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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