A Kingdom Building Manual

*The sermon manuscript below was generated from the recording by AI …

If you have your Bibles, we’re going to be turning through to the Book of Nehemiah. This is a book about kingdom building. Nehemiah labored to build up the Kingdom of God in the midst of a dark world, and I trust that as we go through it what you’ll see is a lot of similarities to our own story, and a shared joy, and shared work with our saints of old.

“The words of Nehemiah, the son of Hakaliah. Now it happened in the month of Chislev, in the 20th year, as I was in Susa the citadel, that Hanani, one of my brothers, came with certain men from Judah, and I asked them concerning the Jews who escaped, who had survived the exile, and concerning Jerusalem. And they said to me, ‘The remnant there in the province who had survived the exile is in great trouble and shame. The wall of Jerusalem is broken down, and its gates are destroyed by fire.’”

Sometimes in life you have to look backwards in order to move forward. We talked a bit about that this morning when we were thinking about the letter to Ephesus and the fact that they needed to repent, and they needed to remember, and they needed to redo. Well, the same can be said of history. There’s the old adage, “If you don’t learn from history, you’re bound to make the same mistakes all over again.” And we’re hoping to look back into our covenantal history in order to learn, and grow, and serve God and his kingdom better.

Sometimes when you look backwards you make quite profound discoveries. Sometimes you hear of people that look into their genealogy, and they discover they’re related to someone that they had no idea about, or they discover they had a long lost cousin or sibling that they knew nothing about. Sometimes they’re monumental things, like when the reformers, having discovered the gospel again, looked back into church history, and they started to explore the early church fathers. And what they discovered was that, contrary to the Catholic Church, the early church fathers were teaching the reality of the reformed faith from the very beginning, the doctrines of grace.

And may it be likewise for us, that we might look back into Nehemiah because this is our history as God’s covenantal people. We might look back into this history and make discoverings that would change us as a people, that would change us as a church, that would advance the kingdom and the gospel into this area.

You see, we don’t want to be like the elder that was talked about at the men’s group on Friday. Someone made the comment that once an elder said to him, “Why are you reading the Old Testament? Everything’s in the New Testament. Why bother with the Old Testament?” We don’t want to be like that guy, but rather we want to take the call of Paul seriously in Romans 15:4, which says, “Whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, that through endurance and through the encouragement of the scriptures we might have hope.” So Paul says to us, “We look into the Old Testament scriptures so we can have hope, so we can have instruction, so we can have encouragement, so that we might seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness.”

And I want us to begin by stepping back and exploring what we might call the forest of Nehemiah. We’ve just finished a series where we’ve meandered through Psalm 45, and we’ve sort of smelt a lot of the flowers. 17 verses, we did quite a few sermons, and we walked through the forest of Psalm 45. We stopped at every tree, and we looked at the flowers and the beauty, but we didn’t really look at the whole forest of the Psalms, did we? We just focused narrowly. Well, today, we step right back, and we consider the wider story. We consider Nehemiah as a whole forest.

And to do that, we have to begin by considering the covenantal history that Nehemiah is a part of. My parents served in Papua New Guinea as missionaries, most of you know this, and I remember they gave me a DVD from someone in PNG which detailed the story of the mission work that happened there, and they videoed all of their work with this tribe. And, and they went in there, and obviously, they started by learning the local dialect of the tribe, and then what they began doing is trying to give the people a wider perspective of where they were. You see, the only things these Papua New Guinean villagers knew was themselves and the local villages directly around them. Beyond that, they had no idea. And so they started by drawing a map of the local area and showing where they fit in, and then they zoomed out and they showed them that they’re part of a whole bunch of other villages, and part of a whole island, and part of a Pacific area, and part of a world. And, of course, the Papua New Guineans’ minds were exploding. They never had any idea we were part of something so big. They were starting to see the whole forest, right? And without that, they weren’t able to actually enter into the story of the work of God in history.

