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A sermon preached by Mr Antony Weiss The Eighteenth Sunday After Trinity Christ Church St Laurence Solemn Evensong – 25th September, 2016 Nehemiah 2, John 8 Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in thy sight, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer. (Ps 19:14). AMEN.
If you were to create a timeline of Exilic and Post Exilic Prophets of the Old Testament and their world, the books of Ezra and Nehemiah (from where last, this and the next three Sunday Evensong First Lessons are taken) would be placed right at the very end as Biblical History of the Old Testament Period ends in the Book of Nehemiah. But if you were to pick up a copy of your own Bible, where would you find these books? The answer is smack bang halfway through what we canonically have as the Old Testament. But this is not so in the Tanakh, the Hebrew Bible… the books of Ezra and Nehemiah are not only treated as one book in Hebrew Scripture, but they are placed together as one, as the penultimate book just before the Chronicles. Last week’s First Lesson from the first chapter of the book of Ezra told us that Cyrus, King of Persia, decreed a policy of the repatriation of the Jews following their Babylonian captivity and he allowed the Jewish exiles to return to a wrecked Jerusalem in order to rebuild their ruined Temple. The first group of exiles returned to Judah under the leadership of Zerubbabel in approximately 536 BC. A century later, Ezra led a second group of Jews back out of exile only to find the the remnant of the Jews who had gone before them were living in a state of spiritual and moral destitution. Like their forefathers they had intermarried with unbelievers from different nations and were willingly engaging in idolatry and other pagan practices. Ezra made it his priority to institute spiritual reform and by God’s good grace the people began to turn from their sinful ways. This sets the stage for Nehemiah’s appearance in Israel fourteen years later in 444BC. Now I’m sure if you were to think about heroes and great leaders in the Old Testament there would be many that would come to mind before Nehemiah. In fact there is not a single reference to Nehemiah by Jesus, St Paul or any of the New Testament writers. But nonetheless God uses Nehemiah’s leadership and faithfulness for a greater purpose; the rebuilding of Jerusalem’s walls (Chs 1-6), the renewing of Jerusalem’s worship (Chs 8-10), the repopulating of Jerusalem’s streets (Chs 11-12) and finally the renewing of Jerusalem’s renewal (Ch 13) which, as I have mentioned, had sadly gone to the dogs after the return of the first wave of exiles in 536BC. At the beginning of the book, Nehemiah is in exile. He is in the service of the court of the King of Persia, Artaxerxes (465-424BC) serving as the king’s personal cupbearer. Jews and other foreigners were able to rise to positions of considerable influence in the Persian court. Like Daniel before him, Nehemiah was highly respected and trusted by the king he served.
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Like Daniel, Nehemiah never allowed himself to forsake the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob whilst serving a foreign king. He kept a commitment to adhering to the laws of God despite being absorbed into a pagan culture. Nehemiah is a Godly man of prayer and throughout the book there are many examples of his dependence on God and his presenting his concerns to Him in prayer and petitions. He is also instrumental in bringing about much needed social and religious reform in Judah. Nehemiah is not only prayerful and Godly, but he is also a purposeful leader, able to inspire his people to rebuild the walls of his forefathers’ city of Jerusalem which had been plundered and laid waste in the summer of 587 BC after the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar II’s siege which led to the destruction of the city and its temple. So Nehemiah, is a wall builder? A sensitive issue these days, but we may rest assured that he is not one in the Donald Trump kind of way. (As an aside you may have heard President Barack Obama’s comprehensive address to the United Nations’ General Assembly last Tuesday in which he took a swipe at Donald Trump’s plan to build a wall along the United States-Mexico border. “Today” said the President, “a nation ringed by walls would only imprison itself…” ) By contrast, Nehemiah’s wall building is about renewal and not about a city wanting to imprison itself. The renewal is not only of the walls of Jerusalem after the Exile but as importantly about rebuilding the city of God’s people, “Come, let us build the wall of Jerusalem, that we may no longer suffer disgrace (Neh 2:17b)” exhorts Nehemiah. As the theologian J.I. Packer puts it, “Nehemiah, through God built walls; God, through Nehemiah built saints.”1 I am not sure if the Republican Nominee for the Presidency of the United States has quite the same goal in mind.
