Nehemiah 7
Turn in your copy of God’s word
to Nehemiah. Nehemiah chapter seven is a super
duper long section. And before you get terribly afraid,
it is a repeat of the other chapter of the list of names. So we will
only read a portion of chapter seven. will not suffer through
me reading all the Hebrew names again. But as you’re making your
way to chapter seven, I want to point out to you a literary
feature of the scriptures. When you see things that are
in common, sometimes we call those bookends, you know, the
little things on your shelf that hold your books up. In the scriptures
or in other types of literature, a bookend, marks the beginning
of a section and the end of a section. And so everything in it is important. And I think what you’ll notice
when we read a portion of chapter seven tonight is God is connecting,
Ezra is connecting the current group of people who are living
and working and building and worshiping in Jerusalem He’s
connecting them with the original group that about 150 years ago
came over from Babylon. And so their people, their pedigree,
their genealogy is connected. And so God is saying, I still
have people. I still have my people, my remnant
in my city for my name’s sake. And so sometimes we wonder the
purpose of all these things. But that’s one of the reasons
why. Let’s give our attention now to Nehemiah chapter seven. Now this is Nehemiah speaking
and he says, now when the wall had been built and I had set
up the doors and the gatekeepers, the singers and the Levites had
been appointed, I gave my brother Hananiah the governor of the
castle charge over Jerusalem for he was a more faithful and
God-fearing man than many. And I said to them, let not the
gates of Jerusalem be opened until the sun is hot. And while
they are still standing guard, let them shut and bar the doors,
appoint guards from among the inhabitants of Jerusalem, some
at their guard post and some in front of their own homes.
The city was wide and large, but the people within it were
few and no houses had been rebuilt. Then my God put into my heart
to assemble the nobles and the officials and the people to be
enrolled by genealogy. And I found the book of the genealogy
of those who came up at the first and I found written in it. These
were the people of the province who came up out of the captivity
of those exiles whom Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon had carried into
exile. They returned to Jerusalem and
Judah each to his own town. They came with Zerubbabel, Jeshua,
Nehemiah, Azariah, Rehemiah, Nehomenani, Mordecai, Bilshin,
Mishpereth, Bigvi, Nahum, and Baanna. And then if you jump
over to verse 61, the following were those who came up from Telmele,
Telharshah, Cherub, Adon and Emor, but they could not prove
their father’s houses nor their descent, whether they belong
to Israel. Verse 64, these sought their
registration among those enrolled in the genealogies, but it was
not found there, so they were excluded from the priesthood
as unclean. The governor told them that they
were not to partake of the most holy food until a priest with
Urim and Thumen should arise. And then verse 66, the whole
assembly together was 42,360. And then look at the last verse of the
chapter, verse 73. So the priests, the Levites,
the gatekeepers, the singers, some of the people, the temple
servants and all Israel lived in their towns. And when the
seventh month had come, the people of Israel were in their towns. Amen, the word. of the living
God for us. What we want to see from this
passage tonight is that God is preparing to renew and restore
the covenant community in Jerusalem. A lot of times when we hear people
use the word church, I go to church, that is my church. Did you ride by the church? They
are not using the word in the way it was meant to be used,
which is the people Remember, you know, here is the church.
