Nehemiah's
Action
Now from Nehemiah's
concern we move on to his action - for, as we have said,
Nehemiah was no detached, negative critic of the
situation. He was not just one who was pointing out all
that was wrong, without knowing what ought to be done for
the glory of God, and doing something about it. So he
took action, and if there is one book in the Bible, or at
any rate in the Old Testament, which is characterized by
action more than another, I think this book is such.
When Nehemiah took
action, he first of all fully and accurately acquainted
himself with the situation. We have such words as these: "Hanani,
one of my brethren, came, he and certain men out of
Judah; and I asked them concerning the Jews that had
escaped, that were left of the captivity, and concerning
Jerusalem" (Nehemiah 1:2).
And then when he came to
Jerusalem, we see him moving, in these descriptive words:
"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; neither was there any beast
with me, save the beast that I rode upon. And I went out
by night... and viewed the walls of Jerusalem, which were
broken down, and the gates thereof were consumed with
fire" (Nehemiah 2:12,13).
So Nehemiah took pains
to get to know exactly what the situation was. It is true
that he had information. Report came to him, or he made
it his business to get to know from those who had
first-hand knowledge, as to what the situation was, but
as soon as it was possible for him to do so on the spot,
he verified the report and accurately informed himself at
first-hand exactly how matters stood. And I would suggest
that, in like manner, when the Lord is speaking
concerning the recovery of His testimony which is the
matter before us, those who are going to co-operate with
Him must be accurately and fully informed. While their
information may come indirectly, they must not be content
with the best second-hand report, they must know at
first-hand exactly how things are. You and I will never
be of much use to the Lord until we know exactly what the
spiritual state of things is and what needs to be done.
We must really see and know this for ourselves, not just
get it from the many people there are who tell us about
it.
It is a fact that we can
hardly go anywhere today in any part of the world,
without finding people deploring the spiritual state of
things amongst the Lord's people. Their sense of things
is in the main a right one - although, as we said
earlier, many of them just complain and murmur and
grumble and criticize without having anything to offer in
the way of remedy and improvement. Nevertheless, their
registration of the spiritual state of the Church is very
largely true. It is very widely true, today, that
everything is not right with the Church; things are not
as they should be, as the Lord would have them. But we
cannot go on a general - even though it be a very general
- feeling that things are not right. This must come into
our own being; we must know it for ourselves. I am not
suggesting that we should go and try to find out all that
is wrong and make a long list of all that is so defective
and deplorable today; but I am saying this - that if we
are to co-operate with God in getting things as He would
have them, the matter must be a first-hand one in our own
hearts. We must know it for ourselves. We must not just
be professional grumblers, but those who have real
travail of heart because of what we know to be the case,
because of what we see, what is clear to our own eyes and
what troubles our own hearts.
So Nehemiah did, in the
first place, inform himself directly as to the situation.
And it was a situation calculated to take the heart out
of anyone. It really could have been so disconcerting
that Nehemiah would not have gone on any further with it,
but returned to Babylon and said: 'We must make the best
of a bad job. Things are not as they ought to be, they
are quite hopeless. It is no use trying to do anything
about it.' But he did not give it up as a hopeless
situation, bad as it was. I am quite sure that if you had
been one of the men going round with Nehemiah that night,
you might well have said: 'This is something altogether
beyond our handling; we will never be able to make
anything of this. This is hopeless.' Nehemiah was not
like that. I think Nehemiah was one of the most
courageous men of the Old Testament - a true hero: faced
with a terrible situation, but facing it with confidence
in God, because he knew, not only that this was a bad
situation, but that God was on the move to put it right,
to make something different of it. It was God's will that
it should be otherwise; and if God wills a thing, then we
have a ground of confidence, however impossible it may
seem to us. So he did not give it up, but faced it -
faced it squarely.
I have a very great deal
in my mind that will not find expression in these
messages, but I have been taking in the whole compass of
the Bible in connection with this, and I am especially
moving in the New Testament, as you will see as we go on.
I am thinking of the Apostle Paul, the great Nehemiah of
this dispensation. What a situation he had to face
amongst Christians! What a condition of things he had to
meet and deal with! We feel, as we read his first letter
to the Corinthians, that we would have given it up and
said: 'This is a hopeless mess - is this Christianity at
all?' But see how Paul heroically and courageously faced
that situation. He did not give it up.