And we have the same thing, and so we need to see how Nehemiah fits into the covenantal history of God, and it goes all the way back to Deuteronomy 28-30. In Deuteronomy 28 verse 30, the Lord re-establishes the covenant with His people just before they go into the promised land, and He delivers blessings and curses, and He says to them, “If you will walk in my way, if you will be faithful to my covenant, I will bless you. I will bless your storehouses. I will bless your cattle. I will bless your wives. I will bless everything. But if you reject my ways, if you reject me, I will curse you. I will curse the wounds. I will curse everything. And finally, I will drive you away from this land.”

And as the years unfolded, we hear the same thing echoed in a shadow in that prayer of Solomon in 2 Chronicles. Towards the end, Solomon prays that, “If your people rebel against you, and you drive them out into foreign land, and they pray to you, please hear.” And then after Solomon comes Rehoboam, and what happens? We’re told in 1 Kings 12 that the nation of Israel is split. We have Judah and Benjamin connected to it in the south, and we have all of the northern kingdoms above it, and now we have 2 nations. And so now the story of God is playing out through 2 kingdoms, 2 nations within the promised land of God.

But we find out very quickly, don’t we, that one kingdom is very corrupt. From its conception, Jeroboam leads the people of Israel into sin, and they march in that sin pretty much the whole way through with just a few exceptions. And so finally, in 2 Kings 17 and 18, the Lord, after threatening and threatening and threatening, and patiently enduring and patiently enduring, sends an Assyrian army that basically destroys Israel and the northern kingdoms for good. He takes them, a Syrian king drives them into other nations and brings other people, the Samaritans, the Sumerians, to live in the land.

And so then we’re just left with Judah, but by this time, Judah’s not much better. They’ve got 2 more good kings, Hezekiah and Josiah left, the rest of them are bad. And they follow the sins of Israel, and you get the ministries of men like Jeremiah, and men like Isaiah, and the minor prophets who cry out to Judah, “Why do you walk in the way of death? Why do you reject the way of God, who is merciful and just, who is kindly to you? Seek God before it’s too late. Judgment is coming.” And then the judgment begins to be predicted, the Lord begins to say, “Since you will not repent after everything I’ve done for you, I will bring a foreign nation and I will take you away just like I did your sister, Israel.” And sure enough, in 2 Kings 25, Babylon comes, don’t they? And they destroy Jerusalem. They burn it to the ground, and they destroy the temple, and they remove everything, and they take the people, leaving only the poorest of the poor.

And one might be tempted to think the work of God has failed, because Judah and Israel are gone, and yet, Jeremiah the prophet who predicted and threatened Judah also brought a promise. He said to them, “In 70 years, your sin will be atoned for, and I will take you home, and I will resettle you in the promised land, and I will bless you.”

Then the year 538 BC comes around. Cyrus the king of Persia, is upon the throne, and out of nowhere, 70 years after the prediction and after the exile, Cyrus declares, “The Jews must return, and they must rebuild the temple, for the Lord has said.” And they go and they begin work, and they lay the foundation, but they grow tired and weary and slack, and so the Lord faithfully, in the year 520, sends Haggai and Zechariah, and Haggai and Zechariah, what do they do? They prophesy and they say, “Come. People of God, come. Don’t you see? Don’t you understand? You’re spending all of your resources on yourself, and the temple lies in ruins. Take up arms. Rebuild. Rebuild the House of God, for then He will bless us.” And the people rally and they build, and in the year 516, the temple’s done. And you see it recorded in Ezra, the people, a mixture of rejoicing and weeping. Why? Because the old men and women remember the temple in its former glory, and they’re sad. But the young bucks, they rejoice at the sight of a temple of God.

And then 458, we have Ezra doing his work as a priest. He comes to teach the people of God, to set before them the truth, to lay before them what God expects of them, and as a faithful scribe and a faithful priest, he teaches the people of God what they need to do in their worship and praise and in their lives of godliness.

