For some time past the
Lord has been laying the message of this book upon my
heart, and I believe the time has come for that message
to be brought anew to His people. I believe that in this
book there is that which can touch the need at this
present time in a very real way; for, indeed, this is a
time when the Lord's people need help to meet the many
activities which are meant by the adversary to lead them
away from, or prevent them from coming to, the place
where the Lord has all that His heart desires in and
through them. This first part will be occupied with a few
general principles which govern the book.
The first is that this
book represents an end-time activity. You know that this
is the last fragment of recorded history before you reach
the Gospel of Luke. Whether that has impressed you
sufficiently I do not know, but it is indeed an
impressive fact that the next piece of recorded history
in the Canon of Holy Scripture, as we have it, is the
Gospel of Luke. Thus what you have here, so far as the
old dispensation is concerned, is an end-time activity.
The content of this book represents what God did at the
end of that dispensation, and will therefore foreshadow
what an end-time activity of God is to be. It will show
the kind of thing that the Lord will do in the end-time.
And then the other
thing, which goes along with it, is that the Book of
Nehemiah is related throughout to the Coming of the Lord.
Luke brings in the Lord Jesus in a very immediate way,
and we find Him in the temple surrounded by the few who
represent the remnant which has come over from the old
dispensation and which takes up the testimony in the new
- for the testimony was indeed represented by a very few
when the Lord Jesus came; Simeon and Anna and a few
others who looked for the consolation of Israel, for the
Lord's Christ. They are found there with the Lord in His
House in the Gospel of Luke, and as that is the next
fragment of history, and as Nehemiah was the last before
that, you will see that the link with Nehemiah is the
Coming of the Lord.
Putting these two things
together, you have your foundation laid for the abiding
value of this book. It is an end-time activity related to
the Coming of the Lord.
Now we go to the book,
and in a few further observations we take note of what we
might call the typology of this book, that is, its
typical elements and features. Indeed, we have to link
another book with it, for the two are one. These are Ezra
and Nehemiah, and in the Hebrew Scriptures they were not
separated, but one was regarded as the completion of the
other. In Ezra, as we know, we have the House of God in
view; in Nehemiah we have the enclosure, the wall of
Jerusalem; and these two speak to us of the testimony of
the Lord as here on the earth.
The
Divine Order: the Altar; the House; the Wall
In Ezra we find the
order introduced. The first feature of the order of
things is the setting of the altar, the great altar, in
its place: "And they set the altar in its
place" (Ezra 3:3; A.R.V. margin). Then after the
altar was put in its place, the House of God was built;
then when the House was built, at a subsequent time the
wall was re-built. This is the three-fold order. First we
have the altar, which typifies the Cross, as being basic
to the whole Divine activity, and then the House, which
typifies the Church, as resultant from the Cross being in
its place. It is important to have the aspect of things
as well as the order. The House is here presented in its
Godward direction, what it is to God, and what it is in
itself. And then the wall is the testimony manward,
towards the world. That is the order and the aspect of
things. Let us gather them up again very briefly: the
Altar - the Cross, basic to the whole Divine activity;
the House - the Church, resultant from the Cross, issuing
therefrom, in its Godward aspect and as to what it is
in itself; and then the Wall as the testimony of the
Cross and the House, outwardly, toward man and the world.
The
Cross - Basic Victory
You will have noted that
the Cross is here seen as a basic deliverance from all
hostile forces. That does not mean that the hostile
forces cease to be, or cease to trouble. They are not
annihilated by the Cross, they are very much in evidence
afterward. But there is a factor about the Cross here
which represents basic deliverance from the hostile
forces. Ezra 3:3, tells us that they put the altar in its
place: "... for fear was upon them because of the
peoples of the countries". So that their fear of the
peoples led them to that step. Working the other way it
meant, or implied, that the Cross - the altar - was the
ground of their security, their safety, and their
deliverance from the hostile peoples round about. The
Cross is basic to deliverance. The forces will not cease
to trouble; the antagonism of the enemy will not become a
thing of naught; there may be a good deal of challenging,
pressing and assailing, but there is that basic thing in
the Cross which speaks of security, safety and
deliverance. By the Cross, says the Apostle, He
triumphed: "having put off from Himself the
principalities and the powers, He made a show of them
openly, triumphing over them in it (His Cross)"
(Col. 2:15; A.R.V. margin). You have the basic thing in
the Cross.
