Reading: Nehemiah
5:2-6; Luke 4:14-21; II Kings 4:1-4.
In these messages we are
allowing Nehemiah, that great servant of the Lord in the
old dispensation, to illustrate for us, and to lead us in
relation to, the recovering of the Lord's testimony in
fullness. Nehemiah said that he was "doing a great
work" and that God had put this in his heart. Our
concern is with the great work, spiritually corresponding
to that which Nehemiah accomplished historically in the
rebuilding of the wall of Jerusalem, which God would do
in our time. We are going to look now at some of those
things which lay behind the broken state of the wall of
Jerusalem. We have observed that the condition of the
wall was an illustration or representation of the
spiritual condition of the Lord's people at that time.
The reasons for the condition of the wall were to be
found in the life of the people themselves. We look
through the wall to see why it was so, and in so doing we
have no difficulty in making a transition from that time
to our own time, with a view to seeing what the state is
and what needs to be done.
A
State of Bankruptcy, Bondage and Death
The fifth chapter of
Nehemiah brings to us the first of the conditions, the
particular conditions, which characterized this broken
wall, or the people of God as they were at that time
reflected in their wall. They were in bondage and
bankruptcy. If you could have looked at that wall, you
would have said: 'That is a fairly good picture of the
bankrupt state of the Lord's people just now.' And that
state was a complete contradiction to the mind and will
of the Lord. It was a contradiction to the liberty and
affluence of the Lord's people, as He willed it for them.
"We bring into bondage our sons and our daughters
to be servants" (Neh. 5:5). And the Lord
Jesus came and proclaimed in prophetic words: "The
Spirit of the Lord is upon me,... to proclaim release to
the captives,... to set at liberty them that are
bruised" (Isa. 61:1; Luke 4:18). That is really
the mind of the Lord for His people. Bondage always
speaks of law and tyranny, and therefore fear. Those
things always go together - bondage, law, tyranny, and
resultant fear, a life of fear.
The
Rebuilt Wall A Bulwark Against Fear
You will recall another
of those incidents in the life of the prophet Elisha,
recorded in the second book of the Kings, chapter 4. You
know the story, but here it is, gathered into a very few
sentences. Death has entered in; the creditor has come
demanding payment of that which it is impossible to
provide. The law is at the door, threatening to bring
into bondage, and fear has taken possession. Over against
that situation there is Elisha, the man whom we know to
represent and embody the law of the Spirit of life, who
is always dealing with situations of death and their
consequences. And so Elisha comes on the scene, and by
providing life, by exercising "the law of the Spirit
of life", he makes it possible to meet all the
obligations, satisfies the creditor, destroys the fear,
and releases the sons.
That is a beautiful
picture of much New Testament truth. Indeed the letter to
the Galatians is the interpretation of that little
incident. That letter, as you know, deals with sonship in
bondage, and shows that the way of release is by the
Spirit of life, liberty by the Spirit.
Well, that sets the
ground for this application of the message. The Lord
Jesus, you see, said: "The Spirit of the Lord is
upon me... to set at liberty them that are bruised".
It is the Spirit over against the law, the Spirit of
life over against the law of sin and death. The Apostle
says: "For ye received not the spirit of bondage
again unto fear; but ye received the spirit of adoption,
whereby we cry, Abba, Father" (Rom. 8:15).
To the Galatians the Apostle said: "For
freedom did Christ set us free; stand fast therefore, and
be not entangled again in a yoke of bondage" (Gal.
5:1). Again says the Apostle to the same people, 'We were
in bondage under the law, but Christ has come over
against our bondage to the law' (4:3-5). There are those
words in the letter to the Hebrews, so familiar:
"... and might deliver all them who through fear
of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage"
(Heb. 2:15).