Today, we might be
greatly discouraged, we might easily feel that it is not
possible to have a full, clear testimony that glorifies
God, seeing how the Church is destroyed, how "the
wall... is broken down", how "the gates are
burned with fire" - that is, how the whole testimony
is rent, and torn, and in ruins, as we might say. Yes,
the situation is a disconcerting one and we have to face
this question: Does God want it to be otherwise? Does God
mean it to be otherwise? Is it the will of God that it
shall be otherwise? Has God given it up? Is He desiring
and intending - nay more, is He moving to secure a
different state of things? If there is anything to prove
that God is actively concerned about this matter, then we
dare not abandon it. But it takes a great deal of
courage, all the courage that God can give us, to face
the present situation. Those who know it know that I am
not exaggerating.
The
Vision and Inspiration of Nehemiah
And then, once more, in
his action Nehemiah brought others into his vision and
into his concern. First of all, it was in his own heart
and it was hidden in his heart. He said nothing to anyone
of what God had put on his heart. It was something
between himself and the Lord, in the first place, and it
was not until he had reached a certain position, and made
a certain decision consequent upon his investigation,
that he opened his heart to others. I think that is a
splendid thing, a thing of which to take note. It is so
easy to have ideas and then to begin to broadcast your
ideas and unload them on to other people. It is quite
another thing, between yourself and God, to have got to
grips with the situation and become fully impressed with
the greatness of it, and then to resolve that this thing
must be done and to bring others into your vision and
inspiration.
You see, Nehemiah was
made to be a tremendous inspiration. You read through
this book and see what you might almost call the
magnetism of this man's personality, the inspiration that
he was. People leapt to the impossible under the
inspiration and vision of this man. There were times when
they were very low in despondency, but then he pulled
them out of their slough. What a force he was as a true
leader to bring others into his vision! And do you not
feel strongly that that is the real need today - of
people who have vision, who have weighed up everything,
who have faced the whole issue, and then who have such
confidence in God, with the assurance that God wants and
means something different, that they have come out with
their positive impact upon others, so that others come
into line? That truly is a great need. It is the easiest
thing in the world to be a passenger, always to be
carried. Ah, it is so easy to be a parasite, just living
on and draining others. But it is quite another thing to
be an inspiration, to be one who really does help others
into the thing that God is after, to be an inspiration to
them to come along to help in the work of the Lord.
Nehemiah was that; and I put it to you that if we have
any sense of things being other than according to God's
mind, and that God would have them otherwise, we ought to
be positive people in this matter, and be an inspiration
to others about it.
And so Nehemiah, having
taken the full measure of it, and having weighed it all
up, and having impressed himself with the greatness of
the task in hand, without despairing, turned to it and so
inspired the other men to whom he opened his heart that
they said: "Let us rise up and build". Oh, for
a people like that! A people today who know all about it,
and, seeing how things are, will say: 'Let us do
something about it - let us rise up and build!'
Well, that is the
beginning of his action, and you will agree that that is
action indeed. Of course, we are not just looking at this
as a human matter, because none of us can be like this
for very long, at any rate not unless we are energized by
the Spirit of God. Consider the Apostle Paul again, who
knew all about it, all about the conditions, and knew how
discouraged and despondent the people of God could be
about the situation. His prayer was this: "that he
would grant you, according to the riches of his glory...
that ye may be strengthened with power through his Spirit
in the inward man" (Eph. 3:16); "that ye may
be... strengthened with all power, according to the might
of his glory, unto all patience and long-suffering with
joy" (Col. 1:9,11). The mighty energies of the
Spirit of God inwardly are the only energies by which we
shall be able to go on. We must allow a large place for
the inward working of God in the life of Nehemiah,
because we know full well that only so can we do anything
about this situation.
The
Object - The Wall
Now let us come to the
main features of the whole matter of this book. We said,
in our first study, that they are three: namely, the
Wall, the Work and the Warfare, or the Object, the
Conduct and the Conflict. We begin with the object, the
Wall, and we must be very clear as to what is represented
by this wall that Nehemiah was going to repair - what the
wall stands for. May I say three preliminary things about
the wall, as to what the wall really was and what it is
now.