The
House - Heavenly Order
The House sees a
heavenly order set up in the Lord's people. That is the
resultant work of the Cross, the issue of the Cross,
because until the Cross has done its work nothing
heavenly can be brought in. The Letter to the Ephesians
sees us in the heavenlies, where we have been quickened
together with Him, and raised, and seated; but quickening
has to do with none but those who have died. So that the
Cross sees an order of the earth and of man set aside;
and, therefore, the House of God, coming in after the
Cross, represents a heavenly order, not of man, set up in
the Lord's people.
The
Wall - the Testimony Outward
Then the wall determines
the testimony of the Lord, the divide as to the world,
and as to mere professors. If I were asked to define the
testimony here I should say that it is the testimony of
what is in resurrection. These walls were "raised
again". They speak of that which is brought back
from destruction, disintegration and death, and
reconstituted. But they are in association with the
heavens in a marked way, and the feature which they
represent preeminently is that of distinctiveness. It is
a distinctiveness of testimony as represented by what is
raised, what is in resurrection. There is a tremendous
difference between that and what has died, what has been
and is no more. The testimony of resurrection life and
nature is something very distinct. So the wall represents
distinctiveness of testimony as characterized by what is
risen and of the heavens.
Now having said all that
in a general way as introductory, we are able to go on
with the book more fully, and we shall take as our first
matter of consideration things as they were when Nehemiah
came to Jerusalem. We shall follow afterward with
Nehemiah himself as the vessel of recovery, and then
after that with the way of recovery. But I think that we
may not get much beyond the summarizing of "things
as they were". Each feature, I am sure, will in
itself be very challenging to our hearts, and to our day.
I would like to say
here, by way of parenthesis, that it is not for one
moment my desire merely to accumulate truth or Bible
matter for the sake of an address, a theme, but very
truly that the Lord may be able at this end-time to get
that which He is after, and that as we speak of these
things the Holy Spirit may strike them home to us in
relation to His own purpose.
Things
as They Were
Now, coming back to this
book, and reading it through and marking the things which
represented the conditions in Nehemiah's time, you will
find that there is presented a very deplorable state of
affairs. In the first place, the clear testimony of the
House of God has broken down. The things resisted by Ezra
have recurred and revived. That beautiful movement which
is presented in Ezra's account, that recovery of truth as
to the House of God; that putting away of things which
were contrary to that testimony and that House, has all
collapsed and the old evils have raised their heads
again; the testimony is in a state of weakness and
ineffectiveness.
As we read through the
book of Nehemiah with Ezra in the background, having Ezra
freshly in mind with all that is there, we shall be
startled and amazed that here in the day of Nehemiah such
things were unrecognized, only coming to light when
Nehemiah comes on the scene to do something which is
according to God's mind. It is always like that. You
never know what there is of evil and of that which is
contrary to God until you come out in some whole-hearted
purpose for God, and then you discover things that you
would not have believed to be existent before. These
things are quiescent, they are hidden, they are going on
quietly, holding and gripping the life of the people,
destroying the testimony of the Lord, and they only
spring into manifest life and activity when something
positive for God comes into the midst.
Oppression
Look at some of these
things. Many of the Lord's people (speaking historically
here, we should say the Jews) had been sold into slavery
among their own brethren. The Lord's people were making
merchandise of one another, were seeking their own good
and gain at the expense of their brethren, maintaining
their own position by the humiliation and degradation of
their own brethren; and I am very far from sure that that
has not a spiritual counterpart. I do not know what some
people would do if they had not others over whom they
could lord it, and were not able to turn even God's
heritage to their own good and account. This works out
from simple forms to extreme forms. It may work out in
the simple form of that unholy, unlovely criticism
amongst the Lord's people, which after all only implies
that we are better than they, and bolsters us up at their
expense. I wonder how much of our criticism of one
another does not secretly have that motive.
