Year 2, Day 59: Nehemiah 12

A City Full of Worship

Nehemiah 12 is largely a worship service.  But this is no simple worship service.  This is a worship service that encompasses the whole city.  Now, you might be thinking as I did when I read this chapter.  I was thinking that this is a huge area of land that we are talking about.  So let’s do a little math here in the beginning just so that we have a perspective on this chapter.

At its largest point before the Babylonian exile, Jerusalem spanned about 135 acres.  That’s roughly 5,880,660 square feet.  Almost 6 million square feet!  That sounds like a lot – doesn’t it?  That sounds like a ton, especially considering that the walls around the city were rebuilt in less than two full months’ time!

5,880,600 square feet would equate to a square with sides equal to 2,425 feet long.  Since there is 5,280 feet in a mile, we’re talking a little bit less than a half of a mile.  Thus, if each side is roughly a half-mile long, then one could walk around Jerusalem by going for a two-mile walk.*  If I can walk 2-3 miles in an hour {and most of us can do that} then what we hear going on in this chapter is not at all unreasonable.  The choirs that Nehemiah organizes could absolutely encompass Jerusalem in worship and it might not take more than an hour to accomplish the task.  {It could take more if they choose, but it wouldn’t have to take more than an hour of singing.}  This isn’t a stretch of the imagination in the least.

But here’s a really cool thought.  Imagine being in an area that has a perimeter of 2 miles.  Imagine taking the time to gather all the spiritual leaders and walk around that area while actively worshipping God.  Wouldn’t that be really cool?  Wouldn’t it be neat to think about worshipping God around an area?  Imagine all of the cool symbolism going on with respect to the witness to the area encompassed by the worship.  {Anyone else getting a “Joshua and the battle of Jericho” flashback here?}

I think it is really neat that the leaders of Jerusalem and the priests and the Levites all got together and set forth on this kind of a demonstration.  Look at the message that they are sending to the rest of the people in Jerusalem.  Look at the message that they are sending to the people outside of Jerusalem.  Even Nehemiah himself claims that people far and away heard the noise of the people worshipping in Jerusalem and claiming Jerusalem for God.  That is so cool.  It’s really something that I can get really excited about today.

A City Full of Worship

And the end of this chapter we see a natural transition.  Worship directly leads us into service.  After the worship service, people went back to “normal life.”  Offerings were collected.  Donations to the work of the Lord were collected.  People supported God’s work among them.  I’ll say it again: worship leads us directly into service.

But here’s the point to remember.  While worship may lead us from God to life, it does not lead us into a life of our choosing.  True worship leads us from the worship of God to a life of God’s ways.  True worship leads us into service – a service of God’s agenda.  Worship leads us into accomplishing God’s ways.  True worship leads us into a humble response to God and a forsaking of the ways of the world.

For me, this is a dynamic that I have struggled with most of my life.  I have been taught by this world to see worship as service.  In other words, “I served God by giving Him an hour of my week.”  But from a godly perspective on life this way of thinking is completely off-base.  I don’t serve God by giving Him an hour a week.  I worship God when I give Him that hour.  I serve God with the rest of the hours in the week that aren’t spent worshipping Him.  {And in truth I should be giving God far more than that hour with respect to genuinely worshipping Him throughout the whole week!} 

That’s a pretty bold thought and a very high standard right there.  I am either worshipping God or I am serving Him.  Those are my options if I want to claim to be following Him.  To pick up a theme I spoke frequently about in my blog while we were reading through Romans, I think this is what it means to consider oneself a slave to God as opposed to God’s “servant.”  When I genuinely buy into the fact that I am a slave to God – a slave of righteousness – I realize that I am either worshipping God or I am serving Him.  If I am doing anything else, then I’m not really His slave.  If I do anything else, I am a slave to myself and a slave to my sinfulness. **

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*Keep in mind that when talking perimeter and area, the square always gives the smallest value of perimeter for a given area.  If we were to move from a square with equal sides to a rectangle with very unequal sides then the value for the perimeter becomes considerably larger as long as we keep the value for the area the same.  For example, a rectangle made up of sides of 100 feet and 58,806 feet would have the same area as I suggest for Jerusalem.  But this rectangle would have a perimeter of 117,812 feet – which would just over 22 miles in length!  Now, we do know that at its largest point Jerusalem was more like a square than a long and narrow rectangle.  So we can be confident that one could walk around ancient Jerusalem in the span of a few miles, not a few dozen miles.  I just wanted to be clear about the math and the fact that I do know what I am talking about fairly well.  I have considered the “square/rectangle” issue in my analysis!

**You might be asking yourself … what about the other 4 of the 6 marks of discipleship?  {Prayer, Worship, Reading God’s Word, Serving, Relating Spiritually to Others, Giving}  Well, speaking more broadly I think it still works to say that I am either worshipping or serving.  Obviously, when I am “worshipping” I am worshipping God and when I am “serving” I am serving God.  But when I am “praying” I am both worshipping God and aligning myself with His will – and that is most definitely a part of serving Him.  When I am reading His Word I am worshipping Him and aligning myself for His service.  When I am relating to other people spiritually I am hopefully worshipping Him a little but I am most definitely acting in service to God’s will.  When I give, I am worshipping Him by returning His things to Him as well as equipping His church for service.  So yeah, I think it still fits.  I am either worshipping God or serving Him.  Anything else is serving myself and my desires.

Year 2, Day 58: Nehemiah 11

Nehemiah 11 is another long chapter of names – which if you are like meant a fair bit of skimming.  After all, I’m not going to remember those names!  But as we have seen in the past few days, this does not give us a theological day off, either!

The Jerusalem Draft

First, before the names are given we can see that we have a “draft” of people who are to come and live in Jerusalem.  The leaders already lived there, but now it was necessary to fill up the town with everyday people, too.  The Lord does not want to be surrounded by just the elite, He wants everyone.  In many respects, this idea has much in common with Jesus’ command to the disciples to “let the children come to me.”  (See Matthew 19:14 as an example.)  God wants everyone to know that regardless of their station in life they can all have access to Him.

