Nehemiah
About one decade
passes between the reforms of Ezra and the time Nehemiah is granted leave from
Artaxerxes. He had been motivated to return by the news of the desolate condition
of the city with its broken walls. Nehemiah found it even as he had heard, and together
with elders decided, "...let us rise up and build. So they strengthened their
hands for this good work." (Nehemiah 2:18)
This restoration
was laid on people by the Spirit and began at the heart/core of things and
spread outwards. When the heart is right with God, and established as His
dwelling-place, the outward work of His
service in the world can go forward.
The entire book
of Nehemiah is thick with the idea of the “servant of Christ”. It begins with
with Nehemiah's
confession to God, in which he humbles himself on account of the condition of
his people. He shows himself to be a servant of people for God and a servant of
God for the people. He familiarizes himself with the details of the needs of
Temple and the people. He is portrayed as a holy man of prayer. But he is not
only that, he is a born statesman, and as such brings his God given gifts and
powers into God's service. We could literally be describing Jesus here.
He utilizes the power
of co-operation and unity in a body working together, and he inspires a those
that at first seem unable…to accomplish a great works in his stead. He manages
to get people that normally wouldn’t even associate with one another to work
together: priests, rulers and merchants, worked side by side as brothers brothers-in-arms
with a common defining purpose-to rebuild the glory of the Temple to God. In a
literal respect Jesus does the same with His church. He brings those of
disparate and differing backgrounds into a unified body called the Church to
glorify of God. We are told of explicit detail as Nehemiah is literally working
to a plan both in rebuilding the Temple and God building His kingdom in
History. Nehemiah manages to accomplish both simultaneously. By rebuilding the
Temple he pushes the march of God’s history forward to an unavoidable and
inexorable pinnacle in Jesus Christ. Nothing is overlooked any more than God
would overlook the exact details of history unfolding from His throne. The
irony or perhaps the plan of it is beautiful in the fact that God picks the
humblest of servants to perform the service for Him.
Adversarial Relationships
Interestingly,
Nehemiah was mocked mercilessly by the Samaritans. In particular it came from Sanballat
the Horonite. In front of the rich of Samarians we hear, “What are these feeble Jews doing? Are they going to
restore it for themselves? Can they offer sacrifices? Can they finish
in a day? Can they revive the stones from the dusty rubble even the burned
ones?” Tobiah the Ammonite was near him and he said, “Even what they are building—if a fox
should jump on it, he would break their stone wall down!” We here
the same sort of disbelief and incredulity when Jesus said, “Destroy this temple, and I will raise it
again in three days." Of course Jesus was referring to Himself.
Furthermore, just like Jesus, Nehemiah’s ridicule from others turns to anger as
he gains success and gets closer to reaching his goal. The more the will of God
is fulfilled by or through God’s chosen, the more like it is that those of the
world system will mount dogged resistance whether it be im mockery or violence.
So it is not surprising what we read in Nehemiah 4:8, “All of them conspired together to come and fight
against Jerusalem and to cause a disturbance in it.”
Nehemiah armed
the builders, and gave orders that in what place they heard the sound of the
trumpet they were come to defend the city. Then the enemy tried four times to
evil devising
to draw Nehemiah
off task, asking him to meet them in the plain of Ono. Four times he sent the
same retort, " I am doing a great work, why should the work stop, so I can
leave it, and
come down to you?"
Although the retorts are not nearly as good as Jesus’, the same type of
stratagem is used by the Devil to tempt Christ in the wilderness to get Jesus
to forfeit His ministry and draw Him off task. Even today our enemies still use
similar threats and plots, to hinder or discourage believers from doing God's work
(like we need any help on this front).
Genealogies & A Great High Priest.
Another
interesting thing often overlooked in Nehemiah is the register of those who first
came from Babylon under Zerubbabel is again repeated here. It looks like just
another list of names but the end of the register is what should draw our
attention. Within this register are some of the priests who sought their
register in the genealogy but it “could not be found, so therefore were
They were excluded
from the priesthood as unclean.
