Weep, Arise, and Build (Nehemiah)

Nehemiah – Formal Elements / Descriptive Data

Text: Nehemiah

CIT: Nehemiah didn’t allow the apparent failure of God’s promises to dissolve his hope or dissuade his desire to do all he humanly could about the situation.

Proposition: No, Jesus has not come back yet, but do not let that dissuade your passion or personal execution of God’s will. Be like Nehemiah. The place to start is prayer.

Statement of Purpose:

(1) MO – Supportive

(2) SO – I want my hearers to avoid becoming disenfranchised because things may not be working out the way they expected.

Title (Topic/Name): Weep, Arise, and Build

Informal Elements / Rhetorical Data

Introduction:

· Quote – “A sad soul can kill you quicker, far quicker than a germ.” ~ John Steinback

· Describe the conditions that led to Nehemiah’s return

· Connect the reproach of God’s people as they dealt with shame (see the entry for Nehemiah in the Dictionary of Biblical Imagery for development of this idea)

The controlling image of the book of Nehemiah is that of starting over. This new start takes several forms: rebuilding the walls of Jerusalem (and defending the building project against hostile surrounding people), renewing the covenant, reinstituting life in Jerusalem and reinstituting temple worship. The excitement of starting life again as God’s people in the old homeland is one of the most attractive features of the book. The orderliness of the account is also one of its salient features, evident partly in the writer’s penchant for lists of names-of those who worked on the walls, of those who returned from exile, of those who signed the covenant, of those who lived in Jerusalem, of the priests and Levites, of the two great companies who gave thanks and went in procession at the dedication of the city walls. The book of Nehemiah emerges finally in our imaginations as a master image of order as well as renewal.

Modern Western readers might be surprised by Nehemiah’s strong reaction to Hanani’s report that the walls of Jerusalem were in ruins and that its gates had been destroyed by fire (Neh 1:3). On hearing this news, Nehemiah “mourned for days, fasting and praying” to the Lord (Neh 1:4 NRSV). The strength of this reaction is even more surprising since Hanani’s news was old news. After all, the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar had destroyed Jerusalem about a century earlier. Nehemiah is not learning about some new devastation that had recently befallen the city. What evokes Nehemiah’s response is not the horror of destruction but something inert: the image of walls and gates lying in a state of disrepair. Clearly, Nehemiah reacts to some connotative meaning of Hanani’s report, some emotive or associational dimension of the image of a wall in ruins.

Why is Nehemiah’s reaction so strong? The first part of Hanani’s report provides the clue: the people living back in Judah were “in great trouble and shame” (Neh 1:3). The ruined condition of the city walls brought “trouble” or “distress” upon the people. More than that, however, it caused them shame. The image of a ruined city, or at least of ruined walls and gates, evoked feelings of humiliation. Nehemiah’s charge to the inhabitants of Judah after he returned and inspected the ruined walls and gate confirms that this is the central issue: “Come, let us rebuild the wall of Jerusalem, so that we may no longer suffer disgrace” (Neh 2:17 NRSV).

Undoubtedly, the ruined walls meant that the Jews were defenseless against attack, but this is not the major problem, at least not at the level of the narrative. The crucial issue is shame. Even as the Jews rebuilt the wall, their enemies stood by mocking them (Neh 2:19; 4:1–5 [MT 3:33–37]). This prompted Nehemiah to ask the Lord to “turn their taunt back on their own heads” (4:4 [MT 3:36]). Nehemiah’s apparent goal was to rebuild a wall, but that project was the vehicle for a deeper purpose: to transfer the Jews’ sense of shame and humiliation on to their enemies. Rebuilding the wall achieves that ultimate goal. When this happened, Nehemiah stated that “all the nations around us were afraid and fell greatly in their own esteem” (Neh 6:15, 16). Although the Hebrew here is difficult, the point seems clear enough: Nehemiah’s prayer had been answered, and now the enemies, rather than the Jews, were experiencing shame and loss of standing.

This association between dilapidation and shame begs explanation. In the ancient world, city building was the pinnacle of a society’s success, an activity that defined it as ordered, civilized and cultured. On the other hand, desolate regions without structures or with ruined structures were understood to be chaotic, disordered, uncivilized—even monstrous and ugly. Cities and buildings represented creation, life, order and beauty. Structures in disrepair and decay were associated with chaos and death. To build or rebuild a structure carried powerful emotive associations. It was more than a mere engineering activity; it was a movement from chaos to order, from death to life. This connotation can be seen in Sanballat’s mockery of the Jews as they rebuilt the city wall: “Will they revive the stones out of the heaps of rubbish?” (Neh 4:2 NRSV). By using the piel stem of the verb ẖ (“to give life, revive”), the rebuilding project is interpreted as a “life-giving” act. Magnificent buildings were the evidence of prosperity and life, dilapidation was a symptom of failure and death. Such successes and failures occurred before the watching eyes of the surrounding nations. Nations that built magnificent structures were held in high esteem by other nations. They were either honored or envied. States whose structures were destroyed or fell into disrepair were held in low esteem by others and so became objects of ridicule.