Of course, you might be wondering as I did why people would hesitate to live in the city.  After all, there is protection and strength in numbers – the wilderness areas of Israel have always been dangerous.  Furthermore, there is strength in the defenses of the walls and the fact that Jerusalem rises high above the natural landscape around it.  There are a few springs that can be counted on to provide fresh water.  What isn’t to like about moving to Jerusalem?  Why did they need a draft?

There is something that Jerusalem lacks – all cities lack, actually – and that is land.  There is no room to farm or provide food for families.  There is no room to set up mines and mills.  Businesses and vendors live in cities, but the people who provide the means for life typically do not.  To live in the city means that you are going to have to buy into the idea that you will have to work to make money and then convert that money into goods that you buy and bring home to your family.  It’s a process that most Americans know very well.

But in the ancient mindset, this kind of living was anathema.  Why force yourself into having to work for money just so you could spend that money and buy food – when you could just work the land and grow all you need to survive yourself?  Why depend on someone else being interested in your goods or services when you could just work the land and glean the fruits of your own labor?  When I put it that way – especially in a culture that had no electricity, no electronics, no public water/sewer, no garbage pick-up, no cars, no interstates and public paved road system – it really makes sense.  Especially in an ancient culture, why depend on someone else to buy your goods so you can give that money to someone else in buying their goods when instead we could just get what we need by working the land ourselves?

Dependency

In asking that very question, though, we come up against the main source of conflict between us and God.  Human beings like to depend on ourselves.  We like to be in charge.  We like to be in control.  We don’t embrace the idea of depending on other people all that well.

In that sense, the draft of people coming to live in Jerusalem was a very religious act.  Yes, these people were coming to live in the holy city of God – that is religious enough.  But additionally, these people are giving up their logical and natural physical life to depend on someone else to bring what they need into the city so that they can buy it.  These people were trusting that they would have money to buy the things they would need to live since they wouldn’t have access to the land to grow it themselves.  This was an act of trust – an act of faith.  It was humble submission.

Voluntary Dependency

What’s even cooler is that there are some people who did it voluntarily.  There were some who were drafted into that way of life, but there were others who volunteered for the job.  I have no doubt in my mind that God saw their willingness to submit their life to His control and He walked with them in full.  It may not seem like it on the surface, but Nehemiah 11 is really a great chapter about submitting to God and His will and letting go of our ability to “depend on ourselves.”

Size and Scope

I’ve got one other small point, today.  If we look at the numbers represented in this chapter, we get just over 3,000 people.  Sure we are told that there were some others, but probably not too many.  If we know that this number represents those drafted to come into Jerusalem (which was 10% of the population) we can really get a sense of how small the faithful Jewish remnant was – especially compared to the population of Hebrew people at the time of the Exodus or even the time of David and Solomon.  If 3,000 represents an accurate 10%, then the remnant was 30,000.  That doesn’t compare at all with the million or two that came out of Egypt.  But size doesn’t matter as much as faithfulness.  That’s one of the other points of this chapter.

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Year 2, Day 57: Nehemiah 10

Today I am going to begin with a completely non-theological point of amusement.  I read through the first paragraph of Nehemiah 10 – well, I skimmed it, at least – and I got to the end of the paragraph and began the next one only to realize that I was already reading verse 28.  Nothing like a paragraph of the Bible having 27 verses because it is predominantly 3 names per verse!  Anyway, I was amused at how quickly the first 27 verses of this chapter flew by and I figured I would share.

Curse And An Oath

On a more serious note, having come off of my amusement of the first 27 verses I was hit by a ton of bricks by verse 29.  These people understood that they are entering a “curse and an oath” with respect to God’s ways.  Wow, that’s a pretty bold proclamation right there, and it is times like this that I am really cognizant and grateful for the way that the Old Testament talks about walking in a relationship with God.  They get it: 

• Follow God’s ways and live in the promise.
• Disobey God’s ways and be cursed.

There are days when I get so tired of shallow and senseless Christianity: people who proclaim to love Jesus on Sunday but who seem to have no evidence of it in their life except that they show up to church for an hour a week, people who claim to be in a relationship with God but when asked to pray they clam up and seem to have no ability to talk to Him, people who claim to know God’s Word but never come together and talk about what they know and how God can use them to teach what they know to others, etc.  Don’t get me wrong.  I am pointing the finger right at me when I make that comment.  I spent the better part of a decade in my life living that life.  I get frustrated because I know how easy it was for me to live like that and “feel like I was still a good Christian.”  The Christianity that I had surrounded myself with enabled me to feel like I was okay because I was “doing the church thing and I could articulate that I believed in a God.”

In actuality, I was living under the curse and didn’t even realize it.  I had convinced myself that I was in a relationship with God but I was under the curse of following my own desires.  I was not spiritually connecting with my wife – our marriage was good from a worldly perspective but not really “connected.”  I was focusing on my own technological gaming pursuits and not being a good husband or caretaker of the house.  {A video game was more important to me than God’s Word!}  Since I was going to church once a week – and even worse, was enrolled full-time in seminary! – I had the belief that I was doing just fine spiritually.  But I wasn’t.  God was letting me experience the curse of this world while I was convincing myself that I was pursuing Him!  I was cursed by storing up my treasure in the wrong place, and I thank God that a few very important people came along and challenged me to see that God wants something better than what I was giving Him.

I think it is important to realize that when we come to God we enter into a contract of “blessings and curses.”  If we follow His ways, He will bless us by drawing us closer to Him.  If we don’t follow His ways, He will curse us by allowing us to pursue our own desires.  Notice I didn’t say that those who follow will be prosperous and those who don’t will not be prosperous.  God’s blessing does not equal material prosperity.  But rest assured, I know what it is like to be convinced I was living under God’s blessing but in reality I was living under the curse of pursuing the world’s desires.

I think that there is another important point to understand here.  The Hebrew people had no issue with understand God as a God of blessings and curses.  They didn’t see God as a Santa Clause that was only blessings.  God is a God of love and wrath.  He is a God of grace and judgment.  The Hebrew people have no problem accepting it.  They have a much easier time accepting it than we do today, certainly.