Oh, that eternal,
everlasting 'but'; always a reservation! 'You know they
love the Lord, but...': 'They are very zealous for the
Lord, but...': 'There is all that is good about them,
but'; and that 'but' looms bigger than all the good, and
undermines all the good.
So many of us who use
that 'but' are only prompted to do so by our superior
judgment, by our pride. I mean this, that too often we
get on top by making others appear small; and we gain, or
seek to gain, our prominence, our position, our influence
by that form of pride which does harm to the children of
God. That may be a simple illustration of this thing
spiritually.
The whole force of the
exhortations of the New Testament is in the other
direction. The emphasis is that we should put others
above ourselves, that we should always be esteeming
others better than ourselves. That is the opposite
direction. That is very hard for the flesh to do, and you
see why we have to stress the fact that if the testimony
of a heavenly thing in the House of God is to be
maintained in fullness and clearness, the Cross has to
come first and to go right to the root of this pride,
this arrogance, this subtle self-sufficiency,
self-esteem, this "humble" (?) criticism of
ours which, after all, is the very essence of pride; and
it may show itself in many other ways, as indeed it does;
lording it over God's heritage; taking position and
making the very privileges and opportunities of service
the occasion for our position.
To put that in another
way, in the New Testament form, it is this: the
disciples, before they were baptized with the Holy Spirit
were men who were always looking out for an opportunity
of being on top of their brethren, and of having the
advantage over one another, having first place; and the
Lord Jesus had to say to them strong words: "I am
among you as He that serveth";"... the Son of
Man came not to be ministered unto, but to
minister..." That is the spirit of the Cross. Now I
think you can see that there is undoubtedly a spiritual
counterpart to this, where others are made the means of
our gain, where we in a spiritual sense sell our brethren
into slavery for our own advantage. You may follow that
further if you desire.
Insolvency
Another thing which
comes out in this book is that many of the Lord's people,
the Jews, were living in insolvency, partly by reason of
mortgages, or by the selling of their sons and daughters
into servitude. That is to say, they were not living in
their own rights. They were reduced to poverty and they
had no resources of their own; therefore dignity and
honour were absent, and they were a debtor people.
That also has a
spiritual counterpart. I wonder, beloved, how far it is
true of ourselves, and of many of the Lord's people
today, that they are not living in their own title; that,
were things brought to the balance, they would be found
insolvent. To put it more simply, how many of us know in
ourselves the riches of Christ, and how many of us are in
that false position of having to live upon other people's
riches? I mean this, that if all the external things of
spiritual help were stripped off; the meetings, and the
fellowship, and all these things were taken away, how
many of us would discover that we were living in our own
title and, in the last analysis, absolutely independent
of all such things? While we may enjoy them, profit by
them, thank God for them, yet it is not things on the
outside which constitute our life, it is our own
knowledge of the preciousness of the Lord, and, though
everything of the outside be stripped from us, we are
solvent, we can stand up and say: 'Yes, but you cannot
take away my own heritage; I have a heritage in Christ
which is not dependent upon meetings, conferences,
addresses, or upon anything on the outside, but which is
my own inward life with the Lord; I know Him'.
It may just be the case
in the end-time, beloved, that the Lord will call many of
His people to face situations like that for their own
discovery, their own finding out. I am quite sure that
the Lord will require at the end-time, that every child
of His shall know Him in a personal, inward way to his
own sufficiency and satisfaction in Christ. And that
although outward things may be removed, may collapse, may
disappoint, we find fullness in Christ for ourselves.
