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NEHEMIAH
Lesson 4, Chapter 2 conclusion
Last week we established a key point of reference for the history of Nehemiah: he was essentially a politician and government leader. And while he was indeed a Godly man, a Jew educated by Ezra to some degree on the Torah, nonetheless his role in the ongoing matter of re-establishing the Jewish people in Judah and rebuilding the city of Jerusalem was quite different that Ezra’s. While Ezra was the pious religious reformer who came from Babylon with Artaxerxes’ blessing to re-establish the preeminence of the Law of Moses over the Jews, to insist upon proper worship and ritual among the priests, and to revive Torah-based morality in the everyday lives of the common Judeans, Nehemiah came from the Persian capital as a government official to revive Judah’s economy and to and re-establish Jerusalem as a fortress city and thus as a place of security and safety for the local residents. And the first step in this economic reboot was to rebuild the once nearly impregnable defensive walls that surrounded the holy city. Those walls had lain in ruin for almost 175 years since Nebuchadnezzar had toppled them. A few individuals had tried to rebuild them during that time but regional and local political opposition always managed to thwart the effort. So the Lord raised up Nehemiah who was of just the right temperament, training, mindset, and ability to get the job done. And we discussed how this is so very often the Lord’s way of doing things. There is not a hint that up until Nehemiah’s brother Hanani (who lived in Judah) came to visit Nehemiah at the Persian capital with news of the decrepit state of the holy city that Judah and Jerusalem were anywhere on Nehemiah’s radar. He seems to have been a satisfied, content man, highly placed in the Persian administration and having almost daily personal contact with King Artaxerxes as his cupbearer. Yet when apprised of the news about Jerusalem, Nehemiah became nearly obsessed with a desire to do something about it. He was so overwhelmed with sadness (and probably a bit of anger mixed in), that it showed on his countenance and thus when he was serving the king and queen their wine at one of their many yearly banquets, the king couldn’t help but notice. When Artaxerxes confronted Nehemiah about his downcast appearance, a fearful Nehemiah explained that he indeed was depressed because the place where his ancestors were buried lay in a condition of desecration. The king fully understanding that this brought shame upon Nehemiah and his family offered to help. Nehemiah used this opening to ask the king for permission to go to Jerusalem to rebuild it, accompanied with letters of authorization signed by the king that made Nehemiah the governor of the district of Judah, and that demanded
that Nehemiah be allowed to safely travel through whatever territories he had to in order to get to Judah. In fact, the king sent a detail of soldiers with him to assure his security along the way. And the king authorized valuable timber to be taken from the royal forests to be used in the various elements of reconstruction. This is where we left off last time, so let’s re-read from this point forward in Nehemiah chapter 2. RE-READ NEHEMIAH CHAPTER 2:9 – end Before we begin with verse 9, I want to point out something we touched on in the last lesson. It is that Nehemiah had no idea (until the day his brother showed up with bad news from Jerusalem) that the Lord had spent years preparing him for a task that others had failed at. Nehemiah, while having received some training in the Torah from Ezra, used it the way most of us do our Biblical training: personally. It is the rare Believer who sees him or herself using that knowledge as a vocation. The training that proved to be of the most practical use for this God- assigned task, Nehemiah received as he worked himself up the ladder of secular government. But at the right moment the Lord reached down from Heaven and altered Nehemiah’s life-course. The Holy Father didn’t suddenly give Nehemiah abilities he never had before, nor did he ask Nehemiah to do something that he didn’t already innately know how to do. Rather Yehoveh simply redirected those abilities, knowledge and efforts to accomplish something He ordained, in a circumstance Nehemiah never expected nor probably cared much about until the Lord moved upon him. This is why I tell you regularly that as Believers, our duty is to be alert to God moving in our lives, and I urge you with ever fiber of my being to say “yes” when He calls. More often than not the calling is unexpected. Usually it is not as if lightening struck, but more a thought enters your mind that surprises you. A circumstance arises that intrigues you. More often than not we had never seriously considered what seems to be happening to us as divinely orchestrated and what it is that He is asking us to do. And equally so when we begin to suspect it might be the Lord calling us, we usually think, “Who, me?! I’m too busy for this! Besides, I’m just a school teacher, or a plumber, or a truck driver, or a housewife, or an office manager. I’ve never been to Seminary, or Bible College, or Yeshiva. What will my spouse think? What will my friends think? How will this change things for me?” And I suspect that Nehemiah wrestled with those same sorts of doubts and confusion at first; one time excited, the next time fearful, and at other times ready to dismiss the entire thought as impractical if not silly or delusional. But somehow he just kept being drawn along by the invisible hand of God until that fateful hour when he was doing something as mundane as serving wine at a party, and the moment of decision arrived. And at that moment, Nehemiah made the most important decision of his lifetime: he could have said “no”, but instead he decided to say “yes” to God having no idea what the outcome might be. Except he knew, as do we when confronted with these moments, that there would be no turning back and life as we knew it was about to change. The unknown is always full of anxiety, and most of us therefore choose to cling to the known and the familiar even if it has borne little or no fruit in our lives, and at times even if it has brought us little more than pain and emptiness. Let us all vow to be Nehemiahs and say “yes” to the Lord when He comes calling at the most unexpected and perhaps (to us) the most inconvenient time. Let us also agree with God that when He calls us, He is the perfect judge of our qualifications for the task, and not us who will always see ourselves from our own limited worldview. And I can assure you who are listening that if you will do this and be entirely sincere, sooner than later you WILL hear God call, some unexpected door WILL open, and the direction you will go will be very different from the path you are now on. For some of you, that thought invigorates you. For others, you shudder and want nothing to do with it. So choose wisely before you make your decision. Verse 8 ends the audience with the king, and verse 9 begins with Nehemiah deep into his journey to Judah. We don’t know how much time passed in between. Josephus suggests as much as 5 years; that is neither suggested by the text or the circumstance. It is unimaginable to me that once this agreement was reached with the king that Nehemiah would need more than a handful of months to prepare, at most. Everything we read says that this was urgent for Nehemiah and the king certainly would not have been anywhere involved with the preparations. Nehemiah delivered the royal letters of safe passage to the various district governors and rulers of the enormous Beyond the River province, and there is nothing to indicate that his journey was opposed or interrupted due to lack of co-operation. However, as he approached his final destination, Jerusalem, two fellows called Sanvalat and Toviyah were more than unhappy with Nehemiah’s mission and his arrival. It is fascinating to me that the main reason given for their unhappiness is “that someone had come to promote the welfare of the people of Israel”. There is such a powerful message contained in those few words. All throughout history because the Lord has been concerned with the welfare of His people, those who listened to Satan of course opposed Israel’s welfare. And now I’m going to say something to the Church at large that is both controversial and polarizing and I fully intend it to be. Since early in the Bible, God foreknew that much (most?) of the gentile world would oppose Israel (the people and the land) and He issued a warning about it. We first get this message from God in the strongest most unequivocal language in the Book of Genesis. CJB Gene sis 12:1 Now ADONAI said to Avram, “Get yourself out of your country, away from your kinsmen and away from your father’s house, and go to the land that I will show you.
2 I will make of you a great nation, I will bless you, and I will make your name great; and you are to be a blessing.
3 I will bless those who bless you, but I will curse anyone who curses you; and by you