What Comes From Blessings and Curses?

As we move through the rest of Nehemiah 10 we get a clear sense of the expectation that comes out of the idea of “blessings and curses.”  The people understand that God has expectations.  The people understand that God wants more of a relationship with us than being known as “the guy whose forgiveness is unmatched.”  God wants to take us, mold us, shape us, be generous to us, and show us what He can do through us.  He wants us to be obedient to Him so that when He works through us we won’t miss it.  He wants to be the focal point of our life so that life makes sense.

The reality is that while God’s work may begin with forgiveness, our work begins with obedience to God.  God has expectations, and those expectations are designed to draw us into a relationship with Him.  That’s what the rest of Nehemiah 10 is all about.  God is gracious, we need to respond obediently.  When we respond obediently, we are preparing ourselves to see the glory of the Lord at work in our lives and the lives of the faithful around us.  When we are obedient, we set ourselves up to live in the blessing of the Lord.

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Year 2, Day 56: Nehemiah 9

Recounting the History

I am personally moved by this passage from Nehemiah 9 today.  Now, I know what you are saying in your head.  “How is it that this simple retelling of all the history we spent the last year reading about can move you?”  Well, let me explain that a little bit.

In my other blog (Vigor of 12) I am walking through the book of Acts in small steps: 3 to 4 verses at a time.  We are currently walking through Acts 7 – which is the chapter that deals with Stephen before the Sanhedrin.  I find myself reading here in Nehemiah 9 a similar retelling to what Stephen is saying before the Sanhedrin.  So my emotional movement begins in the synergy I find today between my two blogs.  {I love it when God brings two separate things together like that.}

Additionally, ever since we started reading through Ezra and Nehemiah as a part of this blog I have become more keenly aware of where this book takes place in history.  The action of this chapter is happening roughly around 445 B.C.  Stephen stands before the Sanhedrin roughly 35 AD.  There is less than 500 years that separates the two accounts in scripture.

Rebellion Comes In Many Forms

Now, if we put those two things together what we end up is a beautiful perspective on how grossly human beings swing along spiritual pendulums.  For at least 500 years before Nehemiah the people lived as though they could care less about what God wants.  They reject His ways in favor of their own disobedience.  But in the 500 years after Nehemiah we end with the same result but for the opposite reason!  In the 500 years following Nehemiah the Hebrew people become so obsessed with following the Law that they end up completely rejecting God’s work again – this time in Jesus Christ, the Messiah!

I guess it just impresses upon me how many different ways we as human beings can be so rebellious.  We can be rebellious and ignore God completely.  We can be rebellious and take what God has given to us yet push it to such an extreme that we are still missing what God is doing in our midst.  It seems almost unfair that humanity has such a difficult time pursuing God because of our human inability to simply focus on Him.

That is actually where the problem rests within this matter.  The Hebrews prior to Nehemiah focused on their own desires and thus missed God’s work completely.  The Hebrew people who followed Nehemiah – and followed Ezra, for the record – focused on their own desire to uplift the Law – and they missed God’s work completely.  You see, when human beings focus so intently upon the desires of our own hearts we miss God completely.  When we focus so intently upon having our way – even if we are convinced that our way is Biblical as the Pharisees no doubt were convinced in the time of Jesus – we miss God.  We are either focused on finding God or we are not.  We are either focused on letting God lead us or we are instead interested in forcing God to follow us.

Focus

That’s really a scary thing for me.  It is easy for me to become focused on something else – even something that I think is godly.  It is easy for me to focus on what I believe to be God’s will and it is even easier for me to use scripture to assert my position.  But the reality is that if I am focused on anything other than God then I am … well … focused on something other than God.

Let me give a few examples. 

• It is very easy for me to become focused on making sure that my sermon is good for Sunday.  I can search long and hard for great illustrations.  I can practice it until the words flow effortlessly out of my mouth.  And it seems inherently good that I should want to preach the best “word” possible.  But the reality is that if in my desire to preach the best word I forget to listen to God, then I am only preaching my words.  And that’s ultimately very bad.
• It is very easy for me to become focused on reading God’s Word daily.  I am even in a pretty good routine about it most days.  It is one of the first tasks I check off of my list every day.  This is a good thing.  It is good for me to long to put in my time with God first thing.  However, if the focus becomes placed upon doing the work and accomplishing the task then I stop listening to God.  If I become more enthralled with my blog post than I am about the lesson that God teaches me, then I am clearly in error.  My focus needs to be on listening to God, not asserting my agenda.

That’s really what I find myself reflecting on as I read this passage in Nehemiah and think ahead to Stephen recounting the same stories to the Sanhedrin.  In both places we hear the importance of stopping to listen to God rather than asserting ourselves.  Life is about finding God, not asserting myself.  Life is about following God, not accomplishing my will.  Life is about making humble disciples of Christ, not about glorifying my own ideas and my own agenda.

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Year 2, Day 55: Nehemiah 8

The Law

As I was reading through the passage on Nehemiah 8 – the reading of the Law – I was struck by the people’s natural desire to weep when they read the Law.  And that got me thinking about a very traditional Lutheran concept.  {But just because it is Lutheran in origin doesn’t mean any other Christian will disagree with this one.}  The concept of which I am making reference is Luther’s Three Uses of the Law.

Here they are, for all the world to see:

1. The Bouncer: outward discipline might be maintained against wild, disobedient men
2. The Mirror: people should be made aware of their sinfulness
3. The Guide: after spiritual “regeneration” people would have access to rules to direct their whole life

The bouncer idea is the idea that without rules and regulations society would devolve into a free-for-all of human selfishness.  For anyone who has read the book “Lord of the Flies” this is the point of the book.  Without regulations and the structure of civilization, people do as they please and they do according to what feels right to them at the time.  Without structure, humanity devolves into each of us running around doing whatever we please and whatever we can get away with.  The point of the Law is to establish order.