Are you solvent? Are you
mortgaged? Are you living entirely upon what other people
have to give you? Is that your sustenance? Or, are you
living upon what you get from the Lord? If so, if you
have something as your own, you will have something to
give, and you are not in the state of beggary, poverty,
such as these people were in. I am so glad that Nehemiah
redeemed the people who were sold into slavery, and
bought them back into their own rights. I am so glad that
Nehemiah stopped this business of mortgaging and selling
their children to maintain their own lives, and saw to it
that every man could stand on his own feet before God,
and pay his own way. That is an important spiritual
reflection for the Lord's people, and that represents an
end-time movement, for we have lived far too long upon
mere externals of grace, and far too little upon what the
Lord Himself is to us.
The
House of God Defiled
Then the temple had been
polluted by the heathen and had been used for secular
purposes. I think that hardly need be applied, the two
things go together. When those who are not of pure blood
by direct birth from above, heathen in this sense that
they are not born children of God, come into the House of
God, and have a place amongst the Lord's people, you very
soon find that the House of the Lord is turned in the
direction of interests and usages which are altogether
contrary to the mind of the Lord. It is brought down to
earth; the House of God is made an earthly thing, drawn
out of its place. The enemy is always trying to do this.
It is his persistent strategy to insinuate amongst the
Lord's people those who are not really born again, those
who assume and presume; who would come in as of the
Lord's people, but who are not the Lord's people; and the
issue of their presence is to introduce into the House of
God worldly judgments, worldly methods, man's ways, man's
thoughts, and so pull it down on to the lower, the carnal
level of life. That is persistently, and too often
successfully, attempted as one of the Devil's
master-strokes. Surely we see that today, for it is very
widespread. You hardly need to be told that; we are aware
of it all round.
But Nehemiah, as
representing God's end-time movement, put a stop to that.
He purged the House of God of the heathen, and saw to it
that the House of God was maintained according to God's
thought, and that man's thought and man's way was ruled
out. No one thinks, of course, that I am talking about
the House of God in any material sense, of churches and
places where people gather. That may be an application of
this; but I am thinking of the people of God, who are
called to be for Him a heavenly people; into the midst of
whom the enemy is constantly trying to get carnal
principles, natural activities and energies to pull this
testimony down from the heavenlies and make of it an
earthly thing run by man. Nehemiah will not have that; he
counters that, and so, represents what God will have at
the end-time.
The
Sabbath Violated
Then again, the Sabbath
was neglected. This is an extraordinary thing after Ezra,
is it not, that the Sabbath should have fallen out of its
place, be neglected, set aside, overlooked, ignored. Let
us hasten at once to say that we are thinking now of the
spiritual and New Testament counterpart of this; not of a
day. While we do still thank God for the Sabbath day as a
point of time here, and while we would cling to it and
not let it go easily, we have been lifted in our
understanding of this to a much higher level, and we have
come to see that the Sabbath is the historical type of
the end of God's works when He enters into His rest in
the Lord Jesus; that the Sabbath speaks of a full
accomplishment of all God's work in the Person of His
Son. Set aside, overlook, ignore the finality of Divine
activity in Christ, and you have lost your rest, you have
lost your peace; you are still wandering in a circle in a
wilderness; you are still in the realm of the imperfect
and unaccomplished; you have not yet come to settle down
on that ground which proclaims the word "It is
finished".
The soul that really
apprehends spiritually the finished work of Christ, is a
soul at rest; it has entered into God's rest. It is
delivered from the tyranny of the Devil who is always
seeking to bring accusation and condemnation, despite the
fact that the finished work of Christ says there is no
condemnation. All this restless, feverish introspection,
self-analysis, self-encompassing; never at rest, never
settled, never sure, never certain of anything; all this
is because the Sabbath has been overlooked. For us the
Sabbath is a Person and not a day, and therefore every
day should be to us a Sabbath. That is the deepest
meaning, I am sure, of this magnificent word which we all
quote as a fragment of Scripture, a text, "The joy
of the Lord is your strength".
What is the joy of the
Lord? "God... rested from all His work...";
"God saw everything that He had made, and behold it
was very good"; and that all-inclusively is Christ
in His full work by His Cross. God has looked upon the
new creation in Christ and said: "It is good".
