connection', is that true? "The body is
one". You cannot separate two or three of your limbs
from your body, and put them in one place and the rest in
another and still have a complete body.
No, the very fact of the
organism means that you are one body, and if one member
suffers all the members suffer with it. Being an
organism, and not an organization, every member -
although its condition may not be as bad as some other
members - is involved by its very life in the state of
the other. The body has one life, it has one nerve
system, it is a corporate whole. That principle is here -
"We" - and the law of the Body is this, that if
there are those who are out of the way, who have not
light, truth, life, as we think they ought to have, being
a body, beloved, we cannot live in detachment from them.
We are by the very fact of being an organism spiritually
bound to them, a part of them; and the Lord is not going
to cleave this Body down the centre and cut off that half
which is more backward than the other.
Oh, no! That is not the
Lord's way. The Lord does not divide the Body, the Body
is a whole; and you will notice all the way through the
Lord's Word, that the Lord brings some members into real
concern for the others, in order to bring the others to a
place where He would have them. And Nehemiah, although
spiritually far above these people in his state, far
beyond them, comes down there and says: "we".
Now do believe me, I
feel so strongly that what the Lord wants is that there
shall never be the sign of that division which is the
fruit and outworking of any kind of superiority of light
and knowledge and truth, that puts others who have not
that light and truth in an inferior place; relegates them
to another quarter, and regards them as something apart
from the Lord's people. That must not be, and our
attitude, the attitude of any who may have been given
more light for ministry purposes - not only for
themselves - to the whole Body, the attitude of such to
others must be that of being in the place where they are,
to help them on, and not to judge, to criticize, to
condemn.
Oh, no, the Lord will
not reward us because we have more light, but according
to what we have done with the light He gave us. There
will be many of the Lord's children in glory who had not
half the light that you and I have, and they will be
sharing His glory as much as you and I will, but on the
basis of what they did with the light they had.
Responsibility is according to light. Our responsibility
will be all the greater if we have more light. Our
attitude toward all whom we may feel - and have good
reason to feel - are far short of what the Lord would
have them be, must be one of earnest, humble, yearning
over them and getting down helpfully alongside of them,
not detaching ourselves and living apart, and regarding
them as those who have not the light.
We must go out as
Nehemiah did and say: 'We are involved in this'.
If there is a bad state, we are involved in it; apart
from the light that we have we are involved in it. Our
responsibility for the light involves us, and we must
take responsibility for the state of things, and work
with God against it, in love, in fellowship. Thus did
Nehemiah.
Oh, may the Lord
speak to our hearts very directly through this word, and
make us to see that there is something that He needs,
something that must be if He is to be fully satisfied;
that things with His people are not as He would have
them; that the full testimony of His Son is not
represented as He would have it represented. In order
that it might be so He must have an instrument, a vessel;
and these are the things which must characterize such a
vessel: energy against all compromise and mixture in the
things of God; a great heart-burden for the Lord's
testimony; taking personal responsibility for the bad
state; a deep and continuous touch with God by prayer;
taking action in fellowship with God for recovery, and
not merely bemoaning the state of things.