And this brings us to where it might reduce people to tears.  A few days ago I had the privilege of watching a good bit of parenting.  A little one year old boy was having fun opening a cabinet door.  When the boy started to crawl inside, the grandmother said “No.”  She then told the boy to close the door.  The boy started to cry.  It wasn’t that there was anything in the cabinet that was of any particular fun.  The boy cried simply because somebody else’s will was being asserted over his own.  This is what society does and this is especially what the Law does.  The Law asserts God’s will over our will.  And we cry when we realize all the things that might be fun which are now prohibited from our doing.

The mirror idea is the second use of the Law, and if you thought the bouncer idea can make a person cry then get really ready to cry.  The idea of the mirror is that when we hold up the Law to our life we understand how filthy we actually are.  Compared to what God desires for our life, the way we actually live is full of corruption and spiritual filth.  Our true nature as fallen human beings is exposed.  Our desire to do things our way corrupts us when we actually do them in spite of being told not to.

We discover just how far we are from God.  We discover just how much we deserve condemnation.  We discover just how much salvation is out of our grasp.  And we are led to tears.  We can do nothing but cry because we realize only too late that we have already screwed up and it is beyond our grasp to bring any kind of fixing to the problem.  There is nothing left to do but cry.

Well, we can cry – and realize the importance of Christ.  With Christ, we can have hope.  With Christ, there is forgiveness.  We can have a new life – spiritually regenerated by Him.  Once we are regenerated, the third use of the Law comes into play.

But for today, let’s focus on the first two uses of the law.  Can there be any wonder that any one of these ancient Hebrew people cried when they came face-to-face with the Law?  They heard God saying “No” to their sinful desires.  They heard God explaining how they had already screwed up.  There was every reason to weep.

But Don’t Cry

Yet, the call went out to not weep.  The day was holy to the Lord.  Yes, we are sinners.  But in spite of our sinfulness we are still to focus on the glory of the Lord.  Our depravity is nothing compared to God’s holiness.  Even when we are convicted in our sin there is reason to give praise.  God is holy enough to call us to repentance and call us His own people in spite of our sins.

This is a great chapter to read in the middle of the season of Lent.  Yes, we are sinners.  Yes, we are a messed up race on this planet.  But we are in a relationship with a holy God.  Let’s give Him some of that glory today.

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Year 2, Day 54: Nehemiah 7

Not Even a Genealogy!

Nehemiah 7 is largely a long list of names.  If you found yourself fighting the urge to skip over the list of names because you know internally you weren’t going to be able to keep track of them all anyway, that’s okay.  I confess that I did that as well.  Genealogies are one thing, lists of dozens of seemingly unconnected names are meant to be skimmed in my book!

However, that doesn’t mean that we can simply close our Bibles and declare a vacation day.  So let’s do some theology.  After all, you came to this site looking for some spiritual thought – probably more so today than other days because of the reading we have here in Nehemiah 7.  So hopefully we will not be disappointed in our quest today – even with a chapter of names.

Dawn to Dusk

There are several verses before we get to the names, and in these verses there is a neat thought.  Nehemiah was clear about something: don’t open the gates until the guard can see clearly, and make sure that the gates are shut while the guard is still present and they can still see clearly.  In other words, don’t open the gates when people could be hiding just outside in the shadows and don’t wait to close the gates when enemies could get close to the walls by sneaking in from the shadows.  With respect to the city, Nehemiah is saying that the town is open for business once dawn is over and the town will close for business before dusk even draws near.

This is great spiritual advice, although I don’t think we should take away from this chapter the lesson that we should only do spiritual work when the sun is up.  Yet, for beginner Christian or Christians that are in a place of spiritual weakness I do think there is some warrant to heeding this advice.  In human culture, sin abounds much more prevalently when the sun goes down.  If a beginner Christian wants to avoid contact with temptation until they are more confident in their ability to resist it, being safe and secure in our homes before the sun goes down is a great first step.  Even doing things inside our home like turning the TV/radio off before the sun goes down will prevent us from watching a bunch of programming that might lead us into sinful thoughts.  {Ever notice that fact before?  When the sun goes down, the TV programming becomes quite a bit more … “influential.”}

However, I do think that as we mature in our faith and learn to resist the schemes of the Devil that we can actually do good ministry day or night.  So I think there is a deeper lesson in the opening verses of Nehemiah 7 than simply watching the sun.  What I hear Nehemiah saying on a spiritual level is to be careful to allow access to our innermost spiritual parts only when it is safe and the enemy cannot sneak in.  We need to be careful when picking spiritual mentors.  We need to be careful when listening to spiritual teachers we might find on TV or radio.  {In other words, just because someone is speaking on Christian TV or Christian radio does not mean we should assume that they are speaking from God.}  We should be careful when choosing a church as to whether or not the spiritual leadership is actually spiritual.  {In other words, just because people call someone “pastor,” “elder,” or “deacon” doesn’t mean they speak from God’s perspective.}  When reading books – Christian or non-Christian – we should be careful to be discerning and read them when we are in places of spiritual security.

Quite figuratively I think we can paraphrase Nehemiah’s advice by saying this: “Let not the gates of your spiritual being be opened unless God is near to you.  And make sure you close access to your spiritual being while God is still near to you and on guard.”  It is not good to try and “experiment” with new theology when we are spiritually weak.  It is not a good time to try and find a new church when we are spiritually weak.  It is not a good time to try and change our life when we are spiritually weak.  When we do things during a time when we are vulnerable we are likely to allow Satan into the process and we are likely to go down a path that may seem healthy at the beginning but it really ends up leading us away from God.  Rather, if you are spiritually weak, draw close to God in His Word and in prayer.  Build yourself up with your proven spiritual companions.  When you are spiritually strong, then it is the right time to open the gates to your spiritual being and try something new.

The Names

Okay, I’m almost out of space and I would actually like to say something meaningful about the list of names.  Want to know what is really cool about this chapter?  So far the book of Nehemiah was all about rebuilding the walls.  But this chapter demonstrates that the city of Jerusalem is nothing without people.  God doesn’t want great edifices; God wants people in relationship with Him.  It is great that Nehemiah could prepare the city and do the work.  But as we see in this chapter the work is complete when the city is filled with people coming in relationship with God.