What does that mean -
"through fear of death"? If you look at the
context in the letter to the Hebrews, it is perfectly
plain that it is the fear of the consequence of violating
the law. That letter is all over against the law, and
those Jews knew quite well what the penalty was for
violating the law. We know from reading incidents in the
Old Testament what it meant for people who violated the
law. In some instances they were taken out and stoned; it
was death. And so the law hung over them like a sword;
they lived in this fear and dread that they might violate
the law, and so incur death. "All their
lifetime", because of this law, they were
"subject to bondage" "through fear of
death". But hear the words of another: "There
is no fear in love: because perfect love casteth out
fear" (I John 4:18). How true it is!
What is this wall then?
Well, in its broken condition it means that something has
happened to bring about death. That something is a reign
of law which could not be met. The creditor could not be
appeased, be satisfied. The law was the creditor. Break
the law, and you go into bondage, into servitude; it is
death, death to everything, death while you live, to be
under that awful burden of the law. Rebuilding the wall,
then, just means that in some way a testimony is being
recovered that the Lord's people are a free people, that
the creditor is paid off and sent about his business, he
is satisfied. It means that death has been destroyed,
bondage has been broken. They are not only out; they are
not merely free, but left poor: they are made affluent
with heavenly riches, as the Lord's free and wealthy
people.
Do you not agree that
there is a need for something like that to be recovered
amongst the people of God today? Whether it is Old
Testament law or New Testament law, a great many people
are not enjoying the liberty of life in the Spirit. Even
the New Testament, with its great doctrines, has been
crystallized into a system of law, and people are
browbeaten by it. Fundamentalism is like that.
Fundamentalism, as such, can become just another system
of law without life. The truths of it are right, but by
itself it falls into the category of that of which
the Apostle spoke when he drew a distinction between the
letter and the spirit (Rom. 7:6).
In effect he said, 'You
can have the letter which is perfectly right, perfectly
accurate, perfectly true, but even the truth in accuracy
can become something that brings you into bondage and
robs you of your liberty and your joy and your wealth.'
In other words, the fact that you are perfectly orthodox
and correct in your doctrine is not proof that you are
one of the Lord's free people enjoying this wealth and
this affluence of the Lord. You may be going about with
that heavy burden of orthodoxy around your neck and not
happy in your Christianity at all, lest you might be
violating some principle, some truth. You can be a very
miserable person in absolute orthodoxy and correctness of
teaching and doctrine. No: while the doctrine must be
right, and while we must be in the truth, there is that
extra factor which means that you and I are God's
liberated people; we are enjoying the liberty of the
Spirit and the life of the Spirit.
So this wall represents
or speaks of a bulwark against fear. Any city wall means
that. That is what it is for, if it is worth its name;
and, mark you, they used to build walls very soundly and
very thoroughly in those days. They were no jerry-built
things that would go over, whatever Tobiah may say -
"If a fox go up, he shall break down their stone
wall" (Neh. 4:3). Let all the foxes in creation go
up against this wall and they will not upset it. Walls
are meant to be bulwarks against fear. You get inside
that wall, and you are safe, you are free from fear -
free from the sense of being brought into captivity. That
is the meaning of the wall.
Now the testimony that
the Lord would have should be after that kind - that the
Lord's people know that they are in an absolutely
sure and safe place. They need have no fear at all: all
fear is destroyed; they are not in the bondage of fear.
They have been gloriously delivered. To use the words of
the Galatian letter again, they are sons. They are
not slaves; they have come now to a Father. They are not
just pupils - for the Apostle, as you know, says that the
law was our tutor (Gal. 3:24). But we are not any longer
under the tutor. We are sons, not pupils; we are sons,
not prisoners. As sons, we are free.
The wall, then, speaks
of safety, security, of deliverance from the bondage of
fear - and oh that the Lord might have a people like
that!
Now, what is your
testimony? The Lord's testimony truly is like that. What
is yours? Are you living in bondage - New Testament
bondage - bondage to fear? Are you living every day in
fear of doing wrong, under the threat of the 'big stick',
even the stick of your own conscience? Are you in fear,
with a miserable face, because of this awful tyranny?
