Nehemiah 2:9-20
Amen. Turn in your copy of God’s
word, uh, Nehemiah chapter two, nine to 20. As you’re making your way there,
remember, uh, that Nehemiah enters the scene in about 445 BC. Uh,
that’s about a hundred and what? Can’t do the math. 141 years
since Jerusalem was destroyed. Remember God promised to Israel
first to the Northern kingdom, then to the Southern kingdom
of Judah. If you don’t do what I say, I’ll exile you. So the Assyrians
dragged off the Northern tribes and repatriated that area with
what we call the Samaritans. And then later the Judah and
Jerusalem was exiled by Babylon. It started in 605 and went on
for about 20 years. Finally, the city was destroyed. So we saw the first return under
uh, the first governor, um, Zerubbabel and others in, in, uh, Ezra. And then we saw Ezra come read
the law. We saw the temple get built.
Now Nehemiah has come to rebuild the temple. And so tonight’s
passage is about him landing in Jerusalem and then going out
in the middle of the night and inspecting the city. So let’s
give our attention to God’s word. This is a Nehemiah two beginning
at verse nine. So this is his first person.
Then I came to the governors of the province beyond the river
and gave them the king’s letters. Now the king had sent with me
officers of the army and horsemen, but when Sanballat the Horonite
and Tobiah the Ammonite servant heard of this, it displeased
them greatly that someone had come to seek the welfare of the
people of Israel. So I went to Jerusalem and was
there three days. Then I arose in the night and
a few, I had a few men with me and I told no one what my God
had put into my heart to do for Jerusalem. There was no animal
with me, but the one on which I rode. I went out by night by
the valley gate to the dragon spring into the dung gate. And
I inspected the walls of Jerusalem that were broken down. and its
gates that had been destroyed by fire. Then I went on to the
fountain gate and to the king’s pool, but there was no room for
the animal that was under me to pass. Then I went up in the
night by the valley and inspected the wall. And I turned back and
entered by the valley gate and so returned. And the officials
did not know where I had gone or what I was doing. And I had
not yet told the Jews, the priests, the nobles, the officials, and
the rest who were to do the work. And I said to them, you see the
trouble we are in, how Jerusalem lies in ruins, its gates burned. Come, let us build the wall of
Jerusalem that we may no longer suffer derision. And I told them
of the hand of my God that had been upon me for good, and also
of the words of the king that he had spoken to me. And they
said, let us rise up and build. So they strengthened their hands
for the good work. But when Sanballat the Horonite
and Tobiah the Ammonite servant and Gisham and the Arab heard
of it, they jeered and despised us and said, what is this thing
that you are doing? Are you rebelling against the
king? Then I replied, the God of heaven will make us prosper.
And we, his servants will arise and build, but you have no portion
or right or claim in Jerusalem. Amen. The word of the living
God. Every once in a while, we have
a work day around here. And when we get a good couple
of handfuls of people and some donuts, we feel pretty good about
the thing, right? We can spread some mulch. We
can wash some windows. with a little elbow grease, get
some chores done that makes everybody proud and happy of their church
building. Now, we’re very privileged because
we get to come in and we get to scrub and Well, we get to
keep something that’s not in ruins clean. They, on the other
hand, here in Jerusalem and Judea, had a big mess. They had a 150
year mess, burned gates, big thick walls that were broken
down and piled up in rubble. And it’s wonderful and exciting,
I think, to see in the book of Nehemiah in this chapter, how
when God’s people get behind God’s leader, they can do a great
and big and mighty project. You might say after reading this
passage that Nehemiah had fish jumping in the boat. He had volunteers,
not only showing up for work day, they came early and they
stayed late. The quote from verse 18 is significant. They say to Nehemiah, after he
presents to them his vision, his desire, his project, his
reason for returning from the capital city of Babylon, Susa,
or Persia, they say, let us rise up and build. And so God, the
God of heaven, we see in this passage, gives his people, gives
his servant Nehemiah success so that his people, his city,
no longer suffers derision. A couple things in this passage
we want to see about Nehemiah and the work and the enemies
of God’s people. First, Nehemiah’s arrival. In
verses 9, 10, and 11, we’re told that he comes from the capital
city of Susa. He comes with an entourage of
people. He comes with soldiers and guards. He had made his request
known to the king, Artaxerxes. You’ll perhaps remember that
that’s the same Artaxerxes of Queen Esther’s day. But he makes
the request. He makes preparations. The king
grants him all that he needs. And so he’s traveled. He’s made
the dangerous journey a couple months and he has now arrived
and he’s brought the letters to the governors of the province
beyond the river. There were before provinces on
the other side of the river from the capital city of Susa, Judah
and Jerusalem would be one of them. And so he delivers the
letters. This is Nehemiah, the king writes,
this is what he’s got permission to do. His timbers will be delivered,
given money out of the coffers, out of the treasury of the empire. Well, he comes and delivers the
letters and then he spends three days resting. Well, perhaps more
accurately, three days praying, three days listening to the people
and the reports of what life in the city is like. And he decides
during this stretch of time to go see for himself. And because
of the situation, the enemies, you understand he’s coming into
an area where the people haven’t defended themselves. They’ve
in a sense been defenseless, their gates burned, their walls,
broken down, but all the inhabitants of the land, and this has been
going on for the Oh, a hundred years since they first returned. Uh, the enemies don’t want the
Israelites, the people of God to succeed in building a city
for God’s name. And so, uh, there’s been a long
stretch of opposition and it pops out to him upon his arrival,
sand ballot and Tobiah, they upset. Don’t want him to be here.