Is not the same thing true about our churches and religious communities?  Programs are good, but people in relationship with their God are what creates importance.  Church buildings can be beautiful, but the people inside who are in relationship with their Lord are more beautiful still.  This chapter may seem like a list of names, but this list of names reminds us that our work is to ultimately be about putting people in relationship with God.  That is where true beauty exists.

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Year 2, Day 53: Nehemiah 6

Further Attack

Nehemiah 6 gives us yet a third means for an attack to come against the work of God.  We saw first the common tactic of external ridicule.  We then saw the utterly destructive attack of internal self-mongerism and greed.  Now in this chapter we see another serious type: attack against the leader.

You have no doubt heard the maxim: cut off the head and the serpent will die.  This is the thought process behind what we see happen to Nehemiah not once but twice in this passage.  Twice an attempt is made upon Nehemiah’s life in order to stop the work of the Lord in Jerusalem.

When Are We Safe?

However, even before we get to that point let’s start in the very beginning of this passage.  We are told in the beginning of this chapter that the walls are complete – although the doors for the gates had not yet been set in place.  The hard work was done, and the project was nearly complete.  Yet Nehemiah still finds himself under attack.  This is a great lesson to hear.  We so often think that when we finish the work of the Lord that the attacks from our enemy will stop.  This is foolishness.  The attacks from the enemy will never stop until the Lord comes back and says once and for all that it is finished and the judgment comes.

Think about it.  Jesus was attacked and even killed.  But after they killed Jesus, have people stopped attacking His awesome name?  Have people stopped defaming His character?  Paul was an incredible evangelist.  Have people stopped slandering his image and the incredible work that he did for God?  How many good Christians have come since Jesus whose names continue to be dragged through the mud?  How many people assaulted Justin Martyr?  Augustine?  Acquinas?  Luther?  Wycliff? I’m not saying that these men {and plenty of others throughout history that I didn’t put on the list} were perfect little saints.  They had their faults just like the rest of us.  But they did great work for the Kingdom of God.  And there name is dragged through the mud even today – especially by Christians!

No, friends.  The attacks will not stop when the work is finished.  The attacks will not even stop when we die and our bodies are cold in the grave.  The attacks will keep coming.  Until God declares that the battle for His creation is over, the attacks will come.  What is that other maxim?  There is no rest for the weary.

External Attack Upon the Leader

Nehemiah is clearly attacked in this passage.  Sanballot, Tobiah, and Gesham set him up.  They try to draw him out into the world.  They try to get him out of his area of protection in order to do him in.  When that doesn’t work they try to defame his reputation and make accusations against his loyalty to the Persian King who had made all of this possible.  The end result is that he is attacked.

Nehemiah will have none of it.  He is too smart to fall into their physical trap and he categorically refuses to give any kind of acknowledgement to the war of defamation that they attempt to provoke.  Nehemiah knows that God did not call him to Jerusalem to protect Nehemiah’s own character.  God called Nehemiah to Jerusalem to build the wall.  God doesn’t need Nehemiah to fight.  God needs Nehemiah to focus on the wall.  Nehemiah does just that.

Internal Attack Upon the Leader

When this attempt doesn’t work, they try to lure Nehemiah into the Temple.  Now, this one is pretty devious, but in the respect it is extraordinarily important.  Who was allowed to go into the Temple?  The priests.  There were restrictions on who could go in.  At the very least, one had to be aware of one’s ritual purity before going into the temple.

I can only guess that in the process of working on the wall that Nehemiah had come across blood or some other substance that would have caused him to need to purify himself before going into the Temple.  At the very least, we need to remember that unlike Ezra, Nehemiah was not a priest!  Nehemiah was the cupbearer for the Persian King that God called to organize the rebuilding of the wall.  Nehemiah had no right to go into the Temple.  So here we see that in a last ditch effort to attack Nehemiah they try and attack his religious character.  They try to attack him and make him appear to be a hypocrite and one who is actually unfaithful to God. 

In the end, this subtle attack is almost the most dangerous.  In all the other attacks the goal was to stop the work on the wall and separate Nehemiah from that work.  Here, we see that the goal of internal attack is actually to put a stumbling block between Nehemiah and God.  This attack is designed to cause Nehemiah to do something with which God Himself will find displeasure.  This attack is quite dangerous against the character of Nehemiah.

After all, most of the work is already done.  The wall is built; only the doors needed to be hung.  Yet the attack still came.  The attempt to drive Nehemiah’s character apart from God continued.

The enemy is relentless, folks.  He is not going to stop.  He is willing to do whatever he can.  The fact that the work is almost complete or already complete does not mean that he will stop attacking.  Until God says to stop, there is always more battle to be fought.  Quite often, it is near the end of the battle in which the stakes are raised to their highest point.

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Year 2, Day 52: Nehemiah 5

Greed

Nehemiah 5 is another great chapter on persecution, but this persecution isn’t an external ridicule.  The persecution found in this chapter is a persecution based on greed.  There is a worldly greed demanded from the Persian king.  But even worse is the worldly greed demonstrated by the wealthy Jews as they preyed upon the other Jews who had returned from exile.

Let me explain what Nehemiah is really reacting to here in Nehemiah 5.  The Persian king had a demand for tribute.  Typically, this tribute had to be paid in precious metal – often gold or silver coin.  That gold or silver coin was brought back to the treasury where it was melted down and formed into bricks (sometimes called ingots).  These ingots were easy to store so when it came time for the king to want something made of a precious metal then the metal smiths could melt the ingots down and make the statue, wall ornament, or whatever the king desired.

Here’s where the problem begins.  The Persian king was inherently rooted in greed.  After all, how much tribute does a person need before they have enough?  Unfortunately, “enough” is not a concept that most human beings do very well.  We always want more.  We always want bigger and better.  The more we get, the larger our thirst for more becomes!  There was never “enough,” so the demand for tribute continued.  {For anyone looking for a modern equivalent, this would be a great place to begin a conversation on government size, programs provided, effectiveness of programming, and the taxation required to support it.}

But that is only where the problem begins.  Everyone expects the king to be an egomaniac and have an insatiable appetite for wealth.  That doesn’t make it right, but it is expected – unfortunately.  Where the problem gets really bad is when the Hebrew people begin fleecing each other in order to follow the example of the king.  So let me explain that a little.

