Nehemiah Series Rebuilding the Walls.
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Nehemiah 7: Leading the Community
Nehemiah 7: Leading the Community
This is another one of those chapters with a hige number of names and although the vast majority of these names, represent people unknown to us, they are known to God and they mattered!
Psalm 139 says that God created you in your mother’s womb
Isaiah 49:16 says that God has “engraved you on the palm” of His “hands” and that your “walls are ever before” Him which is a way of saying, where you live, your community; your habitation is known to God!
“The Wall had been rebuilt”(Neh 7:1).
Well done people of Isael and especially well done Nehemiah for having the vision; responding to God’s call and bringing about the change!
That is what Nehemiah did! Nehemiah had come to Jerusalem from Susa with a single-minded objective: to rebuild the massive but ruined wall of Jerusalem.
He had faced tremndous obstacles.
First, he had to gain permission from the Babylonian emperor Artaxerxes, which meant getting him to reverse an earlier state policy against rebuilding the Jewish capital.
Secondly, once in Jerusalem, Nehemiah had to devise a plan for accomplishing his task and then find ways to motivate the people to tackle it.
Thirdly, when the work got started, he was opposed by the governors of the surrounding provinces and by injustices within Israel. Nehemiah’s enemies tried to stop the work by ridicule, threat of violence, intrigue, harmful rumors, and intimidation.
Fourthly, Nehemiah’s wealthier countrymen almost scuttled the work by their oppression of the poor.
But Nehemiah pressed on. So great was the task and so great its accomplishment that we can hardly miss the thrill of the superb understatement in Neh 6:15 “So the wall was completed on the twenty-fifth of Elul, in fifty-two days.”
From the time Nehemiah had first heard about the problem when he was in Susa until the wall was finished was only 9 months with the wall being constructed within 2 months of his arrival in the city.
This was a time of fulfillment, and a great sense of accomplishment must have filled the people’s hearts. Soon they would celebrate that great accomplishment and dedicate these walls and doors with singing and pageantry (Neh 12:27–43).
What perseverance! What courage! Cyril J. Barber writes: “His was the faith that moves mountains. His confidence in God gave him the courage to plod on in spite of the clouds of opposition that gathered around him. He boldly championed the cause of right and scorned the things that would inspire fear. Nehemiah’s courage helped him attain new heights of achievement. Armed with this fortitude, he turned obstacles into opportunities, and outward trials into personal triumphs.“
If ever there was a time when Nehemiah could have been tempted to sit back and take credit for his success, it was when the wall was completed. But he did not. What he did next shows his greatness and exemplifies what we must do as we glorify God:
Leading by giving Glory to God:
In Neh 6:16, Nehemiah gave glory to God. He says, “When all our enemies heard about this, all the surrounding nations were afraid and lost their self-confidence, because they realized that this work had been done with the help of our God” (v. 16). Nehemiah gave glory to God for his achievement. He understood that ultimately God is behind all success and blessing because it is God who gifts us with teh life and gifts and talents and strengh to do great things!
We need to remember to acknowledge God and give thanks to him regularly and fervently, especially as we are climbing the the long ladder of success,. Let us heed the words of Deut 8:17-20 “You may say to yourself, “My power and the strength of my hands have produced this wealth for me.” But remember the Lord your God, for it is he who gives you the ability to produce wealth, and so confirms his covenant, which he swore to your forefathers, as it is today. If you ever forget the Lord your God and follow other gods and worship and bow down to them, I testify against you today that you will surely be destroyed. Like the nations the Lord destroyed before you, so you will be destroyed for not obeying the Lord your God.”
We must be careful when we think we have reached a pinnacle, not to forget tthat our success is not an exclusive achievement, all manner of people, parents, sibblings, teachers, etc and especially God your Creator has given you this privilege and He can take it away!
Francis Chan struggled with pride as a pastor. He ultimately resigned as a pastor and currently works as a missionary and speaker. Chan has stated…It’s pride, plain and simple, that keeps me from giving God all the glory and keeping some of it for myself. It is a battle that we all fight in some form or another, some of us daily or even hourly.
I love the fact that Sir Isaac Newton, so brilliant, changing the way we understand the Universe; discovering the laws of gravity and motion and inventing calculus, underpinning much of modern physics and engineering. “Nature, and Nature’s Laws, lay hid in Night.
God said, Let Newton be! and All was Light. –Alexander Pope. Yes, Newton believed he was put on Earth to decode the word of God, by studying both the scriptures and the book of nature. For him, theology and mathematics were part of one project to discover a single system of the world, God’s world! - This is what he said: “The true God is a living, intelligent and powerful Being … He governs all things, and knows all things that are or can be done...I don’t know what I may seem to the world, but, as to myself, I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.” - He gave glory to God!