Don’t, don’t check on the city of God. Let it, let it rot. Let
it, Well, he goes out by night, by himself with his own beast,
and he inspects the city. And you get a sense of the ruin
and the rubble, because the place that he comes to, at one point
in the city, he can’t get through with him and his animal, and
so he turns around and makes his circuit the other way. Well,
the city is in ruins. Its gates have been burned. Its
walls have been destroyed. The temple has barely been built.
The people are back in their houses, back on their farms.
But there is this darkness over the city of God, the people of
God, and it’s because of the enemies. It’s because of people
like Sanballat and Tobias. There’s a chill in the air. It’s
not just the rubble and the morale and the poor economy, it’s the
enemies are all around. And so Nehemiah’s arrival is
a turning point. It’s a big change in the air
for the people of God. So the second thing we see is
Nehemiah’s survey of the land, verses 12 through 16. He sneaks
out by night, secret mission, not a soul knows, only animal
is the one under him. And perhaps you think his nighttime
reconnaissance trip is, well, he’s just looking to see how
many stones they need, how much concrete they need, maybe how
many workers they need. And we need to see that his mission
is bigger than that. His mission is the glory of God. His mission is the name of God,
the reputation of God. His mission is to protect the
people with a city wall and with gates and fortifications, but
his mission is also to protect the name of God that is represented
on earth in the city of Jerusalem. Sometimes we say around here
that the church is an outpost of heaven and the unseen realities
of heaven are made visible on earth. And so when people come
into our church, When they come in to our fellowship, what do
they see? What do they experience? What
realities of heaven come down in this outpost of heaven? And that’s in a sense what we
need to be thinking of here for Nehemiah. He comes to a city
that’s broken down. He comes to a people that are
broken down. There’s about a mile and a half,
perhaps two and a half miles of city wall that’s been broken
down. This is four feet thick. It’s
normally tall and serves as a fortification. And he rides around and sees
a hundred years of rubble, 150 years to be exact. He sees what’s
needed, the digging and the hauling and the cutting and the manpower
and the beast of burden that’s needed to clean up the city.
It’s long overdue. It’s a huge undertaking. But you understand from Ezra
and now Nehemiah, the city lies in reproach. The city is held
in derision by the other nations. They look on the poor, pitiful
condition of the people in the city and they say, oh, who is
your God? He must not be able. He must
not be mighty. His promises to you are no good.
And it’s not only demoralizing to the people, but it’s, well,
it’s a poor reflection on God himself. And isn’t that something
that we ought to think of from time to time? We take care of
our personal appearance because we’re temples of the Holy Spirit. We take care of our bodies because
they are the dwelling place of God himself. We remember that
God says in the New Testament that he does not live in temples
made with human hands. There is no temple any longer,
but he lives in each of us temples of his Holy Spirit. And so we
we take care of ourselves made in God’s image. We take care
of ourselves. Vessels of the Holy Spirit. We take care of
our church building and outpost of heaven from time to time. You’ll hear me say where we live,
where we worship. and how we present ourselves
ought to, in some sense, some way, reflect the glory of God. Well, it’s incompatible for the
grand city of God, so grand in David and Solomon’s day, to now
be in rubble, the city of God where people came from, nations
all around to visit and see the splendor of it. It’s now vulnerable. It’s now insecure. It’s now an
eyesore, we would say. You know, sometimes we read in
the local newspaper about, oh, is it Maple Avenue? And the city
wants to buy up all the property along it so that when people
get off the highway and ride in on Maple Avenue, they think
Burlington is something, right? You know, you see urban planning
projects. Let’s get rid of the low rent
district. Let’s gentrify. Let’s mow down
the rotten and the poor. Oh, the trampled upon and the
jungle and let’s build new pretty things. Let’s make a name for
ourself. That’s not what’s going on here. It’s the glory of God
that’s at stake, not the glory of man. And so this is a project
of great magnitude. And you have to think in Nehemiah’s
mind, he was the cupbearer to the king. He lived in the palace
of Susa, a place of beauty and magnificence. And it burdened
him, it broke his heart that the city of God was in rubble. And so he wants to repair the
ruins. And so he makes his survey. And in some sense, As Ezra reads
the book of the law and reforms the spirituality of the people,
Nehemiah wants to reform the appearance of the city, the walls
of the city, the gates and the doors. Well, that leads us to
a third thing, Nehemiah’s proposal. One man can’t do this project.