First of all, the wall
was a definition: that is, it defined. A
definition: that means, spiritually interpreted -
interpreted in our own time, according to Divine thoughts
- a clear defining of what is Christ and what is not
Christ. That wall of Jerusalem defined a certain area, a
certain territory; and it stood there originally to say:
'Now, what is within this wall, this mark, is of a
certain order, of a certain character; within this,
things are so and so.' Of course, the character was given
by the temple. right there at the centre, so to speak;
but the wall was a defining factor, and we need not stay
with detail about that. It is only necessary for us to
say that in the recovering and completing of the Lord's
testimony there is the necessity for clear definition of
what is of Christ and what is not. Things have become
terribly confused. Here the wall is broken down and there
is much rubbish. I am going to deal with the rubbish
presently, but here is the fact - much rubbish where the
wall had been. Multitudes of people today have no clear
discernment, perception or apprehension as to what is
Christ and what is merely 'Christianity'. In evangelical
Christianity things have become terribly mixed up, and
what is necessary, it is evident, is the reconstituting
of that which clearly and exactly defines what Christ is;
that Christ shall be clearly understood and known and all
the confusing and complicating and mixing elements shall
be eliminated.
The wall was a defining
thing. That means, spiritually, that it stands to
represent the real character of Christ. I said a few
pages earlier that there is very much behind what I am
saying that cannot now find expression. but I have been
thinking about walls - looking at walls in general
through the Bible and passing from all the historic walls
to the great inclusive wall at the end of the book of the
Revelation, the wall of the New Jerusalem; and I find
amongst other things that a wall is to define the
character or nature of what is within. That is true, is
it not, of the great wall of the New Jerusalem at the end
of the Bible? Its main feature, we may say, is its
character: its glory, its beauty, its purity. It is the
character of Christ that is the first thing about His
testimony, and that has to become established and very
clearly defined.
And then - you may think
that this is a distinction without a difference, but
there is a difference - the wall represented a demarcation,
that is, a distinction. Here things are not mixed at
all; here at the wall there is a declaration and an
establishment of the fact, that this testimony is a
distinctive testimony. It is not a general thing; it is
not something that brings into itself all sorts of
different things. It is clear; it is distinctive. It has
one thing to say, and that one thing is: 'Only what is of
Christ can pass this, can be within this'.
Now that is very, very
searching, and very arresting. We shall find as we go on
that this brother of Nehemiah's, Hanani, was eventually
made a policeman. And he, as policeman, was in charge of
the gates, to deal with intruders, with merchants - and
there are plenty of merchants finding their way into the
testimony of Jesus, who have their own interests to
serve, their own business to do, and all sorts of
merchandise to bring into the confines of God, of Christ.
And this wall said. 'No!' You read on to the end of the
book, and see how Nehemiah and his policeman dealt with
the merchants! They were having none of that - they
chased them, they used strong measures with the
merchants. But they did not do any more than the Lord
Jesus did with the merchants of His day, with His knotted
cord. No, the simple word is this: the wall spoke of a
distinction between the precious and the vile; and that
is covering much ground; it puts very much between what
is of the Spirit of God and what is of another spirit.
And in the third place,
this wall represented a defence. It was something
which was placed as it were in a position of
responsibility. It was responsible to protect the Lord's
interests and the Lord's people from that which would
invade, which would attack, which would corrupt, which
would change the character. The Lord needs a testimony
which challenges everything, a testimony which will not
let anything pass that is not wholly of the Lord. That is
where things have gone wrong with the Church, with the
people of God, with the Lord's interests. So much has
been allowed to creep in, to have a place, that is not of
the Lord, and there has not been a sufficiently strong
testimony to what is of the Lord to meet it.
Again, in your New
Testament you find that at the beginning, when the
spiritual wall was first built, it was such a strong,
clear thing in the power of the Holy Spirit, that first
of all there were many that durst not join themselves -
they durst not, they were afraid. The situation
was such that fear was created in the heart where things
were not right with God. On the other hand, people coming
in fell down on their faces and said 'God is in the midst
of you'. The Lord needs a testimony like that, does He
not? - something so clear, so strong, that those who do
not mean business with God are afraid, and in our common
expression, just 'clear off'. "They went out... that
they might be made manifest that they all are not of
us" (I John 2:19), and that is a very healthy sign.