Here’s the steeple open all the doors and see all the People
right the people is the church But very often we associate the
church and I suppose it’s not all that bad but we associate
the church with the building and And we get a building committee,
right? And then we get a building improvement
committee, and then we get a building improvement oversight committee
because the building committee needs oversight and on and on
it goes, a decorating committee and all the rest. And we, we
make much of our building, right? And there’s a sense where a place
of worship, a house of worship, if you’re living in a first,
part of the world like we are where, you know, there’s beauty
and there’s architecture and there’s good materials to build
with. There’s no reason within limitations of godliness and
holiness and appropriateness that we shouldn’t have a place
that’s well-built and beautiful and appropriate for worship of
God. And it stands as a witness. I
can’t help but think that if, as people have driven by this
building on Saddle Club Road for all these years, And now
they ride on the backside of it since the road opened up a
while ago, 30 years or so ago. I can’t help but think that our
building, our oak trees and our steeple, even our azaleas when
they’re in bloom and other things, I can’t help but think it causes
people to say, at least in some way, shape or form, there are
a people of God there. God is worshiped under that steeple,
that spire that rises into the sky with a cross atop it, is
a witness that God has put his flag in the ground in Burlington
on Saddle Club Road with this people who gathers here. I think
we should think of ourselves that way. We’re an outpost of
heaven and a building is an important part of that. Go back to the
early church during persecution. They had to worship in the catacombs,
which was not a very fun place to worship. It was. dead people buried, not, not
too fun. Um, other people in other parts
of the world, they may show up to their church and the doors
are padlocked or the building has been raised, uh, not raised
up, but raised down. Um, we, we, we know that in,
in certain parts of the world, people worship in different types
of buildings, different types of places. But we really need
to focus on the people. I think back to COVID, when we
were closed for those eight weeks, it was strange. And then when
we felt it was legal for us to gather and not be in rebellion
and all the rest, we worshipped outside for eight or so Sundays
under the oak trees. We rolled our piano out. We took
out folding chairs. Some people sat in their cars
and brought lawn chairs and other things. And what we proved is
with just a few basics and you got the people, you can worship
God. We’ve experienced that when we’ve
moved down to the fellowship hall a time or two to allow for
the work that needed to be done in this room to take place. And
it’s good for us to remember you can keep it pretty simple.
You gather God’s people, they sing to God, God speaks to them,
they respond, and back and forth it goes. That can happen literally
anywhere. Yes, it’s nice to have a building,
nice to have air conditioning. And all that to say, the city
of God is now finished. Nehemiah reports to us, I’ve
built the city. In 52 days, the wall is built. In 52 days, the gates are hung. In 52 days, the doors are in
place. In 52 days time, we’re opening
the gates when the sun is hot. We’re closing them at the end
of the day when a guard stands there and watches. But here’s
the problem. The city is empty and in an empty
city, there’s not people, there’s not the masses, there’s not the
ebb and flow of life, the watchful eyes, the participation in communal
life that is needed to support a city. And so Nehemiah doesn’t
just go back to his cup bearing post back in Babylon and say,
well, we got the building built, that’s all we need. We closed
down the building committee. We closed down the building improvement
committee and we closed down the building improvement committee,
watchdog group, right? That’s not what he does. He says,
we have a place where God can be worshiped, a place where sacrifices
can be made to God, a place where God’s people can come and seek
and receive atonement, but we need people. And so this business
of urban planning is, The business of Nehemiah preparing to get
Jerusalem up and running post wall completion. His job is to
repopulate, repatriate the city of Jerusalem. And so first thing
we want to think about is how this is a priority. It’s a priority
of Nehemiah, first things first, to get the city populated with
the people of God. It’s his reason for living. Yes,
he got the wall built. But that was a means to an end
and the end or the goal was to fill it with people. And so he
knows the city needs leadership. It needs gatekeepers. The city
needs singers. It needs Levites. It needs people
to take charge over Jerusalem. It was a working city. We might
say in a, in a non-religious city, we need people at the,
um, at the water plant. We need people at the electric
switch. We need people watching over natural gas. We need people
doing street maintenance. We need people watching over
sewer and sanitation and all the rest. And I suppose some
of that was needed in Jerusalem as well. but it was a working
city, a working city for the people of God to worship the
living and true God. And so a priority for Nehemiah
arises in verse four, the city was wide, the city was large,
but the people within it were few and no houses had been rebuilt. So here’s Nehemiah, He’s been
an urban planner. He’s been a wall builder. He’s
been a security man. He’s been an espionage fighter. He’s been an adversary watcher
for all those enemies. Now the city needs people. There are no people and there
is no security. And it’s vulnerable. And so he
puts people, responsible people in charge, double duty until
they can populate the city and get people to live there and
work there and serve there. We see this in the ebb and flow
and the movement of people throughout our nation. You know, we want
people to come to our city. So we say we’ve got good schools.
We want people to come to our city. We say we’ve got good restaurants.