"The joy of the Lord is your strength". The
finality of God's satisfaction is in Christ. Overlook
that, miss that, and you have lost your Sabbath rest,
your rest of heart. That is how it was here. But Nehemiah
brought that back, and an end-time movement represents
the recovery of the finality of Christ's work, the
fullness of His satisfaction to the Father, and the
people of God being brought into that. Oh, beloved, the
importance of that can never be overestimated, because
against that the adversary is dead set.
I see two
movements as marking the end-time, and they are these. On
the one hand, the enemy is trying to rob the people of
God of their rest, assurance, peace, certainty,
confidence, and circling them round with doubts, fears,
apprehensiveness of things, to cut the ground of
confidence from under their feet - the Accuser of the
brethren comes out in that way at the end-time in an
intensified form. Over against that, God would bring back
the fullness and finality of His work in Christ, set His
people in their Sabbath rest, directing their hearts
toward Him, saying: "This is My beloved Son, in Whom
I am well pleased": 'You are accepted in Him, I am
satisfied'. It is all in Him. Bring back that testimony
of the Lord Jesus at the end-time, and it is a great
countering factor. "Nehemiah", be he a man or
be he a corporate instrument for recovery at the
end-time, must have as a part, an important part, of his
ministry the establishing of the Sabbath in this sense.
Mixture
and Lost Distinctiveness
Then, again, we find
here that many of the Lord's people had married foreign
wives and thus their distinctiveness was lost. Nehemiah
destroyed those unions, and compelled such as had thus
transgressed to send back their wives to their own homes
and countries, thus upholding a Divine principle. Now the
spiritual counterpart is not that those who have
unconverted husbands or wives should leave them, or
neglect them, though I am afraid that many are doing
that. Because the husband or wife has not the things of
the Lord, the interests of the Lord at heart, they go out
to many meetings and leave them alone. Do not fall into
that trap. No, the spiritual counterpart is that these
wives in the Old Testament always represent principles.
Women, as we know, throughout the Bible are types of
principles, and what is here typified is alliance, and
relationship, and association with principles which are
foreign to what is wholly of God; and any voluntary
association with those principles destroys that spiritual
distinctiveness which must ever characterize the Lord's
people.
That covers a very wide
area and includes innumerable things, but that is the
inclusive application of this. What we have here is an
element, a feature, a principle, a law that is contrary
to the revealed will of God, which is foreign and alien
to the mind of the Lord, to the Word of God, to the way
of the Spirit; what is in view here is a voluntary
association with that, an allowing that to come into
relationship with ourselves. As the result of such a
course, there will be an offspring which is a mixture,
which has a mixture of things of God and things of the
enemy; and if there is one paramount abomination to God
as revealed in the Word of God it is mixture.
Everywhere God is
against mixture. God will have things utter, complete,
absolute, clearly defined, wholly of Himself; and this
wall of Nehemiah represents the mark which divides
between what is wholly of God, and what is not of God; it
is not just a matter of the different shades and degrees
of what is not of God, but what is not of God to the
finest degree. What is inside is to be of God to the very
last measure, and anything that is not of God has no
place there. And so these wives must be expelled from
that area and sent away. It is a spiritual principle
which is in view. God is against mixture. There is a
terrible amount of mixture amongst the Lord's people.
Suburban
Christians
There are, perhaps, two
other things to be mentioned. The majority of the people
we find here were living outside Jerusalem, in the
suburbs, and Nehemiah had not enough people in Jerusalem
for the work in hand, and had to appeal to them,
encourage them, exhort them, to go out to bring others
in. That is a very simple thing in its spiritual
interpretation, and yet an important thing. There are a
good many of the Lord's people living in the spiritual
suburbs; who are not right inside His testimony. They may
be only a little way out, but they are out; they may be a
long way out. There may be all manner of - shall we say -
reasons which they would give. Some would say that they
did not want to be singular, they did not want to seem to
be unbalanced, they want to keep the balance of things.
