The Book Of The Living (Nehemiah 7:5-73)

Introduction

A. Preliminaries

Good Morning.

We will continue our series in the Book of Nehemiah this morning.

We will finish the seventh chapter of Nehemiah today. The text for the sermon this morning will begin at verse 5, and go to to the end of a very long chapter, finishing up at verse 73. Our text starts on Page 473 of the Bibles in your pews.

Chapter 7 is another long list of names. Genealogies and Tribes and various responsibilities. I will not be reading all 70ish verses to you this morning before we begin. That would take up about 1/3 of my sermon time, and would do little more than demonstrate that I struggle with Old Testament name pronunciation just as much as you do.

But we will read the introductory and concluding elements of our passage this morning, starting at verse 5:

Nehemiah 7:5–6 ESV

Then my God put it into my heart to assemble the nobles and the officials and the people to be enrolled by genealogy. And I found the book of the genealogy of those who came up at the first, and I found written in it: These were the people of the province who came up out of the captivity of those exiles whom Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon had carried into exile. They returned to Jerusalem and Judah, each to his town.

And then comes the long list: the families who returned from the Babylonian exile including the Levites, the priests, the temple servants, and those whose names could not be properly traced.

Then our chapter concludes with these words:

Nehemiah 7:73 ESV

So the priests, the Levites, the gatekeepers, the singers, some of the people, the temple servants, and all Israel, lived in their towns. And when the seventh month had come, the people of Israel were in their towns.

This is the Word of the Lord

Thanks be to God!

B. Background

A text like this is difficult to preach, because it confronts us with a few challenges::

It’s a long list of names

This is the second time we’ve seen this list. The first time we saw it was back in Ezra 2! Here in verses 5 and 6, Nehemiah tells us this is the same list.

Even though the lists are the same, there are some differences, particularly in the numbers or the counting.

This is not a “listing out” of the people in front of Nehemiah (as is usually the cast with lists like this). The people on this list are all dead. This is the original list of returned exiles from the Book of Ezra. Most if not all of the people named in this list are dead.

And it would not surprise me if many preachers would—for those reasons—skip this portion of the book when preaching through Ezra/Nehemiah. It is material already covered, after all. And I say that not out of pride—it makes good sense to me.

But I wanted us to give a Sunday to this for the simple reason that all Scripture is profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be competent, equipped for every good work.

Nehemiah tells us that this is the same list as the one back in Ezra 2. But there are differences. And this has caused more than a few people to suggest that this could threaten the doctrine of inspiration—can’t God get his story straight?

It was John Wesley who said,

If there be any mistakes in the Bible, there may as well be a thousand. If there be one falsehood in that book, it did not come from the God of truth.

—John Wesley, from a journal entry dated July 4, 1776. Quoted in Ezra & Nehemiah (REC) by Derek W.H. Thomas, pg. 312.

And to this, we should all say “Amen.” (I don’t often tell you to “Amen” John Wesley in my sermons, so enjoy this moment.) We are a people who believe in the doctrine of inerrancy. That the Bible is without error in its original manuscripts, though we do make room for variants and differences in the numerous manuscripts we have. We know where those are, and we have comprehensible ways of understanding them. (More on this next year on Wednesday Nights).

But the problem we face here is not that the Bible has an error. The problem we face is that we read the Bible like moderns and not like ancients. Scripture, in its accounting is not afraid to round numbers up or down, to arrange events topically rather than chronologically, and to have softer rules than we do on citation.

So, there are some slight variations of names in these two lists, and as many as half of the numbers disagree. But honestly, the most likely explanation here is that this 90-year-old list had probably been updated to account for births and deaths shortly after the Exile’s return.

So my encouragement to you when you find seeming contradictions in the Bible’s text is (and I say this with all charity) think a bit harder about why differences might exist before we despair of the doctrine of inerrancy.

C. Transition to Sermon

So, before us this morning is a genealogy. A list of names. And while we are given to gloss over such parts (and quickly!) I want us to take a few minutes this morning and reflect on why God put these lists in His Bible.

I think there are at least three answers we can reflect on together this morning.

D. Sermon Points

1. Promises are for People

2. God’s People have Names

3. These Names Live Forever

E. Sermon Prayer

Let’s Pray:

Our God and Father, as we open Your Word, we ask that you would send forth your Holy Spirit. The same Spirit who breathed faith into the saints of old.

Grant that this morning we might encounter our Savior in the Word Preached. That we would hear from Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, the firstborn from the dead, and the One who is gathering all Your saints into one body.

Grant that by your words we would be sanctified in Your truth, that we might run the race with endurance, fixing our eyes on Him who reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God, forever and ever.

Amen.

I. Promises are for People

We left off last Sunday at verse 4, and I touched very briefly on the last verse but didn’t really explain its meaning or significance. So let’s start there now. Verse 4 tells us that

Nehemiah 7:4 ESV

The city was wide and large, but the people within it were few, and no houses had been rebuilt.

So the wall building project is done. Jerusalem is now far more secure against her enemies. But a major portion of the city’s population actually lived outside the walls.