We want people to come to our city. So we say we’ve got low
taxes. We want people to come to our city. And so we give them
a reason to come. And the reason Nehemiah wants
people there is because this is the city of God. This is the
kingdom of God. This is the work of God’s witness
in the world. And it is no small task. You
have an uninhabitable city. You have lots of dust and cobwebs
and rabble and enemies and uninhabitable places and it’s going to take
some pioneers and pilgrims. to make this happen. You think back to your history
when the people across the pond who are forebears wanted to come
to America for religious freedom. And they said, it’s going to
be hard. You’re going to leave your family. You’re going to
leave your country. You’re going to sail across the sea. And not
everyone makes it across alive. And then we’re going to go over
there and live in the wilderness. And the goal and the hope is
that in two or three or four generations, There would be good
things for the next people to come after them. We don’t very
often think about that, do we? We live in a me first culture.
We live in a narcissistic culture. What can I get for me now? Instant gratification. And one of the things we have
to think about as a church of Jesus Christ is we need to be
pioneers and pilgrims. We need to seek and to help to
serve the church of the living God for a next generation. And
this was no small task for these people being asked to move back
in the city. It’s no small task for us. For them, they’re going
to have to uproot. Some of them are enjoying the
country life outside Jerusalem. They’re going to have to leave
behind their fun rural life, the chickens, as it were. They’re
going to have to come live and serve in the city. Uh, they’re
going to have to sacrifice and they’re going to have to sacrifice
literally as priest and Levites and, and those in charge over
the city, but they will lead people in worship. And this is
a huge undertaking. It’s worth it. Um, chapter 11,
verse one and two, if you flip over there, when it looks at
the leaders in Jerusalem, it’s sort of the rest of the story.
Now the leaders of the people lived in Jerusalem. And the rest
of the people cast lots to bring one out of 10 to live in Jerusalem,
the holy city, while nine out of 10 remained in the other towns.
And the people blessed all the men who willingly offered to
live in Jerusalem.” You remember the story of Jesus’ birth, and
Mary’s going to visit Elizabeth, and her husband’s over in Jerusalem,
because it was his turn to be there, and the lot was cast.
You kind of get the picture, the idea. Well, people gave up
a lot. order for the city of God to
be established. And don’t we think back to Abraham? He was the first, he left Ur
of the Chaldeans, left home and country and kinfolk and went
to the promised land. Moses left the palace of Egypt
and went and lived in the wilderness. And then he went and lived among
the people and led them through the wilderness those 40 years.
I think of the disciples, how they left their fishing nets,
they left their boats, they left their tax booths. And they left
their professions, their world behind to follow Jesus and to
serve him or Paul. Paul didn’t really have a choice.
I guess none of us do, but Paul left it all behind to serve Jesus.
And by the time we get to the end of Paul’s life, he’s beaten
and bruised and shipwrecked. He’s been stoned. He’s been left
for dead. He’s been reviled and injured and assaulted and all
the rest by all kinds of people throughout his whole ministry.
And of course we can’t help but think of Jesus, the great pioneer
of our salvation. He left the riches of heaven
and for our sakes became poor. And he did so in order that we
might become rich. And so a priority for Nehemiah,
a priority for Jesus, a priority for us is to seek first the kingdom
of God. And it makes us need to take
a pause here for a moment and say, what is God asking of you?
How can you serve him? How are you serving him? Are
there ways you could serve him more? What’s your sphere of influence? Maybe it’s with the grandchildren.