That is not the Lord's will for us. The Lord wants His
people completely delivered from fear: for "ye
received not the spirit of bondage again unto fear; but
ye received the spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba,
Father" (Rom. 8:15).
All
Debts Paid
This wall, then, also
speaks of debts all paid and the rich emoluments of
grace. That is simple, basic Gospel, but it is glorious.
All debts paid, the creditor satisfied. The Lord Jesus
did that for us in His Cross. He paid all the debt to the
law, satisfied the law, and sent the creditor about his
business. He set us free from him - the law; set us free
from all our debts. Oh, it is a wonderful thing to know
that all your spiritual debts are paid. It is a terrible
thing to know that you have to face up to that law of God
and answer to it - that, if someone does not pay your
debts, you have somehow to meet that demand in time and
eternity. But the true child of God, who knows what
Christ has done for him or for her, is always ready to
sing -
Free from
the law - oh, happy condition!
Jesus hath bled, and there is remission.
The
Franchise of the Heavenly Jerusalem
Then this wall, being
the wall of Jerusalem, pointing to another Jerusalem, a
spiritual heavenly Jerusalem, speaks of the heavenly
franchise, the franchise of the heavenly Jerusalem,
heaven's free men.
You remember on one
occasion, when the Apostle Paul was taken prisoner, he
was brought to the Roman centurion, and was going to be
examined by scourging: that is, they were going to apply
the 'third degree' method of getting out of him what all
this was about. Our translation does not give us the full
force of what was taking place. It just tells us that he
was 'tied up'. Really literally it is: 'they had
stretched him out'; and this method applied by the Romans
was a very severe one indeed. So terrible was the laying
on with the scourges, the man having been stretched out
with his hands and feet securely tied, that it often
resulted in death, or in being crippled for life. When
Paul was placed in that position, he asked: "Is it
lawful for you to scourge a man that is a Roman, and
uncondemned?" (Acts 22:25). The officer, thinking he
had a good case, replied: "With a great sum obtained
I this citizenship". 'I bought my freedom to do as I
like - I am just exercising my right as a free man, for
which I have paid a great price.' Paul answered:
"But I was free born" (A.V.).
Now, when the senior
officer was told what Paul had said, a terrible fear came
over him that he should have taken a free man, a
free-born citizen of the Roman Empire, and not only
brought him into chains and bonds, but have come within
an inch of thrashing him. A free-born man should not be
dealt with like that. He had the franchise of the Empire
behind him. Even more was it to be free-born than to buy
your freedom. To be free-born meant that you could not be
brought into bondage, you could not be thrashed, you
could not be dealt with like that, and woe betide the man
who essayed to do it - he had to answer to the Emperor.
All the strength of the Roman Empire was behind the man
who was free-born, and Paul knew what that meant. So the
officer became full of terror when he realized that he
was treating a free-born man like this.
Do you see the
illustration? Yes: we are first-born sons, says the Word;
our names are enrolled in heaven, we have the franchise
of the Kingdom of God; we cannot be brought into bondage,
we cannot be thrashed by the law, we cannot be dealt with
like this, dealt with so hardly, by this tyrant. No
matter what his claims may be of right to do it, there is
a higher claim. It is the claim of sonship. You cannot
deal with God's sons as you deal with other people. It is
a wonderful illustration of this great truth.
The wall of Jerusalem
means that here is something which is the enclosure of a
heavenly people, who have been delivered from bondage,
set at liberty from all debts, and are walking in the
good of sonship - God's free people and God's wealthy
people. That is the truth of the Word of God. Sonship is
something to be enjoyed, and that wall is no
picture of joy and the state of those people is no
picture of joy. It is a contradiction to what the Lord
would have. This is how He would have it, as we
have just seen.