Although this ideology undergirds the book of Nehemiah, it is found elsewhere in the OT. Song writers acclaimed Jerusalem for the perfection of its beauty (Ps 48:2; 50:2; Ezek 16:14), and its city walls were a source of national pride: “Walk about Zion, go all around it, count its towers, consider well its ramparts; go through its citadels” (Ps 48:12, 13 NRSV). Kings boasted of their great construction projects (Eccles 2:4–6). Conversely, a city in ruins was a matter of national disgrace (Lam 2). When Jerusalem’s walls “lay in ruins” and its gates “had sunk into the ground” (Lam 2:8), this gave Judah’s enemies the excuse to “hiss and wag their heads,” mocking Jerusalem with a cruel parody of the psalmist’s words of praise: “Is this the city that was called the perfection of beauty, the joy of all the earth?” (Lam 2:15, 16 NRSV). The book of Nehemiah is the counterpoint to Lamentations. It is more than a story about a mere reconstruction project. Rebuilt walls and gates are surprisingly evocative images. They speak of deeper realities: the restoration of order and life and the sweeping away of national shame.

· Show how in many areas of “Christianity” today, the testimony of Christ falls under reproach and seek to move the heart of the hearers to empathize with how Nehemiah might have felt to be moved to arise and build.

· Develop the CIT and Proposition above:

CIT: Nehemiah didn’t allow the apparent failure of God’s promises to dissolve his hope or dissuade his desire to do all he humanly could about the situation.

Proposition: No, Jesus has not come back yet, but do not let that dissuade your passion or personal execution of God’s will. Be like Nehemiah. The place to start is prayer.

Statement of Purpose:

(1) MO – Supportive

(2) SO – I want my hearers to avoid becoming disenfranchised because things may not be working out the way they expected.

Body – Development – Outline:

I. Nehemiah Rebuilds the Walls of Jerusalem (Neh. 1-7)

EXP:

Describe the Report of Reproach (1:1-3), Response of Regret (1:4-7), Remembrance of Redemption (1:8-10), and Request for Recognition (1:11);

the Supplication to Return (2:1-8), Survey of Reproach (2:9-15), and Speech to the Remnant (2:16-20);

the Gates: Sheep, Fish, Old, Valley, Dung, Fountain, Water, Horse, East, and Inspection (3:1-32);

Supplication Against Opposition (4:1-6), Perspiration Among Opportunity: Countering Wicked Conspiracies (4:7-14), Continuing the Wall’s Construction (4:15-21), and Commitment Until Completion (4:22-23);

Appealing Extortion (5:1-5), and Anger Over Sin (5:6-13);

Protecting Purity in Ministry (5:14-15), Pressing On through Adversity (5:16), Putting Others in Priority (5:17-18), and Praying Fervently (5:19);

Standing Strong in Opposition: Personally Ambushed (6:1-4), Publicly Attacked (6:5-9), Provocation and Deception (6:10-14);

Accomplishment (6:15), Acclaim (6:16), and Adversaries (6:17-19);

Description of Restoration (7:1), Delegation of Responsibilities (7:2-3), and a Desire for Replenishment (7:4-5);

God’s Prompting (7:5), His Proclamation of His People (7:6-60), His Purging of His Priesthood (7:61-65), and His Provision for His People (7:66-73).

ILL:

Disturb us, Lord, when we are too well pleased with ourselves, when our dreams have come true because we have dreamed too little, when we arrive safely because we have sailed too close to the shore.

Disturb us, Lord, when with the abundance of things we possess, we have lost our thirst for the waters of life; having fallen in love with life, we have ceased to dream of eternity; and in our efforts to build a new earth, we have allowed our vision of the new heaven to dim.

Disturb us, Lord, to dare more boldly, to venture on wider seas where storms will show your mastery; where losing sight of land, we shall find the stars. We ask you to push back the horizons of our hopes and to push us into the future in strength, courage, hope, and love.

—Sir Francis Drake, 1577, explorer and naval pioneer during the Elizabethan era [1001 Illustrations that Connect]

APP:

· God’s people today have remained complacent and apathetic in many ways, to be stirred from this shameful condition, we must see the reproach of Christ around us and move from our duffs to get busy repairing the work of God for His name’s sake.