Maybe it’s in a Sunday school class. Maybe it’s praying with
and for other people. Perhaps it’s to visit those who
need the presence of another person. This was a priority for
Nehemiah, and it ought to also be a priority for us. Let’s think
secondly about the principles behind this mission, this ministry
of Nehemiah, and it’ll help us think about what gives us initiative
or zeal for our work for the Lord. We notice something important
here, what Nehemiah is not looking for. He’s not looking for people
with ingenuity or incentive or inspiration. He’s not looking
for people who are astute or forceful or perhaps they got
their MBA degree from business school or they look good or they’re
polished. He simply goes to the book of
the genealogy and he says, we need people of God to do the
work of God in the house of God and in the city of God. So how
will Nehemiah populate or repopulate the city? Will he go to the highways
and the byways and say, come one, come all? Or will he go
to the people of God and seek God’s face and see him move in
their hearts, just as had been done in the past when people
were moved to leave Babylon and come to Jerusalem on that great
spiritual and physical journey? It’s good, I think, for us to
pause here and think how we need to take care to do God’s work
in God’s ways, to do spiritual work in spiritual ways. Because
we have so many different ways now that, that I guess in the
church in America, we pick and choose who does what. Uh, we
look for spiritual people and by spiritual, you know, in air
quotes here, that’s not a good thing. Uh, we look for people
who they just have this deep down feeling that God has called
them probably when in fact they had bad Mexican food the previous
night and it’s a tummy ache, not a call from God. Um, we have
people that have bent wheels towards doing their own agenda
in the church. We have fads. We have people,
sometimes they’ll say, God, God wants this. And so we have to
be careful to discern and avoid disasters in the work of God’s
mission and his ministry. Many disasters because we failed
to read Psalm 127. Unless the Lord builds his house,
the laborers labor in vain. And so Nehemiah practices what
we ought to mimic. We trust God’s word. We trust
God’s spirit and we trust God’s counsel. And it ought to cause
us to pause and think for a moment, is God’s word our only rule of
faith and practice? When we need to do something
for God, do we say, what does the word say? Or do we say, let’s
just make something up that people will like? Or do we go back to
the word and say, what does God require of us? Or let’s take
a poll within the church and see what people are really wanting,
what people are feeling, what they’re needing, what’s an itch
that needs scratching. Now, we need to be careful of
that. Remember Paul warned Timothy that we’ll have a day when people
will have itching ears and they will pull a people to themselves
to speak to them and scratch those itches. Who is our teacher? Who is our guide? Is it the Holy
Spirit? Do we have God’s men who Christ is ruling and guiding
and shepherding us through? We follow Christ as we follow
the means to getting there. And I think it’s important for
us to think about that. There’s protection in that as
well. You grew up in a home, perhaps with a mother and a father
or some grandparents or some kind of guardian. And in some
way, shape or form, whether good or bad or positive, they took
care of you. They protected you from from
things that you did not need to stumble into. And I think
when we follow God’s word, when we follow God’s spirit and when
we follow God’s leadership over us, it protects us. I made point
to read verses 61. all the way through 65, where
it spoke of the people who were from Telmela and Telharsha and
Cherub and Adon and Emer. These were the ones who could
not prove their genealogy. And so they couldn’t serve as
priests. They couldn’t prove they were of the people of God.
Their names were not found in the book. And so the governor
told them, Don’t partake of the most holy food. Don’t don’t do
priestly duties until we can consult the Urim and the Thuman
through a real priest. And I think it’s good for us
to stand under the shadow of our parents. It’s good for us
to stand under the shadow of those over us, perhaps in our
case, the elders of the church. Sometimes they know things we
don’t know and the things they know that we don’t know may not
need to be broadcast, but they’re able to protect and to provide
for us in a way that delivers us from what could be hardship.
Could you imagine giving the priesthood to unqualified people?
Could you imagine giving the duties of God to people who should
not have those duties or hold those keys? And so it’s good
for us to follow principles as we do the work of the kingdom
of God. Let’s get to the word people.
People is really what this is all about. Think about your Christian
life, your Christian service, your church participation, and
think about all the faces of all the people you’ve known throughout
church. It’s probably a lot of people.
I think of now 20 years of pastoral ministry, I think of One, two,
three, four, five churches that I’ve helped in some way, shape
or form. Three is the pastor and two more
in sort of a interim connection. And I think of all the people,
probably, I don’t know, just say 1,500, 2,000 people. People
come, they go, they pass through. The church has a core of people.
You think about all the faces you’ve known and loved in your
church career, as it were. And they’re important to you.
They’re important to God. If we were to look at the church
here, go down and look at the picture book that’s on the table.
If we were to look at a directory from 60 years ago, if we were
to look at all the picture books from churches that we’ve been
in in years past, we would see all kinds of names, all kinds
of faces, all kinds of people who’ve called on the name of
the Lord Jesus. And this list is like that. You can imagine the leadership
looking at this book. They find it, they flip through
it. Oh, here’s the Smiths. Here’s the Jones. Of course,
it’s more Hebrew sounding, I suppose. but they looked through the list.