A
Restored Sabbath
Now the next thing - the
Sabbath. There are fourteen references to the Sabbath Day
in the book of Nehemiah. It is a matter of the nullified
Sabbath. If you want proof of that, go to Malachi, the
contemporary of Nehemiah; you know what he has to say
about it. But here in this book of Nehemiah fourteen
times the Sabbath is mentioned, so it has a very large
place. We know that these people represented the
nullifying of the Sabbath. Now I am not going to start on
an argument for Seventh Day Adventism or for
Sabbatarianism; the ground is very much higher and more
glorious than that. But remember that the Sabbath was the
oldest covenant in existence. God rested from His labours
on the seventh day, and God hallowed the seventh day and
demanded that it should be hallowed all the way through.
If you will look the matter up, you will see how much in
the life of the people of God, for good or for ill, was
bound up with their observance of the Sabbath, the
covenant of the Sabbath - perhaps the foundation
covenant, the covenant of all covenants.
But what did it mean? Of
course, it was a foreshadowing of Christ. God rested from
His labour, from all His works, on the seventh day, "and
God blessed the seventh day, and hallowed it"
(Gen. 2:2,3). Israel went into captivity in
Babylon because they had not kept the Lord's Sabbaths -
the seventh day, the seventh month, the seventh year and
the sevens of sevens up to forty-nine. They had failed to
observe the Sabbath in all its connections, so He sent
them into Babylon for seventy years because of His
Sabbaths. "Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he
also reap" (Gal. 6:7). It is the 'whatsoever'
always. And now that broken-down wall speaks of the
broken Sabbath, the nullified Sabbath: and Nehemiah is
found restoring the Sabbath, and you know he did it in a
very vigorous way. When the merchants came to the gates
on the Sabbath Day, he chased them away, he handled them
very roughly, and restored the Sabbath.
What is it all about? I
have said that it pointed on to Christ - Christ who, in
the new creation, has finished all God's works, the works
of a new creation; has brought again satisfaction to God,
and God into His rest, the rest of His satisfaction: so
that Christ and His accomplished work are now the
Sabbath. The Sabbath is not a day; it is a Person. The
Sabbath is not a time matter at all. The Sabbath is a
work finished, and so any violation of it is severely
dealt with by the Lord. It means this - take one little
bit away from the fully accomplished work of Christ and
the absolute satisfaction of God with Him, and you
violate the principle of the Sabbath, you undercut the
covenant. If that were only realized, it would destroy
Seventh Day Adventism in five minutes. Well, you say, are
we not to observe the Lord's Day? Oh, yes - but as a
testimony, not as a matter of law. We come together now
on one day, the first day of the week, to celebrate the
glorious truth that God is satisfied with His Son - that
is, we gather around His Table and worship in the values
of Jesus Christ, God's ground of satisfaction. Take
anything from that and you violate the Sabbath.
Now the testimony to be
recovered just means that there must be a people who are
enjoying the fact, rejoicing in the great reality, that
the work of redemption is finished gloriously: God is at
rest, completely satisfied, and His people have entered
into His rest. It is very simple, perhaps, as it is put
like that, but are we not tested on this thing? Almost
every day of our lives we are tested about the Sabbath -
not merely as a day, but as to our rest in God's
satisfaction, as to our contentment with God's
contentment: in other words, as to our apprehension of
the fact that Christ has altogether finished the new
creation in Himself, and has brought God an answer to His
last demand and requirement. God wants a people who are
rejoicing in that; He wants a testimony like that. The
Lord make us a people after that kind! The wall speaks of
that, because, as you notice, as soon as the wall is
completed, Nehemiah, who had paid his visit back to
Babylon and returned, began to put the Sabbath in its
place and clean up everything in relation to the Sabbath.