Matthew 23:12 - “Whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted.” Denzel Washington in 2019 was given American Film Institute's 47th Lifetime Achievement Award. A great actor; a world-renowned celebrity, stood before the audience f fellow celebrities who had given him a standing ovation and what he said was so moving, “I am up here to say thank you to God for giving me this ability. For blessing me; for shaping me; for chastizing me. For teaching me, for punishing me. For allowing me to be a vessel to touch people around the world…If nothing else, I am living proof of the power of God...the opportunities that I have been afforded, I have been given by the grace of God.”
They gave glory to God! Just like Nehemiah gave glory to God and this was the secret of his continued usefulness to God beyond the accomplishment of his initial objective of building the wall which is why the book does not end with chapter 6; the second half is filled with equally remarkable achievements because once the wall is rebuilt, the people need to be rebuilt as well!
2. Leading by Confronting the Problems that still remained.
Nehemiah reports his achievement, he does not allow success to blind him to his continuing problems.
There are problems and Nehemiah admits them as the end of chapter 6 shows (vv. Neh 6:17–19): “Also, in those days the nobles of Judah were sending many letters to Tobiah, and replies from Tobiah kept coming to them. For many in Judah were under oath to him, since he was son-in-law to Shecaniah son of Arah, and his son Jehohanan had married the daughter of Meshullam son of Berekiah. Moreover, they kept reporting to me his good deeds and then telling him what I said. And Tobiah sent letters to intimidate me.”
Tobiah had been a source of opposition all along. A constant thorn in his side causing trouble even at the very end of the book (in chap. 13). His opposition was particularly troublesome for three reasons:
(i) he was a Jew, like Nehemiah,
(ii). he was influential - he had profitable trading agreements with the wealthier classes in Jerusalem (this is what the words under oath seem to refer to), and
(iii) he was connected - linked to the wealthier Jewish families by marriage. When we remember that it was these very families that had been oppressing the poor and that Nehemiah had forced to back down, return what they had extorted, and abandon their policies, we can understand how these people might well have continued to resent Nehemiah despite their public change of heart and how Tobiah might have had strong allies in them.
Tobiah represente a group of disaffected people, drawn together by the desire to see things fall apart so that they could step back into the gap and take control, having the upper hand in Judah once again.
The Bible never promises that life will be easy, that a believer will never be misunderstood, or that everyone will like believers.
Nehemiah was faithful in spite of the threatening opposition by those around him.
Does this apply to us? It does indeed. We live in a sinful and wicked world, and our calling to live and work for the Lord Jesus Christ in that world is never ended. and will never be plain sailing.
We are called to be faithful in teh Lord’s work - “Therefore, my dear brothers and sisters, stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain.”(! Cor 15:58).
3. Leading by Delegating Authority to Faithful Believers:
Nehemiah’s first step after having completed the rebuilding of the wall was to make a few key appointments.
Neh 7 opens by telling us about three general categories of appointments - gatekeepers, singers, and Levites - and two specific ones: his brother Hanani as the civil leader of Jerusalem and Hananiah as the military commander in charge of Jerusalem’s new defenses: “After the wall had been rebuilt and I had set the doors in place, the gatekeepers and the singers and the Levites were appointed. I put in charge of Jerusalem my brother Hanani, along with Hananiah the commander of the citadel, because he was a man of integrity and feared God more than most men do” (Neh. 7:1–2).
Notice that loyalty and godliness were important in these appointments.
Hanani was his “brother” and could be counted on and Hananiah, was a soldier and more importantly “ a man of integrity and feared God more than most men do” (Neh. 7:1–2).
Nehemiah was confident that these men could be trusted to carry out his instructions - Neh 7:3
Loyalty and godliness is not perfection it is commitment to be somethign and become something. To put yourself wholeheartedly into the work of the Lord in spite of your sinfulness and frailty. - Col 3:23-24 “23Work willingly at whatever you do, as though you were working for the Lord rather than for people. 24Remember that the Lord will give you an inheritance as your reward, and that the Master you are serving is Christ.
Nehemiah then proceeded to organise the people - Neh 7:4-5 “Now the city was large and spacious, but there were few people in it, and the houses had not yet been rebuilt. So my God put it into my heart to assemble the nobles, the officials and the common people for registration by families. I found the genealogical record of those who had been the first to return.”