Things are in a good condition when that happens. Ah,
yes, but when things are in a bad condition you are
afraid to lose anybody - you hold on to anybody. The Lord
said: 'No; don't try to hold on to everybody, don't try
to bring in everybody'. This testimony, this wall, is a
defence, a protection against anybody, anything. How
necessary it was to Jerusalem in Nehemiah's day! The
whole book shows that. You look at these other people,
and see what this wall meant to Tobiah and to the rest of
the company. They knew the implications of this wall;
they knew that they were not getting into this.
Well, that is the
meaning of the wall in the first place. But let us go
just a little further in the matter. The wall represents
Christ on two sides. On the one side, it represents
Christ outwardly to the people of the world and the
nations. On the other side, it represents what Christ is
to the Lord's own people themselves. In a phrase, the
wall is a testimony in fullness to the Son of God: what
the Son of God means, as seen in this world, to the world
and to the people of God.
The
Need For Repairing the Wall
It is necessary that I
should put in a word here, lest there should be a
misapprehension of our meaning. Nehemiah was not building
the entire wall all over again from the foundations. If
you look closely, you will see that it is the repairing
of the wall that is going on, the repairing and
making complete of what had been broken down. Why do I
say that? Well, it is not given to us, we are not called
upon, to build this thing from the foundations. Thank
God. the foundation was laid, and thank God, the wall was
built, in the beginning. The book of the Acts shows the
wall, the testimony, in fullness and completeness, and in
glory and strength and grandeur: a mighty defence, a
mighty revelation of Christ to the nations and a mighty
meaning of Christ to His own people. It was there at the
beginning. Nehemiah did not come to commence, to initiate
this thing. He came to a scene where what had once been
full, clear, perfect, was broken down, ruined, and his
work was to repair it and make it complete again; and
that is where we are. If we are called into anything, we
are called into that. We are not called upon to do
what the Apostles did. They did their work, and it
stands; but since their time there has been a good deal
that speaks of the conditions of Nehemiah's day - a good
deal of collapse, of breakdown, of disintegration and of
spoliation; and the Lord calls in to recover, to recover
what was. That, surely, is the work to which we are
called.
So we look first of all
at the wall in brokenness. Here it is: "Then said
I unto them, Ye see the evil case that we are in, how
Jerusalem lieth waste, and the gates thereof are burned
with fire: come, and let us build up the wall of
Jerusalem, that we be no more a reproach" (Neh.
2:17). The last word touches the spot, does it not? See
the great enemy of God, of Christ, of the testimony of
our Lord, having it as his one abiding object to bring
reproach upon the Name of the Lord - anyhow, by any
means, whether by direct assault or by subtle
underworking; somehow to bring the Lord's Name and
testimony into reproach. "That we be no
more a reproach". What a motive to govern the
people of God, to save the Lord and His people from the
reproach of this broken-down condition!
Idolatry
the Cause of the Broken-Down Condition
We must, before we can
move to the recovery, examine and trace the fundamental
and ultimate reason for this state of things. We are
taking our cue from the illustration in this book and in
the other books leading up to it. There is one word that
goes to the root of the whole matter, and that word is idolatry.
If you look at the wall in its ruins, its wreckage;
if you meditate and contemplate and ask questions - 'Why?
Why this? How is it that this is come about? What are the
reasons for this state of things?' - the inclusive and
fundamental answer is - idolatry.
Is it not very
impressive to recognize that, because of the idolatry in
Israel, the nation was sent to the very heart of idolatry
to be cured of it? Babylon was the world centre of
idolatry - you know that from the great image set up. Now
Israel had allowed idolatry in her midst, and the Lord
sent her to the world centre of idolatry to be cured of
idolatry. I say that it is impressive, and it just means
this: that sometimes the Lord's way of curing is to give
an overdose of the thing with which we flirt. They
hankered and they flirted. The prophets cried, pleaded,
wept, appealed, agonized, that the people would break
with this thing, cease their flirtations with the gods of
the heathen nations round about them: but they would not,
they were wedded. 'All right', said the Lord; 'have what
you are after - have it to the full' and indeed they had
it to the full, and it cured Israel of idolatry in that
form for the rest of their history. I am not saying that
it cured them of the spirit of idolatry; we shall see
that later. But that form of open complicity with the
power of evil was destroyed by their being given that
upon which their hearts were set.