For one man, it would be impossible, but with thousands, who are full
of zeal for God’s house, for God’s city, it’s going to be
a doable task. One of the things you’ll see
later is that the families, you fixed what was outside your door,
you fixed what was within your boundaries, your property line,
and it got people involved. Thousands of people with zeal
can do such a project. Currently, though, they’re discouraged.
They’re mocked. They’re poor. They’re apathetic.
Remember how pitiful they were when it came to rebuilding the
temple. And Nehemiah does something great. He comes and identifies
himself with them. He doesn’t say, look, you people,
you’re a bunch of lazy bones, you’re tearing the church building
up, right? He doesn’t come to them and say, you people need
to get it straight. Some of us have it straight,
you don’t. Anytime somebody begins with the phrase, you people,
they’re in big trouble. No, he identifies with them.
He says, let’s fix our problem together. And so he gives his
testimony about how he heard the report about how God put
it on his heart to come and rebuild the city and how he went to the
king, which was a rather precarious situation and request he could
have. Lost his neck, right, over it. But God gave him the ideal
timing and the ideal plan, and thank goodness, God moved in
the heart of Artaxerxes. He gave him the letters, he gave
him the money, he gave him the timbers. And I wonder sometimes
if we ever get discouraged about church. You know, you hear preachers,
about preachers, they get the Monday morning blues. Preachers
give it all out on a Sunday, every bit of emotion, every bit
of energy, every bit of spirit. And Monday morning you wake up
and, well, we don’t get the paper anymore these days. But the temptation
for the pastor is to look at the one ads. Is there something
else I can do? I’m worn out with ministry. I’m
worn out with trying to move people in a direction. But then
you begin to think about the big picture, about God’s redemptive
work, God’s redemptive plan, God’s mighty work in the lives
of people. And it can become infectious
in the Christian community. And we see that’s exactly what
happens as he pitches his plan to the people after giving his
testimony and telling them his idea. They say with one voice,
let us rise up and build. And it says God strengthened
their hands. He encouraged them in their work. And what a great blessing because
the magnitude, the scope, the time, the blood and the sweat
and the tears and the sacrifice and the opposition that would
come is going to take everything that Nehemiah and the people
of God have in order to accomplish this great task. What’s even
more interesting is he’s a stranger. They’ve never seen him. He’s
a grandson of somebody that used to live there. You know, we,
we say when somebody comes into town, you know, you’re a, you’re
a carpetbagger or you’re not around here or from around here,
are you? And that’s exactly the case with Nehemiah yet in God’s
grace, they get around him and do the work because it’s right
because it’s the work of God. It’s, it’s proper. It’s, it’s
fitting for the city of God. This work is not for the faint
of heart. And work and life in the kingdom
of God is never for the faint of heart, is it? It’s for those
who are all in. It’s for those who aren’t a flash
in the pan or all talk and no action. It’s for those who have
faith in Jesus Christ and they cry out for God and for Jerusalem
or for Christ crown and for his covenant. When I was in seminary,
I think it was my third year, I used to commute with a couple
of guys into Charlotte. And on the day that we invaded
Iraq, I made the mistake of riding with one of my classmates who
was an army ranger. And he had the radio on and we
were listening to the news of the invasion. And we’re getting
on the on-ramp of I-77 there in Charlotte, just snarled with
traffic. And he hits the gas and lets
out some kind of yell. And I remember thinking, this
guy is really into this. I think he was wishing he was
there. And can’t you sense that in a
passage like this? The people want to be in the
fight. They want to be in the battle.