Nehemiah is making use of the “archives” of Ezra found in chapter 2. Ezra’s purpose in compiling the list was religious to determine who among the body of returned exiles were Jews? Nehemiah has a different concern, who among the returned exiles is able to repopulate and revitalize the city? This was vital because unlesa the city was populated, the viability of Jerusalem was in question
The document contains nine categories
1. The original leaders (vv. 6–7), including Zerubbabel the civil leader and Jeshua (or Joshua) the religious leader, who together brought the first body of exiles to Judah after Cyrus permitted their return. see on Haggai and Zechariah. Zerubbabel was of the royal line of Judah. From Joshua there descended fourteen successive generations of high priests.
2. Jews who were laymen (vv. 8–38). The first part list 18 individuals from whom the then-living descendants came and the second part lists 20 towns in which the returning exiles settled.
3. Priests (vv. 39–42), descendants of Aaron, Moses’s brother. They were responsible for the service of the great temple altar and aspects of the feasts. David had organized the priests into twenty-four families, each responsible for a two- or three-week tour of temple duty. Nehemiah’s list mentions only four of these families, presumably the only ones who returned. Nehemiah lists just over four thousand priests—about one-tenth of the total census.
4. Levites (v. 43), the descendants of Levi, one of the original twelve patriarchs. Levites also served in rotation, and their job was to assist the priests descended from Aaron. Surprisingly, a very small number is listed, meaning that only a minority of the Levites had returned from Babylon.
5. Singers (v. 44), like the gatekeepers who follow, were taken from among the Levites. Their task was to assist in the temple worship (cf. 2 Chron. 25–26).
6. Gatekeepers (v. 45), like the Levites and the singers were the categories of temple staff appointed by Nehemiah.
7. Temple servants (vv. 46–56), were assistants to the Levites, just as Levites were assistants to the descendants of Aaron. The Gibeonites had been appointed to this role after they had deceived the Israelites at the time of the conquest. In fact, these actually might have been their descendants, now incorporated into the nation by circumcision.
8. The descendants of the servants of Solomon (vv. 57–60). This group was closely linked to the previous one, a common total serving for both groups.
9. Those whose ancestry was questionable (vv. 61–65). These were in two categories: laymen and those who claimed to be priests but who were excluded from priestly functions until their case could be decided by submitting it to a sacred casting of lots known as the Urim and Thummim.
About a 100 years after these people accepted the challenge to come to Jerusalem, Nehemiah honored their faith and commitment to God and their hard work.
They had set an example for the people of Nehemiah’s day. Nehemiah then challenged a new group of people to pull up stakes and leave their comfortable country farms and move only a short distance into the city of Jerusalem.
Heb 6:10 says: “God is not unjust; he will not forget your work and the love you have shown him as you have helped his people and continue to help them.”
Every generation of believers has a challenge to carry on the tradition of striving to do great things in the name of God. Opposition will always be present, the move will always require faith, but God will always guide and bless his people as they give themselves and their money to the work of God in this hostile world.
4. Leading by Prioritising the Work of God:
The final action taken by Nehemiah in his attempt to consolidate his earlier work and prepare for the tasks to come was to provide for those who would now be working in the temple.
We find this in the next verses of the chapter (Neh 7:70–72): “Some of the heads of the families contributed to the work. The governor gave to the treasury 1,000 drachmas of gold, 50 bowls and 530 garments for priests. Some of the heads of the families gave to the treasury for the work 20,000 drachmas of gold and 2,200 minas of silver. The total given by the rest of the people was 20,000 drachmas of gold, 2,000 minas of silver and 67 garments for priests. The priests, the Levites, the gatekeepers, the singers and the temple servants, along with certain of the people and the rest of the Israelites, settled in their own towns.”
We have already observed that a number of the wealthier Jewish families were teamed up with Tobiah, and that these would be hostile to Nehemiah’s plans and reforms. But in fairness to the rich, it needs to be noted that not all were opposed to Nehemiah.
According to scholars, the families of Israel gave gold and silver worth, in today’s currency, more than $5 million.
These gifts were a barometer of their love for God and their belief that God would supply their financial needs in the future. This money was supplemented by gifts from Jewish people who stayed in Babylon (Ezra 1:6).
Nehemiah was a layman but he cared for th temple of God because he was primarily a godly man who knew that you rebuild a city and rebuild a people by being primarily committed to God and His glory.
We have already seen many great traits of leadership in Nehemiah. Here we see four more.
First, he GAVE GLORY TO GOD.
Second he CONFRONTED THE PROBLEMS
Thiurd he APPOINTED GODLY LEADERS
Fourth He PRIORITISED THE THINGS OF GOD
Ultimately Nehmeiah knew that : ‘Unless the Lord builds the house, its builders labor in vain. Unless the Lord watches over the city, The watchmen stand guard in vain.” (Psalm 127:1)
This ia vital lesson for us a sleaders of WCF today and for us as the people of God, working for the glory of God here at WCF.