Here is the extreme
instance of the working of a certain law. The Psalmist
said about Israel in the wilderness: "And he gave
them their request, but sent leanness into their
soul" (Ps. 106:15). They refused to let go. They
would have; they said 'yes' in the face of God's 'no'.
'We will have.' 'All right', said the Lord - and they
were the losers in their getting.
Now that principle does
work, you know, and I am not so sure that it is not
working today. In the Church, in Christianity, the world
has found its place. The Church of God went out to the
world and brought the world in. There has been complicity
with the spirit of this world, it has found a large place
in Christianity; and while it is not my desire to speak
in this way, we must be very faithful. Perhaps all
unperceived, all unrecognized - God grant that it is so -
even in evangelical Christianity, there is a good deal of
worldly principle, the bringing in of unspiritual things
- names, titles, resources and what not, to do the work
of God. There is a hidden complicity to get favour, to
get advantage; there is behind all that another spirit -
the spirit of idolatry - which is getting a grip upon the
Lord's people. Very well: what has happened? The Lord has
let the Church have what it wants, and today it is
feeling that it has lost its power, lost its position,
because the world has too much of a place. In its gaining
it has lost: that is very patent, is it not?
That principle works -
and mark you, it works personally too, if your heart is
so set upon something that you will not take 'no' from
the Lord; you insist, you will have it; and your threat
to the Lord, even if it is not put in the form of a
threat, is that unless the Lord gives you that, or does
that for you, you are not going on. If there is anything
like that, the Lord will give it to you, He will let you
have it. It will be a curse to you. Abraham did that over
Ishmael - and what a curse You see, there is the
principle. Now the point is this, that these people
allowed idolatry to come into their lives, in spirit and
in principle; and the Lord, through His prophet,
"rising up early", appealed; but they refused
to listen to the voice of the prophet, so the Lord said:
'All right, have what you want - away to Babylon!' They
lost everything.
What is idolatry? If it
is not bowing down to idols of wood and stone, it takes
many, many subtle forms, and very often indirect ways. It
is just heart communion with anything that takes God's
place, that gets in God's way. What a lot of ground that
covers! The ultimate effect is that the Lord is
frustrated, the Lord is hindered, the Lord cannot have
what He is after. That is idolatry in principle. It
displaces the Lord, it makes difficulties for the Lord.
I said earlier that,
although Israel was cured of that outer form of idolatry,
the principle or spirit of idolatry was not eradicated:
for in the days of our Lord they were worshipping
tradition - and tradition can be an idol. Yes, tradition
can be an idol: you can be so committed and devoted to
tradition that the Lord does not have a chance. It
obstructs the Lord's way, like the rubbish that Nehemiah
could not pass - the beast that he rode could not pass
the rubbish. Very often the rubbish in the Lord's way is
the rubbish of a dead tradition, of a dead history,
something that belongs to the past and is not alive now.
That is the principle of idolatry. That was the
fundamental and ultimate cause of the brokenness of the
wall, the wreckage, the rubbish, the debris: idolatry,
heart union and communion with that which is not of the
Lord.
Remember that this book
of Nehemiah is full of bad conditions, of evils and
errors, and these things correspond to the state of the
wall. I want you to get this, although I shall come back
to it again. You look at that wall and examine it, and
you can look through it, so to speak; and in looking
through you see that the conditions of the Lord's people
tally exactly with the condition of the wall. There are
all sorts of wrongs and evils and errors, and that is the
rubbish, that is the broken-down state of things. You
see, the people's state corresponded to the state of the
wall; the wall was just an illustration of spiritual
conditions: so that when you come to 'look through' this
wall, you find that what you are dealing with really is
not a wall but spiritual conditions; and as Nehemiah went
forward to deal with the wall, he found that he had at
the same time to deal with spiritual conditions in the
people. They were one and the same thing. It would in
effect be foolish to put up a beautiful wall when the
conditions behind the wall were a contradiction. You see
the point? The two things must be consistent - the
spiritual state and your testimony. The testimony must
have a spiritual condition behind it. A spiritual
condition must support the testimony. You cannot work
upon building up something that is not in the energy of
truth.
We shall see further
what the wall means, and what the wall is made of; but
for the time being, the Lord bring us into His own
vision, into His own intention, and energize us with the
same energy as that which possessed His servant Nehemiah
and His servant Paul, and many others whom He has used to
recover something more of the testimony of His Son.