Basically, what had been going on is that the city had been artificially populated with wall-builders for several months. The work is done, so they’ve gone back to their homes and families outside the walls, and the city of Jerusalem is left thinly populated, with less than 10% of the population living inside the city.

So what is Nehemiah’s motivation in grabbing this genealogy book? He’s engaging in ancient city planning. His goal was to move the people back into the walls of Jerusalem. This is not because there’s some sort of explicit virtue in living inside a city rather than out in the country. This is because this city was God’s city, and it’s where God’s people were promised to dwell.

And that is why he tell us in verse 5:

Nehemiah 7:5 ESV

Then my God put it into my heart to assemble the nobles and the officials and the people to be enrolled by genealogy.

Only one kind of person gets to call the Sovereign Creator of the Universe MY God, and that is someone in covenant relationship with him. He’s using the same language as David in Psalm 23 who calls the Lord “MY Shepherd” and the same language as Paul in Galatians when he speaks of the Son of God “...who loved me and gave himself up for me.”

Nehemiah says that God had put this into his heart. Reminding us that every good work, from the building of the wall to the review of names, begins with divine initiative.

Nehemiah knew that God had called him to the particular work of strengthening Jerusalem, not because he just had an idea in his heart that it would be good, but because God had promised that Jerusalem would be rebuilt and repopulated.

Jeremiah 31:38 ESV

“Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when the city shall be rebuilt for the Lord from the Tower of Hananel to the Corner Gate...

And the text goes on to name specific corners of Jerusalem and how all of it shall be sacred to the Lord. My point is that Nehemiah wasn’t just saying “I had a feeling one day that it would be really nice if Jerusalem was rebuilt, and I just felt God telling me to do that.”

No, he was saying, God promised this, God commanded that this would be done, and he put it on my heart to carry it out.

And it would be good to take a moment just to glory in this. That God doesn’t only give commands, he shapes the hearts of his people to love what he commands.

Which is no small encouragement! Sometimes you read a command in the Bible and you’re thinking “Why is that in there?” Why does God call us to such responsibility. To such courage. To such conduct in our speech. To such sincerity in our relationships. To such fidelity to gathering together as a people. To husbands who not only love their wives but love to love their wives. To wives who not only respect their husbands, but love to respect their husbands. To children who not only obey Mom and Dad, but who love to do so. To single people who not only pursue faithfulness in the waiting, but also pursue meaningful relationships in the church, and love to do it.

Sometimes God’s commands seem burdensome. But God is kind to win our hearts. To change our minds. To warm us so that we can grab hold of all his words and say “Amen. Let’s go. Let’s live this out. Let’s rededicate ourselves to these things.” To sacrificial love and service, to biblical households, to quiet faithfulness, to glad-hearted singing, to godly joy, to hope in the face of trial.

God puts these things into our hearts. Because his promises are for people. Lots of people. That’s what these lists tell us, right?

II. God’s People Have Names

The list proper begins in verse 7:

Nehemiah 7:7–11 ESV

They came with Zerubbabel, Jeshua, Nehemiah, Azariah, Raamiah, Nahamani, Mordecai, Bilshan, Mispereth, Bigvai, Nehum, Baanah. The number of the men of the people of Israel: the sons of Parosh, 2,172. The sons of Shephatiah, 372. The sons of Arah, 652. The sons of Pahath-moab, namely the sons of Jeshua and Joab, 2,818...

So on and so forth.

Now here I return to a point already made. If I had been given to write this portion of Nehemiah, I’d probably want to shorten it. You would read “And let us not forget that a bunch of Israelites came back, and they were a big bunch, and Amen.”

But God is a better historian than that. He doesn’t work in vague generalities. He builds His city one name and one household at a time. This is how he has always worked, and this is how he is still working today. God’s people has names, and he delights for those names to live on forever.

And I think there’s something especially delightful about the fact that many of these names are so foreign sounding to our ears.

I mean the name Zerubbabel sounds like a gravel spill. But he is a direct descendant of King David, and is in the lineage of the Lord Jesus Christ.

But I want you to think about this in terms almost of a Church Directory. These are the people who at this stage of redemptive history are the ones inheriting God’s promises, trusting them, and living them out in faithfulness. God’s people have names.

And as you read through the list, I would encourage you to use your imagination a bit, and imagine an almost rhythmic kind of record-keeping happening.

That the repetition provides a kind of cadence in the text. Like the sound of bricks being laid. Baruch, Jeshua, Nehemiah, Azariah, Raamiah, Hahamani, Mordcai, Bilshan, Mispereth...

God is building his kingdom the same way he has always build it. By steady, ordinary obedience, name after name after name. By proving himself generation after generation. Because lest we forget, every name on this list is a former slave in Babylon. Now made free to serve the God of Heaven and Earth. And so it is with us.

So there’s a kind of glory to be uncovered here, I think. Because perhaps you’ve heard the expression, sometimes used in census data or even college campus rosters. You’ve heard this: “I’m nothing more to them than a name on a list.”

And sometimes church life can feel this way. I’m on an email list. I get the church newsletter. I get the prayer requests. I get the meal train links. But am I just a name on a list?