So let’s spend a few moments looking more closely at God’s workings in Nehemiah from Chapter 2. King Artaxerxes notices his servant’s forlornness and he senses that Nehemiah wishes to ask something of him. When quizzed, Nehemiah shares with the king that the city of his father’s sepulchres (graves) lies in ruins and its gates have been left derelict. It is very interesting to note that Nehemiah just doesn’t immediately launch into his request for leave from the court, but firstly he prays to “God in heaven” before he humbly asks the king to send him to Judah in order that he might commence the rebuilding of the sepulchres of his forebears. (Note: Nehemiah never mentions Jerusalem per se, for fear, I suspect, of being denied leave to rebuild the city what the Babylonians had once destroyed). The king accedes and here we see how Nehemiah acts swiftly and resourcefully. We already know that Nehemiah is a man of prayer, but he is also one of instantaneous action. Firstly, he requests that he be given letters to the governors of the province so that he may pass through to Judah without let or hindrance. Secondly, he wants to make sure that he would be able to tap into the resources of Asaph, the keeper of the king’s forest in order that he would have the necessary timbers to make the beams for the gates of the fortress and of the temple. When granted his requests, Nehemiah understands that is the king who gives him permission but most importantly, he records that it was the good hand of God who was upon him to be able to fulfil his purposes.
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J. I. (James Innell) Packer, A Passion for Faithfulness : Wisdom from the Book of Nehemiah (A living insights Bible study; Wheaton, Ill.: Crossway Books, 1995).
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In the middle section of this chapter we see details of Nehemiah’s clandestine and detailed inspection of the walls around Jerusalem three days after his arrival. He scurried off with a few men though he did not tell them or anyone that what he was doing was a result of what God had put in his heart to do. He certainly did not inform the officials where he had gone or what he was doing. Similarly he was yet to tell the Jews, the priests, the nobles, the officials and his future workforce what he was up to until he had surveyed the situation thoroughly. Nehemiah not only wants the place rebuilt, but he also wants to bring his people back in line with God, inspiring them by exhorting, “And I told them of the hand of my God which had been upon me for good…” (Neh 2:18). He demonstrates that what is good comes from God and that any blessing is only orchestrated by God and that the Jews can see that their bad ways and their oppression by foreign pagan kings are not irreversible as they are a people of the God who changes things according to His redemptive purposes.2
The Book of Nehemiah as with all Holy Scripture is about God’s redemptive history not just within the confines of their (or indeed our own) personal predicaments or the circumstances of ancient or modern times. Nehemiah’s work brings restorative faith to his people at that time in history but it also goes beyond this. It was also about preparing Jerusalem for the arrival of the Holy One, the King of kings, the Lord of lords, Jesus Christ to a rebuilt nation, a rebuilt city and a rebuilt temple so that the priesthood and sacrifices of the Old Covenant may be carried out in a place where Jesus himself would grow up, preach, teach and heal, be tried, mocked, denied and crucified, buried and from where He would rise from the dead in Glory. The entire Bible is about the Lord Jesus from before the foundation of the earth. As we read from our Second Lesson for St John Chapter 8, “…for I proceeded and came forth from God; I came not of my own accord, but he sent me.” (v42b) and ‘Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am.”’ (v58b) Holy Scripture is not about seeking wisdom and example simply for living well, for comfort or general guidance under perplexing times. The Bible is about redemptive history within and beyond the confines of our own personal predicaments or the circumstances of the present times. Jesus is the true Israel and the final temple, the only High Priest and the ultimate sacrifice bearing the sins of the world so that by repentance and in faith, those who call on His name as their personal Lord and Saviour will be saved. By God’s grace the Holy Spirit reveals to believers the Truth enabling us to see how God deals with the world and His plan to redeem it and restore it.
+ In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. AMEN 2
D. A. Carson and Kathleen B. Nielson, God’s Word, Our Story : Learning from the Book of Nehemiah (Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway, 2016).