Nehemiah 7:63-65~”And from among the priests: The
descendants of Hobaiah, Hakkoz and Barzillai (a man who had married a daughter
of Barzillai the Gileadite and was called by that name). These searched for
their family records, but they could not find them and so were excluded from
the priesthood as unclean. The governor, therefore, ordered them not to eat any
of the most sacred food until there should be a priest ministering with the
Urim and Thummim.”
Here is another
illustration of Christ from the Old Testament. To miss it is to be blind to
Scripture. If one is looking for Christ in the Hebrew Scripture, this is a neon
sign. It is as bold as it is unexpected. Right after a redundant list of names
we see Jesus. Jesus is the capstone of both Matthew’s and Luke’s genealogies in
the New Testament, so too here we see an auspicious nod to Jesus at the end of
a register/genealogy. In particular a register of a few priests who could not
find their place in it. They were to be people that were holy people. But
apparently because of God’s plans, they were not to be holy of their own accord
but by a priest that would minister in their stead just as Jesus our Great High
Priest does for us. We too are unclean, unworthy until our High Priest Jesus
acts on our behalf. Christ is a great High Priest—not by genealogy of Aaron,
but "after the order of Melchizedek," who was "without
genealogy” as stated in Hebrews 7:3. Melchizedek's genealogy was, no doubt,
omitted to fit him all the more to be a type of Jesus not because he didn’t
have a genealogy but it was just unknown. God has called all believers in Christ
to be Priests. Our right of priesthood being totally dependent on whether we’re
born again and have our names written in the Lamb's Book of Life.
Ezra's Preaching with Authority
The immediate
result of the work of restoration was a great hunger for God's Word. When
people are restored into a proper relationship with God through justification
in Christ…this also ends up being one of the signs of a true believer. They
intently study and crave the World of God. They desire to learn it…so they can
better obey it. The people gathered themselves together as one man around Ezra before
the Water Gate, and begged him to bring the Book of the Law of Moses (the
Pentateuch). It is here that we see both bastions of restoration united in Ezra
and Nehemiah to do God’s work. Ezra's preaching is profound. He opened the
book, and having prayed, read the Law clearly and people understood it…and the
people did not weary of it. Just as we see in the true believer. The Word…that
is simple enough for a child to understand but deep enough for an elephant to
wade in. Day after day they listened. Any that "could understand"
Ezra stayed on. As a person learns more of God as they grow in God they become
more convicted. Why? Because as man becomes more aware of God and understands
Him better, they begin to understand and sense just how far they fall short of
Him or even His demands of them. We are never as obedient as we think we are.
None are righteous...no, not one. The people of Ezra and Nehemiah's time then
weep. Weep of their shortcoming in sadness. Then the weep in joy that God would
still remember them and desire to have a relationship with them. All pointing
to Jesus Christ. The joy is also caused by turning themselves over to God's
will. What does Nehemiah 8:12 say?:
"Then all the people went away to eat and
drink, to send portions of food and to celebrate with great joy, because they
now understood the words that had been made known to them."
Another decade
unfolds and what do we suppose happens? Backsliding once more. Nehemiah, who
had gone back at the Court of Shushan for a time then returns to Jerusalem only
to find all the terms of the covenant broken and the Law disregarded. Again
Nehemiah is forced to contended with the rulers because he found that the
service of the House of the Lord was neglected and they had actually given over
a chamber in the Temple to this enemy of the Lord. They had forsaken the Sabbath.
The utter
disregard of God's Day (Sunday) is one of the evidences of the backslidden condition of
the Church in our own time. It has spread upon our land like disease and is a
sign of the perilous times of these last days. It is the image of a remnant
that will be saved by belief in Christ. The path is narrow to salvation but
wide is the path to destruction.
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