And the answer is first, that is not by itself a bad thing. God keeps lists of names that live forever! But second, it also means that if your name is on the list of the people of God, there is yet good work for you to do in His Kingdom.

It might be that there’s a place for you to teach. To consider encouraging God’s people by way of sharing God’s Word with them. It might be that you could teach the children, one of the highest and greatest things you could ever invest your time in, because if you’re old enough to teach the odds are good that the investment will outlive you.

It might be that there’s a place for you to serve by feeding people by tidying a table, and by adding your voice to fellowship and conversation. You might not think much of it, but God delights to work through people, not programs. Programs are only designed so that the people have a way to show up and do their work together.

It might be that God lays it on your heart to encourage a few who need it. Oh, there is such a marvelous power in the ministries of encouragement!

It might be that it’s been given to you to pray. To come before the very throne of God and lift up the names on those lists so that they might win their fights against the world the flesh and the devil.

God’s people have names because God delights to work through people. Ordinary sinners like us, and God says “Yes. I want to make my plan happen through you. Through your work, through your love. Through your prayers.”

In fact, if you go down to verse 43, you find these names

Nehemiah 7:43–45 ESV

The Levites: the sons of Jeshua, namely of Kadmiel of the sons of Hodevah, 74. The singers: the sons of Asaph, 148. The gatekeepers: the sons of Shallum, the sons of Ater, the sons of Talmon, the sons of Akkub, the sons of Hatita, the sons of Shobai, 138.

The Levites. The singers. The gatekeepers. These guys were the worker bees. You’ve probably never heard of the sons of Shallum. But God has. If the sons of Ater made the list, so do the nursery workers. And the youth bake sale organizers. The ones who turn off the lights and lock the doors. Who cook the food and brew the coffee. Who show up even when joint pain would press you back into bed. The Lord sees and acknowledges and delights. Because he knows us by name and remembers us forever.

III. These Names Live Forever

Listen to the last three verses of this chapter

Nehemiah 7:71–73 ESV

And some of the heads of fathers’ houses gave into the treasury of the work 20,000 darics of gold and 2,200 minas of silver. And what the rest of the people gave was 20,000 darics of gold, 2,000 minas of silver, and 67 priests’ garments. So the priests, the Levites, the gatekeepers, the singers, some of the people, the temple servants, and all Israel, lived in their towns. And when the seventh month had come, the people of Israel were in their towns.

After all the counting, all the naming, and all the numbering, what happens? What is the practical upshot of this recall of names? The people give. They put their money where their memory is.

We read that the heads of families brought gold and silver to for what end? To put into the temple. To build the reserves for their work as a people, as a city, as a community, and as a worshipping body.

The point we should take here is that people who remember their past invest in their future.

People who remember the blessings of God in the past, and his faithfulness through the ages—the worth and meaning of that is to provoke us to press forward into the future with renewed hope. This is the kind of God we serve, who has preserved his people by name throughout the ages, shall we now fail to trust him today? Has he forgotten us? No! The long, long list in front of our eyes is proof that he will never forget us. Therefore we will work and fight and build for our children and grandchildren, for they will carry this work on in a day when our names show up on a list of those who have gone on to glory.

And I find this to be a particularly providential reminder on All Saints Sunday. The day that we set aside in our calendar to do what? To remember names. To remember people. To remember stories. To remember faithfulness.

Why? Because the faith of the living is made strong by the faithful examples of the now immortal.

God loves to keep track of names. He does it throughout the Bible, and perhaps most famously in Hebrews 11, when we walk through the hall of faith, remembering the lives and the examples of faithful saints.

Nehemiah is doing something similar here. He knows the wall is finished, but the work of the people is not yet done. And so he refreshes their memory about a census. Not of stones or building materials, but of families.

All Saints Sunday is our own kind of census: a yearly remembering that God knows His people by name.

Those who have gone before us are not lost in the dust of exile; they are written in His book, gathered into His city, and awaiting the day when the New Jerusalem descends in glory.

In Nehemiah’s day, God’s people were rebuilding a ruined city. And they were doing it stone by stone, family by family, name by name.

Today, our Lord Jesus Christ is rebuilding a ruined humanity. And he’s doing it sinner by sinner, saint by saint, name by name.

The genealogies of Nehemiah 7 point forward to another list of names, the one that is mentioned in Revelation 21, at the end of history. A Lamb’s Book of Life, which is opened and contains—it had to be this way, right?—the names of all the people of God who will dwell with him eternally.

So what falls to us today is first, to be mindful of the names of those who have gone before us and finished their course in faithfulness. Remember their example, and let it fuel your own faith and hope and love.

Second, to be greatly comforted by the fact that your God does not forget. We are frail. Our memories are frail. As we get older we get more forgetful. The brain shows its age. We start to forget names, places, dates. Even things very dear to us.

But we serve a God who never forgets us. And even when we struggle to remember, we are forever remembered by the one who will carry us all the way home.

And third, in a world obsessed with making ourselves matter, let us be happily surrendered to the reality that there is only one way to matter forever, and that is to have your name on a list. A list of people who will dwell eternally together by the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ with all the saints. Forever.

In the name of Jesus, Amen.