Oh, I know this family. Didn’t we work on the wall with
so-and-so? That was his long ago ancestor. And so they probably
had great joy as they looked at the list. It brought them
inspiration. These were people who 150 years
ago left the comforts of Babylon. Yes, it was exile. Yes, it was
punishment, but God’s people prospered there. These are the
people who counted the cost. They left, they came back to
the rubble that was the city of God. And they came those 900
miles, not knowing what they would find, but yet knowing that
they could worship the living and true God and that the generations
after them would be able to serve God there. There was not just
inspiration when they read these names, there was incentive. These
people have bought in to God’s church, God’s holy city, and
God’s holy people. We ought to follow in their footsteps. Then there’s also their inheritance.
This is our land. It was taken from us by the Babylonians,
but God has restored it because he moved in the hearts of these
pagan kings. And so people are able to move
back into the city, repopulate it and serve the church in that
way. And think of the New Testament
teaching on this, the body of the Lord Jesus. That’s the word
picture for the church. We are the body of Christ. There
is one body with many members, one body, many parts. Each of
us comes with different gifts, different abilities, different
graces. I was listening over the last
couple of weeks to some little talks on preaching and how God
in his providence moves preachers around. And sometimes we may
have sat under this kind of preaching and that kind of preaching. And
the description that was given that I thought was helpful is
God knows what a certain group needs at a certain time. And
he brings to them the right preacher with the right gifts, the right
burdens, the right skillset. And he feeds them and it’s the
same with the membership of the church. Many and varied gifts
serve well for the good of others and the glory of God. And so
God gathers his church, he equips his church and gives us gifts
for service. He’s redeemed us. He’s recreated
us in Christ to be his workmanship. Well, in verse 66, It gives a great summary of the
people. The whole assembly together was 42,360. These were people
who counted the cost, gave up some things, and came and served
the city. They joined. The church was better
off for them. The service of God was theirs. They had all the rights and privileges.
It was their lifestyle. And God calls and sends and even
requires of us Sometimes that we move or we sell things or
we give up things to make the church, the invisible realities
of heaven visible on the face of the earth. And so I encourage
you to think through how you might serve God’s people. What are your gifts and how might
God use them? Well, just to think through a
couple big picture thoughts here. This is a city that’s messy,
broken up. No houses have been rebuilt.
People aren’t living there. And to think about how God came
creation and he took what was formless and void and he formed
it and he filled it. And he can do that at Jerusalem,
can’t he? He can take what is formless and void and he can
form his church and he can fill it with people made in the image
of God and being conformed to Jesus Christ. I think of the
garden and how God put Adam and Eve in the garden to work and
to keep it and to spread the glory of God across the face
of the earth. I think of the promised land that was meant
to be an inheritance for the people of God. And they could
live there and live out in that promised land, the reality of
all God had provided for them. And I think about us. I think
about our spheres of influence. We have children and grandchildren.
We have families, we have neighbors. We have coworkers, we have people
that we bump into during the week as we make our rounds in
our professional life or having medical needs met, we pass through
different offices and clinics. There’s all kinds of ways that
God can use us in this world. And so the ends of the earth
are right here in front of us. And we don’t have to do something
big and something drastic, but God can use you to do what he’s
always been doing as he forms and fills his church. And I think
of how the book of Ephesians and Peter and other places speak
of the church as a group of living stones. God is using us to build
his church on Jesus Christ, the chief cornerstone. He’s building
a spiritual house and we’ll see the full reality of that one
day in heaven. But this little city, this little
village of Jerusalem, our little church, the places you will go
during the rest of your life where you serve the living God,
they’re just outposts. the bigger heavenly city where
the great multitude of God’s people will one day all be gathered
around the glorious Lord of hosts and our savior, Jesus Christ
will be clothed in white robes, will be washed in the blood of
the lamb. We will worship before the lamb and forever the redeemed
of God will be gathered before the presence of God. And we’ll
live in a city, we’ll live in wall where revelation says evil
won’t come in, evil will not exist, but only the righteous
are inside and day and night they worship the lamb. And so
this little bitty village, this little bitty Jerusalem, our little
bitty outpost of heaven here in this church are not to be
thought of as small. for they’re all getting us ready
for the great big gathering of God’s people up in heaven. And
I hope you’ll be there by faith in Jesus Christ. Let’s do pray. Lord, we ask that you would help
us to see this little glimpse, this little slice of Jerusalem
and Judea as a pointer to the heavenly city and the heaven
realities. Help us to put our shoulder to the plow as we do
your kingdom work in this part of the world. Help us and bless
us in the name of Christ our Savior. Amen.