Yes, all kinds of reasons (?) would be advanced. It may
be prejudice, it may be suspicion, it may be keeping on
the safe side of the road, it may be fear of the cost,
unwillingness to pay the price. It may be that Sanballat
and Tobiah will look unfavourably at them if they come
inside and co-operate with Nehemiah. It may be that they
are not quite sure about this thing; they want to see how
it is going to fare, if it is going to succeed, and if
they see the thing is solid ground they will take the
risk! There is no risk if the thing is solid, and
therefore there is no heroism and no honour.
You see what I mean.
When the Lord does a new thing, and the Lord is seeking
to have His utter testimony to what is altogether of
Himself and of heaven, where man, in the flesh, in
nature, has no place, a thing which is wholly of the
Lord, it involves cost, loss of favour, loss of friends;
it involves misunderstanding, misrepresentation; it
involves in criticism, in the judgments of being extreme
and singular and different from everyone else; all that!
Yes? Well, what of it? The issue is, are you going to be
wholly in with God, or are you going to remain in the
suburbs? Nehemiah would urge, would exhort, would
entreat, would encourage, would reach out, would call in;
and blessed be God! there was a response adequate to the
need. It remains for us to decide in our own hearts,
whether we are on the fringe of things, on the outskirts,
on the rim, or whether we are right in, and taking the
consequences of such a position; and we shall just have
to square right down to this issue.
Some of us have had to
do that. We had seen what it would involve, what it would
cost; at least we had seen a good deal of the inevitable
practical outcome of taking that course with God. Yes,
but the issue has just been this: "Was it the way of
the Lord?" If so, to be out of it could not pay in
the long run; whatever we might have for the time being,
it must be lost sooner or later.
Certainly we must not
view things merely upon that low level - gain and loss -
but after all it is the question of what we are here for
- for the Lord, or for ourselves? For the Lord, or for
others? The whole question is, "What does the Lord
want?" Then, it may be costly, it may mean much, it
may mean loss of fellowship in many directions, loss of
favour, and we may be involving ourselves in the terrific
animus - hostility - of the enemy; but what can we do? We
must go on with God. Are we all at that place? That is
bringing things very close to our hearts, is it not?
Official
Obstruction
Then, in closing; all
these things which we have mentioned as being the wrongs,
the evils, which Nehemiah encountered; which existed, but
of which no notice was taken until he came on the scene,
all these things were supported by an important,
influential and official class, priests and nobles, and
even the high priest himself was a party to them.
Nehemiah came right up against that. Well, it is quite
true that, when we determine to go right on with the
Lord, it is the official element that obstructs. We meet
an influential force, we come right up against those who
have place and position and we find too often that, like
the high priest, even those who officially represent, and
are accepted as the representatives of God's highest
interests are not favourable toward the whole counsel of
God, the whole purpose of God, but condone things which
are altogether contrary to His full testimony. That is
very true. Some of you have proved it, and will know it
if you determine to go right on with the Lord.
But Nehemiah met it all,
and he met it with courage. "Then I contended with
the nobles", he said. He did not grovel before the
influential class, he did not bow to the official
elements; he contended with the nobles. He knew that he
was a man with a Divine mandate, and that gave him
spiritual, not merely natural, dignity amongst men,
because as he stood upon his Divinely-given ground, to
fulfil his Divinely-given ministry, he knew that God
would stand by him.
We shall see there were
other factors in the background which made him the man he
was; but that was his attitude. It is a great thing to
know you are in the purpose of God. You have great
confidence when you know you are in a Divine activity;
that the thing you are in was not initiated by you, but
came from heaven, and you came into it from heaven,
spiritually; the thing is of God. It puts you in a
position of moral and spiritual ascendancy, and gives you
a dignity above that of men whose dignity is merely
official, and not spiritual.
Now you have been making
your application as we have gone along. We must come back
and see this instrument of recovery, and the method of
recovery more fully. I do trust that the Lord will enable
you to see that we are in an end-time, related to the
Coming of the Lord, and that an end-time activity is the
raising of a testimony of distinctiveness, that is, that
which is in resurrection life and power, a thing all of
God, with nothing of man in it. And that testimony
demands that a very great deal that is contrary to it
shall be dealt with and put away.