Their hearts have been won, and they want to serve the living
God. Now contrast that with the facts and the figures. What do
we always say about church? 80% of the work gets done by
20% of the people. And I think it’s actually far
worse than that. I think 95% of the work generally
gets done by about 5% of the people. R.C. Sproul was well
known in his sermons on tithing to quote the statistic that 4%
of people tithe. Now, some percent may give to
the Lord in some way, shape or form, but what do these statistics
show? Well, It shows, I think, in a
big picture way that we come to the church as consumers and
not producers. We come to the church saying,
what can you do for me today? What can you do for me today?
And there’s times where we can’t serve. There’s times where, perhaps,
other people are in a better position for time and energy
and money and those sorts of things. We do understand that.
But we should never come to the church and say, what’s in it
for me? Remember the famous quote, ask not what you’re Country can
do for you, but what you can do for your country, the same
ought to be said for the church. And so it’s very heartening,
I think, when we see in our little congregation, our sweet fellowship,
We’ve got a high level of engagement across the board, and it’s a
wonderful thing to see a faithful church giving faithfully, serving
faithfully, and when we call a work day or something of the
sorts, y’all all pitch in, and it is wonderful to see it and
experience. Well, wouldn’t you know it, the
last thing we have to look at here is opposition. There’s Sandballot
and there’s Tobiah, and we’re gonna see them a few more times.
But in verses 19 through 20, we are told of their jealousy. We’re told of their greed. We’re
told of their desire for power. And they are the people that
surround Jerusalem. They surround the city and the
people. And news has hit the street. There’s a new governor
in town. There’s a new project manager
in town. And this guy is serious. This
guy looks like he can get the job done. This guy has met with
the emperor. This guy has letters. This guy
has the checkbook. This guy has the timbers. This
guy has everything it’s going to take to rebuild the city. And so if you think about these
hundred years or so, since the first returnees came back to
Jerusalem and Judah, It’s been a long, slow process to build
houses and to build towns and to build farmland and to build
the temple and to get things back going again. And there’s
been opposition all along, but it ramps up here again, and it’s
gonna be with the people of God. Now it turns vocal. There’s jeering,
there’s scorning, there’s ridicule, there’s words of despisement. They say things and they’re not
really mocking the people of God, they are, but they’re mocking
God himself. They’re mocking the God of Abraham,
the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob, the God of Jerusalem,
the God who loves Zion, his city that he formed, and he loves
the people who are members of it. Remember how bad it has been
in the past. The people of the lands come
and they said, let us help you, let us build, we’re with you,
we’re of you. Well, we remember that God’s
people have always had enemies since the garden of Eden, the
Satan, the serpent, the seed of the serpent. And in Sanballat
and Tobiah, you’ve got the Ammonites and the Moabites. These are lots
illegitimate sons and all throughout the scriptures. through Exodus
and Judges and through the ministry of David, these people have been
a pain in the side of the people of God. And here they appear
again, and they accuse the people of God of rebelling against the
empire. They accuse them of setting up
a rebellion. Let’s kill the enthusiasm is
on their mind. And so thank the Lord for strong
Nehemiah. Thank the Lord for the sword
and the trowel. He doesn’t go to Artaxerxes for
help, he prays to his God. And he says to them, it’s none
of your business what we’re doing here. You buzz off, you go away,
you go back to your little haunt. You don’t have a portion among
us, a right among us, and your name is not part of the people
of God. This is an exclusive, project
and we will prosper. We will build. And, you know,
there’s always opposition to the church. There’s always opposition
to God’s work. There was Herod who wanted to
kill baby Jesus. There was Herod who wanted to
kill John the Baptist. There were the Jews who wanted
to put Jesus to death and then Paul to death. And we experience
opposition ourselves as a congregation. And the challenge for the church,
the church militant, is to suit up It’s to put on the whole armor
of God and we will prevail and we will make it safely to heaven’s
shores. But how sweet it is to work and
to labor in God’s kingdom to build and to fix and to repair
so that our little outpost of heaven, our little spot of the
glory of God can be maybe perhaps a small but significant witness
in our part of the world. May it be so. Let’s do pray together.
Lord, give us a vision of your city, not an earthly one, but
a heavenly one where we will dwell with you forever. And what
we do now is a little down payment towards that. It’s a little spot,
a little foretaste, a little outpost of heaven to help us
to love your church, to take it seriously and to do all we
can to make her a great representation of your
dwelling place on earth. Hear us and help us as we make
our prayer in the name of Christ our savior. Amen.