Each year, the tribute needed to be paid.  But not everyone had ready access to money.  So a typical Jewish person who was struggling to make ends meet would have to go to their rich neighbor and ask if they could borrow some of the rich neighbor’s “cash on hand.”  The rich neighbor would do what we commonly accept – hand out the money and charge interest.  Well, you know where this is going.  If the poor person didn’t have access to enough money to pay the tribute to begin with, they aren’t ever going to have enough money to pay back the loan.  And usually when people pay with chickens and goats they never catch up.  Wealthy people simply don’t value chickens and goats as much as they appreciate gold and silver.

So the working poor would fall behind.  The interest would pile up and soon they were under an enormous pile of debt.  {Sound familiar to anyone out there?}  They would have to sell their land (and thus they become rentors – responsible for paying a rent that they can’t afford!). They would then be forced to sell themselves into slavery.  Then they would have to sell their children into slavery.  Pretty soon we have a land where the rich have everything and people who should be free find themselves enslaved.  We have a land where if you are not independently wealthy you are a slave to someone who is.

The sad part is that the Jews did it to themselves.  Their desire to store up earthly wealth was more important than relieving the burden of their neighbor.  Let that sentence sink in, because I’m pretty sure that this sentence applies to a good number of Americans – even a good number of American Christians today.  Our desire to store up wealth for ourselves is far more important than releasing our neighbor from their burden.  {Of course, this is a great place to start a conversation about the difference between helping someone in genuine need and enabling poor decision making to continue.  And that is a very important conversation to have.  We don’t want to be enablers.}

But that isn’t even the whole story.  Are you ready for the saddest statement on this chapter?  The saddest fact in this chapter is the realization that there is no record of any kind of building going on!  Yesterday – when we had persecution of an external ridicule in nature – we saw how Nehemiah was able to use it and band the people together and spur the work on even more!  Today, as we are dealing with internal greed and self-mongerism, we see that the work of the Lord comes to an absolute crashing halt.  There is not one sentence about the work of the Lord advancing one step.  External persecution is hard, but internal persecution and greed is absolutely deadly.

Oh how the Enemy of the Lord loves nothing more than to come in and disrupt the internal functioning of God’s work.  Any opportunity that we give to Satan to come into our midst and disrupt us from the inside is an opportunity that He will readily accept.  I’m not saying that we can’t have discussion and different opinions – or even wealth.  But when our discussions, our differing opinions, and our desire to increase our wealth lead to the pursuit of different agendas than God’s agenda, then Satan has won.  As we see in this chapter, when Satan wins and we are divided internally the work of the Lord stops.

This chapter has a lot to say on greed.  It has a lot to say about self-mongerism.  It has a lot to say about how we treat our neighbor.  It has a lot to say about generosity and hospitality.  It has a lot to say on whether we are genuinely willing to reflect God’s love or not.

Nehemiah gives us a great counterpoint to the rest of this chapter.  Nehemiah doesn’t even take what is rightfully due to him as a governor of the land.  Nehemiah takes care of the people around him without demanding anything in return (outside of being willing to follow God and assert God’s agenda, of course).  We can be really inspired out of Nehemiah’s example today.

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Year 2, Day 51: Nehemiah 4

For the next 3 days, we will talk about oppression and resistance to the work that God has set before us.  Sometimes that oppression is external.  Sometimes it is internal. Sometimes it is overt.  Other times it is covert.  But there is one true statement: wherever there is the work of the Lord there will be resistance against it.

External Resistance

In Nehemiah 4 we get a picture of the most basic type of resistance: external ridicule.  This is the easiest resistance for the opponents of God’s will to organize.  Anyone who sees something going on that they don’t like can talk about what they don’t like.  Anyone who sees something going on of which they might be afraid can talk about what is going on in negative terms to try an attempt to destroy what momentum has begun.  External ridicule is so simple for the enemies of God’s work to use that it can almost be said to be second nature to human beings.

Think about it. 

• Imagine that a person who makes a commitment in their life to read their Bible every day.  The people around them might be challenged by that decision of faith.  Rather than respond with support or even by being challenged into action themselves, they try to tell the other person that the other person doesn’t have the strength to accomplish their goal.  Or maybe they talk about how hard the Bible is to understand and try and get the other person to believe that they are destined to fail.  Rather than rise to personal challenges, it is easier for outsiders to tear down those who do try to rise up.
• Imagine a person who wants to go serve people in another place on a mission trip.  They might need to raise a bunch of money, get several sets of legal permissions, sacrifice time with their family, and a few other things.  Those around the person who see the spiritual response and who are afraid to face the fact that perhaps God is calling them to respond similarly will begin to convince the person committed to the trip that they won’t be able to accomplish the task.  Maybe they will talk about the potential danger or the unknown.  Maybe they will talk about not being able to raise the financial support necessary.  Again we see how easy it is for people to tear down the other rather than join God’s movement.

Whatever the reason, I think we can see how people feel threatened by spiritual growth and use external ridicule to stop the momentum that may be happening.  It is sad to say, but this kind of resistance is very common in our world.  In fact, I daresay that any movement of the Holy Spirit faces this kind of resistance within moments of the initial calling from the Holy Spirit.  Human beings seem to be hard-wired to react to the movement of the Holy Spirit with external ridicule.  I think a good part of this is that human beings don’t like change and that is precisely where the Holy Spirit tries to bring us.

Detecting and Dealing With External Criticism

Thankfully, although this kind of resistance is the most common resistance we face, it is also the easiest resistance to detect.  Just about any time a person outside of a group lifts up a word of discouragement it is this kind of resistance at work.  It might be evidence of fear of change in the other person.  It might be a sign of jealousy in the other person.  It might be a sign of laziness or lethargy in the other person.  There are plenty of other reasons to which external ridicule may point.  But it is easy to spot because it is almost always present against any movement of the Holy Spirit.