Restored
Purity of Blood
One more thing for the
moment - the state of mixture which existed. We are told
that the children of the people could not speak in the
Hebrew language. They spoke half in one language, half in
another. And then we read about the mixed marriages with
the people of the nations outside - so many of the men
had foreign wives. Here were elements, features, of
mixture amongst the Lord's people, and Nehemiah set to
work to clean that up. He did it very thoroughly - and,
thank God, the people co-operated with him. It was
necessary as a spiritual principle that this should be
done; but here again, mixture being one of the conditions
represented by the wall - the wall was broken down and
destroyed because there was not a purity in Israel - in
its rebuilding it was a bulwark against mixture of blood.
That says something very
strong and very definite - the necessity for everyone who
claims to have any place in the city of God, in the
Church of God, in the Kingdom of God, to be able to prove
that their blood is pure, that they really are born from
above, they have the pure life of the Lord in them, they
are not a mixed people in their constitution - they are a
people of one tongue, of one language, of one blood, of
one life. The wall being re-erected was to be a testimony
to a 'cleaning up' in this matter of mixture among the
Lord's people: a purity of blood, a purity of language, a
purity of worship.
You know how possible it
is to mix these things up. You very often find people who
are talking the language or the phraseology, but you
hardly recognize it as the language of the Spirit. Oh,
they have got all the Christian phraseology, but there is
a lot of mixture here, a lot of contradiction in the life
here. There must be a people of a pure language, those
who truly speak the language of the Spirit. Is it not
true that there are many professing Christians who do not
speak the language of the Spirit? Many of you know what I
mean. Yes, you miss something. There is something about
their way of speaking of 'Christianity' and 'religion'
which does not say that they have really been born from
above.
The
Restored Tithe
And I close with this
other thing - defaulting in the tithe. Malachi, who
depicts the conditions at that time, charges the people
with defaulting in the matter of the Lord's tithe. He
says, speaking from God: "Ye rob me, even this
whole nation." "But ye say, Wherein have we
robbed thee? In tithes and offerings" (Mal.
3:9,8). There was default in the matter of the tithe.
But what is this? Oh, do
not think that we can get out of this by just taking a
tenth part of our earnings and giving it to the Lord. You
can do that and not be giving the tithe at all. What does
it mean, this tithe? It was like this. Tithes were given
of everything - of their earnings, of their field, of
their vineyard, of their flocks; and what happened was
that the farmer or the husbandman or the shepherd would
watch carefully for the first ripe fruits, the first
product to reach maturity, the first animal to come
forth, to come into life, to live. He watched, as,
supposing it were the field, the corn was growing, and as
the time drew near he would take a walk out to see the
state of the corn and watch for the first ripe ears: and
as soon as he saw ripe ears, he did not wait for the
whole harvest to ripen, he took them to the house of God,
and he said, in effect: 'This represents the fact that
all belongs to You, Lord. This is a forerunner, a
first-fruit of what is to come. It is all Yours, and I
give this as a token that it is all Yours, that You have
the first place and the whole place.' If it were the
fruit, the husbandman did the same. If it were the
shepherd, he took the firstling of the flock and said:
'Lord, this is the firstling of this flock; it betokens
that all is Yours - Yours is the first place, and Yours
shall be the whole place.'
That is the tithe. The
tithe is not something detached and given to God, while
we have the rest. It is a token that the Lord has the place
from beginning to end. Now, you see, that was the trouble
with Israel - defaulting in the matter of the tithe - and
that was why the testimony had broken down. The Lord did
not have the first place and the whole place in all their
interests, in all their matters, in all their
possessions. The Lord wants a people like that, who
really do bear that testimony. He would raise up the wall
of testimony again in a people who do not just give Him a
place, a part, but who give Him the whole place,
and are always on the look-out as to how they can bring
Him that which is His right - a people like that.
Suffer the simplicity of
these words, but they go deeper than perhaps you
recognize. They touch very vital matters. All this is
very practical. When Nehemiah put these things right, he
was not just building a wall. He was putting right the
things which the wall represented; the testimony was
supported by spiritual reality behind. That is what the
Lord wants.