TS: Having considered how Nehemiah went and rebuilt the walls of Jerusalem, consider now how-

II. Nehemiah & Ezra Revive the Hearts of God’s People (Neh. 8-13)

EXP:

Describe the Proposal (8:1), Pattern (8:2-7), and Product for Expository Preaching (8:8) by feasting from the local storehouse of God’s Word (despite its seeming global famine) can still bring repentance of sin, renewal of faith, revival of strength and rejoicing of heart;

The Fountain (8:9-10a), Fortress (8:10b-11), Finding (8:12-15), and Fruit of Joy (8:16-18) by the delight to understand God’s Word deeper leading to living out God’s truth daily;

the Burden (9:1-3), Backward-Look (9:4-21), and Backsliding of Israel (9:22-38) to escape the cyclone of sin by evacuating to the mountain of the Lord’s strength;

Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia, has inspired a new religion. Yoism, invented by a Massachusetts psychologist, is based on the “open source” principle that the general public creates a combined, creative authority and source of truth.

Yoism operates and evolves over the Internet and has numerous contributors. It shuns traditional religious authorities and divine inspiration in favor of the wisdom of humans. Bob Dylan, Albert Einstein, and Sigmund Freud are among its revered saints.

Dan Kriegman founded Yoism in 1994 to make religion open to change and responsive to the wisdom of people everywhere. “I don’t think anyone has ever complained about something that didn’t lead to some revision or clarification in the Book of Yo,” Kriegman says. “Every aware, conscious, sentient spirit is divine and has direct access to truth.… Open source embodies that. There is no authority.”

—Charles Piller, “Divine Inspiration from the Masses,” LA Times (July 23, 2006)

the Sealing of Covenantal Commitment: To Keep God’s Word (9:38-10:29), To Keep the Family Unit Strong (10:30), To Keep a Day of Worship (10:31), To Keep Up God’s House (10:32-39), and to Settle the Land (11:1-33);

the Priests & Levites Return (12:1-26), and the Rejoicing of God’s People (12:27-47) by their dedication through purity and separation.

ILL:

John Lasseter, Pixar Animation Studios’ genius and director of the hit film Cars, was talking to Michele Norris on National Public Radio. She commented on the amazing photo-realism of the film, which was entirely created by computers. “The cars glisten,” she said. “It looks like we’re seeing photography.”

But she had a question for the moviemaker. “With everything you can do with computer-generated animation, are there still limitations?” Norris asked.

“Absolutely,” Lasseter replied. “The more organic something is in the way it looks or the way it moves, the harder it is to create it with a computer.” This was after he mentioned that every frame of the feature-length film required an average of seventeen hours to create. According to the Los Angeles Times, production costs for Pixar films average about $140 million.

However, no costs were mentioned in a Wall Street Journal review that appeared two weeks later describing a summer exhibit at Brooklyn Botanic Garden. The medium here was photography, not computer-generated anything, and the subject was totally organic. Here is a brief description from the review: “One canvas in magenta red has curling squares of what looked like skin or material; another has furry brown hairs sprouting on green and orange stripes; and on a third, lip-like shapes float on a gray-white background.”

The subject of these abstract photos? Magnified close-ups of tree bark.

“The closer one gets to something man has made, the more its imperfections are obvious,” said Dr. Lewis Foster many years ago. “The more we magnify something God has created, the more we see its perfection.”

—Mark A. Taylor, “From the Editor,” Christian Standard (August 6, 2006)

APP: Sometimes it is easy to become so focused on the physical building of ministry, or the sheer mechanics of programming and functions that we can fail to notice where God is working in the spiritual realm in the lives of those to whom we minister. Let us keep the focus on helping people understand and apply the Word to their lives, even if all the “mechanics of ministry” are not as pristine as we would hope.

Conc: Let thine eye affect thine heart, arise and put your hand to God’s work, but do not allow the devil to distract you from seeing the spiritual accomplishments that are made along the way.

John Lasseter, Pixar Animation Studios’ genius and director of the hit film Cars, was talking to Michele Norris on National Public Radio. She commented on the amazing photo-realism of the film, which was entirely created by computers. “The cars glisten,” she said. “It looks like we’re seeing photography.”

But she had a question for the moviemaker. “With everything you can do with computer-generated animation, are there still limitations?” Norris asked.

“Absolutely,” Lasseter replied. “The more organic something is in the way it looks or the way it moves, the harder it is to create it with a computer.” This was after he mentioned that every frame of the feature-length film required an average of seventeen hours to create. According to the Los Angeles Times, production costs for Pixar films average about $140 million.

However, no costs were mentioned in a Wall Street Journal review that appeared two weeks later describing a summer exhibit at Brooklyn Botanic Garden. The medium here was photography, not computer-generated anything, and the subject was totally organic. Here is a brief description from the review: “One canvas in magenta red has curling squares of what looked like skin or material; another has furry brown hairs sprouting on green and orange stripes; and on a third, lip-like shapes float on a gray-white background.”

The subject of these abstract photos? Magnified close-ups of tree bark.

“The closer one gets to something man has made, the more its imperfections are obvious,” said Dr. Lewis Foster many years ago. “The more we magnify something God has created, the more we see its perfection.”

—Mark A. Taylor, “From the Editor,” Christian Standard (August 6, 2006)