Since it is almost always present, those who desire to be in spiritual leadership need to brace themselves for its presence.  Weak leaders will crumble under this kind of resistance.  But those who are strong in the Lord will find ways to overcome this form of resistance.

Look at what Nehemiah does here to resist the external ridicule that he and the Jews faced.  He brought the Jews together and made sure nobody got isolated where they might be influenced more by the resistance than by the faithful.  Nehemiah set up an intentional network of protection so that nobody found themselves working without being able to trust that someone was watching their back even as they worked.  Nehemiah also trained the whole community to know various warning calls so that if trouble came in another area of the city people could rally to the defense of the place under attack.

We can really learn some lessons from Nehemiah here.  If we are going to do the work of the Lord, then we will come under external ridicule.  We need a network of support around us.  We need to work in the company of others who are going to watch our backs as we work.  We need to also know that there is an even larger community of support that will be there to rally and protect us if we need them.  What we can learn through Nehemiah’s example is the importance of a spiritual community around us that supports us.  We can now see that it is actually through our spiritual community around us that God musters the support we need to survive against external ridicule.

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Year 2, Day 50: Nehemiah 2 & 3

Waiting Upon the Lord

Four months after Nehemiah heard about the plight of Jerusalem he was given an opportunity to serve the Lord with respect to the burden that was placed on his heart.  Four months!  How many of us could wait four months to accomplish something if our spirit was troubled to the level of grief to which Nehemiah was troubled?

This tells us that we need to be patient.  We need to wait for God to prosper us rather than taking things into our own hands.  We need to wait for God to say that the time to act is now rather than jumping out ahead of God.  How difficult is this lesson!

However, we don’t need to just sit on our hands.  We don’t need to twiddle our thumbs while we wait for God to give us the divine “all clear.”  We need to prepare ourselves for the task.  Take a look at what Nehemiah is able to accomplish when he finally gets the attention of the king.  Nehemiah is able to explain his problem, invite the king into empathy for his problem, put out a proper timeline for the resolution of the problem, and make a few requests based on what the king might be able to do to make the resolution of the problem move along more smoothly.  Nehemiah may have patiently waited for God before actually acting, but he certainly didn’t wait for God to say “act” before planning to act!  Nehemiah was ready with a plan so that when God’s opportunity arrived he was absolutely ready to pounce.

Rabbit Trail: Discipleship

For me personally, I think this is really the point of the discipleship process.  The discipleship process helps keep us like a finely tuned motor – absolutely ready to roar into life once the gas pedal is pushed to the floor.  Daily prayer keeps us connected with God.  Reading and internalizing God’s Word keeps us mindful of God’s ways.  Relating to God’s Word as well as to the company of saints around us keeps us spiritually attuned to what God might be saying in our life.  Daily service reminds us of our servant nature so we are ready in line with God’s will when God’s timing is right.  Worship reminds us who it is that we are serving.  Giving of ourselves keeps us in a sacrificial mindset so when God’s timing is ready we do not mind making the sacrifices necessary to do His will.  For me, discipleship is all about preparing ourselves to do God’s will once God tells us that the time is right.

Nehemiah Comes to Jerusalem

Okay, back to Nehemiah’s story for a little bit.  When it comes time to inspect the problem, notice that Nehemiah largely keeps everything to himself.  He inspects at night so that he can focus on the task at hand without being distracted by all the other opinions of people in Jerusalem.  Even when it comes time to talk about repair he speaks to the officials first.  Nehemiah is careful to extend his influence only as far as he can manage it successfully.  Had Nehemiah cast his influence too far too fast, it would have given time for opposition to arise.

I think this is another important step that we as Christians can learn from.  How many of us suffer from casting too large of a net?  We set out with big grandiose plans and try to change everyone and everything that we meet.  Nehemiah’s example is the opposite.  Keep the plans manageable.  Keep the contacts manageable.  It is better to have many small successful steps than to have several large failures {or even several large moderate successes}.  A long line of small yet clear victories will be much more likely to produce good fruit in the long run than a modest chain of wide yet unexceptional victories. 

Rabbit Trail #2: Back to Discipleship

This is good advice for life in general, but it is great advice in the spiritual realm – especially with respect to discipleship!  I would rather deal with someone who has small daily moments of learning from God than a person who goes months or years between divine inspiration – even if those divinely inspired moments are significant.  I would rather deal with someone who worships God with routine even if the routine becomes a bit rote than deal with the person who seldom worship but has an incredible time in the few instances that they do worship.  A long line of small spiritual victories will be far more useful than several sporadic victories – even if those victories are significant.  The fruit of the steady life with far outweigh what little fruit comes from substantial yet sporadic growth.

Delegation

Then a really cool thing happened.  As we hear in chapter 3, Nehemiah modeled this approach to leadership for the people.  Nehemiah knew that the task of rebuilding the wall would simply be too daunting for any one person to undertake.  Again, it goes back to many great small steps being better than one large moderate one.  Nehemiah divides up the work into manageable chunks.  Nehemiah is the spiritual leader and he oversees the whole work.  But the individuals are responsible for accomplishing an amount of work that they can manage successfully.

Rabbit Trail #3: Back to Discipleship

Going back to the topic of spirituality and discipleship, this is perhaps the key.  Just like the walls of Jerusalem were neither built by a single person nor in a single day, our spiritual life is not built by a single spiritual moment nor built in a single spiritual day.  When we divide up the task of being spiritual into smaller more manageable pieces we can indeed be successful – far more successful than if we don’t!

Honestly, consider this point.  How daunting does it sound to say, “I’m going to be the spiritual person that God wants me to be each and every day for the rest of my life?”  On the other hand, how easy is it to agree to these tasks:

• I’ll spend 10 minutes in prayer to God.  I’ll actually make it easier on myself be making sure as a part of my prayer every day I will remember to give God glory, to thank Him for the spiritual mentors in my life, to pray for the people around me that need His presence in their life, to pray for those Christians in this world who are under persecution, to honestly repent of the sins that I committed since I last prayed repentance, to ask that He makes me humble to do His will, to ask Him to make me willing to talk about Him when He gives me an opportunity, to thank Him for the spiritual lessons I learned in the prior day, to thank God for giving me the promise of eternal life through the sacrifice of His Son.  {C’mon, how many of us honestly can’t spend 60 seconds on each of those ten topics?}
• I’ll worship God at least once a week.  {This isn’t hard…}
• I’ll read a chapter of the Bible every day and try to be in communication with at least one other person about what I read.  {Again, this isn’t hard.  In fact, if you are reading this then you are already pretty much doing it!}
• I’ll make sure I have at least one act of service in my life every day, and when I serve I will make it a point to pray to God thanking Him for giving me the opportunity to reflect His love.  {This isn’t hard.  It isn’t like service has to be big or grand every day…}
• I’ll try to talk to one person (Christian, non-Christian, or personal spiritual mentor) every day about something that God has taught me recently.  {This isn’t hard, either.  If you want to fulfill this one, leave a comment on this blog every day and you’ve begun it!  Trust me, I comment back!}
• I’ll give God out of my time, talents, and treasure (limits on each category set between you and God with advice potentially coming from a spiritual mentor).  {This might be the toughest one on the list, but it’s really not that big, either.}

Seriously, nothing on that list is unmanageable.  In fact, accomplishing that list could very well take less than 30 minutes a day {depending on how much you talk, of course.  I would have trouble keeping the 3rd and the 5th bullets to under a half-hour, but that’s just me!  LOL.  Besides, the goal isn’t to keep it under a half hour, I was just saying that it could be done that way!}.  

I think we can learn from Nehemiah’s approach here.  We need to plan so that we are ready to act.  When it is time to act, we need to divide up the task into manageable portions that bring about clear victories.  When we have clear manageable victories, we will be inspired on to greater and greater successes.  And like Nehemiah building a wall around a city, God will accomplish the impossible through us and in us.

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Year 2, Day 49: Nehemiah 1

Okay, I’m going to take a paragraph and explain the historical timeline as we transition from Ezra to Nehemiah.  It was about 536 B.C. when Zerubbabel and Jeshua first came to Jerusalem with their initial contingent of Jews to begin rebuilding.  The Temple was finished around 516 B.C.  Under Ezra in 457 B.C., a small spiritual revival begins to happen when he comes to Jerusalem.  Almost a decade later in 445 B.C. God sends Nehemiah to Jerusalem in order to rebuild the walls and provide some security for the refugees that had returned to the land.  We should recognize, therefore, that by the time Nehemiah steps on the scene, almost a century has passed since Zerubbabel and Jeshua were first allowed to return to Jerusalem.

Nehemiah Cares

The first thing that I notice here is that Nehemiah asks for a report.  He is genuinely concerned for Jerusalem and for the exiles that have returned.  But let’s get one thing straight.  Nehemiah is primarily concerned with the relationship between God and God’s people.  The health and safety of the people are important, but the people’s relationship with God is of more importance.

Yes, the report is not good for Jerusalem and the inhabitants.  The report actually focuses on the lack of a wall and the harassment of the people.  But we should not presume to know Nehemiah’s focus from the report he receives.  We should know Nehemiah’s focus from the prayer that he prays.  The report is one thing.  Nehemiah’s prayer reveals where his heart is.

Nehemiah Prays

What is it that Nehemiah prays?  His prayer is a simple prayer that follows a pattern that I have spoken of often – and in truth it is a pattern I speak of often because I’ve heard it spoken by others even more often!  The prayer follows a pattern of acknowledgment of God, confession of sin, humble repentance, promise of obedience, genuinely asking for God’s will to be done.  It is such a natural and simple pattern, but it is a pattern that so often we get it messed up.

• Acknowledgment of God: You might think that this step begins in verse 5 with the opening of the prayer when Nehemiah says, “O Lord God of heaven, the great and awesome God who keeps covenant and steadfast love with those who love him and keep his commandments.” (ESV)  But if you think that, you would be wrong.  Yes, that part is definitely a portion of the acknowledgment of God.  But that is not where it begins.  Nehemiah’s acknowledgment of God begins in verse 4 when he fasts.  Fasting is humbling oneself before God, but it is more than that.  Fasting is an acknowledgement that we believe God is the one who sustains us.  Fasting by definition is acknowledging God’s place in our life.  And of course, not only does Nehemiah fast but once he has prepared himself through fasting Nehemiah acknowledges that God is of the heavens and the only one who honestly keeps His commandments.
• Confession of sin: Nehemiah confesses the sins of his people, but he also is quick to remember that he and his father’s household are not perfect either.  The spiritual leader might bring the faults of the people before the Lord, but the spiritual leader is also quick to acknowledge the place that they have been in error as well. 
• Humble repentance and promise of obedience: Nehemiah lets God know that He understands the promise that God gave to Moses so many generations ago.  Nehemiah lets God know that he remembers that if the people are obedient to God’s ways that God has promised to be faithful to them, gather them together, and dwell with them.  Nehemiah is telling God that he understands the role obedience plays in response to God’s promises.  God is faithful and powerful.  Our part is obedience.
• Genuinely asking for God’s will to become our will: Nehemiah acknowledges that God has begun to bring His people back and He has begun to redeem them.  Nehemiah asks that he would have the strength of character to do his part in God’s plan of redemption.

Community

Furthermore, notice that in verse 11 Nehemiah not only asks for himself but that he might be surrounded by people who are fervent about doing God’s will and who not only delight but who fear God.  Nehemiah doesn’t want to be a Lone Ranger.  He doesn’t want to do it all himself.  He doesn’t need to stand in the spotlight and have God’s plan revolve around him.  What Nehemiah wants is to be a genuine piece of a much larger puzzle – a puzzle filled with all kinds of people accomplishing God’s greater overarching purpose.  Now that’s a great vision and a humble vision with which we begin a new book of the Bible!

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