And then finally, we find Nehemiah in 445, 13 years later, and Nehemiah comes on the scene not as a priest, not as a Levite, but we think as a Judahite, someone from Judea. Someone from Judah, I should say. And Nehemiah comes as a governor, as a civil servant, to establish the people of God, the kingdom of God, the visible kingdom of God at that time upon the Earth.

And so we see that the Lord is working a plan, He’s working a process, He’s doing something here. And so to help you sort of get your feel of what it’s like to be Nehemiah, Nehemiah’s grandfather was alive when the temple was built, so he would be able to look to his grandfather and talk to him about the time that the people of God returned from Babylon. His father would have been around in the prime of his age when, when Esther, the story of Esther was playing out. And it’s interesting, because one of the undercurrent narratives in Esther, you may not have thought about this, but one of the undercurrent narratives in Esther is that the people of God haven’t returned. They’re still in foreign land, and they’re more interested in peace and comfort in a foreign land than seeking first the kingdom of God in Israel. They’re distracted, and it leads to all sorts of problems.

But then in Nehemiah’s day, he’s just followed after the ministry of Malachi, who came to correct God’s people and call them to faithfulness, and he serves at the same time as Ezra. And what this teaches us is that God, as a covenantal God, is completely sovereignly committed to his purposes, and he will not let them fail. Assyria, Babylon, the Edomites, the Northern Kingdoms, the Southern Kingdom, all of it is under the sovereign plan and will of God.

And as we approach Nehemiah, this is essential for us to understand because this is our story. And the God of Nehemiah is our God, and he’s still the same. Our existence here today is according to the perfect sovereign will of God alongside every other thing that happens on the face of creation. All of it according to his will. And this should bring us great comfort. Why? Because if the Lord— Well, I shouldn’t say if. Since the Lord is in control, we need not fear. We need not be anxious because, as Jesus says, we can’t add a single day or hour to our life. We can’t make one of our hairs grow gray or not grow gray. We can’t stop our hair falling out, and we can’t stop sickness or death, and yet the Lord is in control of it all. He knows the hairs upon our head. He knows our beginning and our end.

And so as we, as we enter this book, and as we seek first God’s kingdom, which is what this book is so much about, we do so with great comfort knowing that he who holds the strands of covenantal history is our Father. Not just some foreign god, not some thing up there, but a heavenly Father who loves us, and that’s an encouraging thought. No matter what you face today or tomorrow, it is in his hands, so do not despair.

And so we see that Nehemiah, this forest is part of a much bigger world. It’s part of an island, part of a hemisphere, and part of a globe, but we also must see that, that Nehemiah fits within a covenantal story of kingdoms, a covenantal story of kingdoms.

You see, this, this forest that we’re looking at is part of what we call the story of redemption, isn’t it? And it’s important for us to understand the thread that runs in the story of redemption. It’s a story of 2 kingdoms, and it goes all the way back to the beginning, all the way back to Genesis 3:15. Prior to that, prior to The Fall, it was the story of one kingdom, the Kingdom of God, established upon the Earth in peace with 2 vice regents to rule it together as husband and wife. But then The Fall took place, and then the Lord says those words in Genesis 3:15, “There will be enmity between you and the serpent, between you, the serpent, and Eve, and between both of your offspring.” And from that moment, 2 kingdoms set up in opposition to one another, the Kingdom of God and the kingdom of darkness, the kingdom of the serpent and the kingdom of the seed of the woman.

And from that moment on, everywhere you look, you see 2 kingdoms at war. You see it with Jacob and Esau. You see it with David and Goliath. You see it with the northern and southern kingdom. You see it with Israel and the Philistines. You see it and will see it in Nehemiah, as Nehemiah seeks to rebuild a kingdom and build walls and labor for the sake of the Kingdom of God, and as they do that, they will suffer, and they will have opposition against them. And as they have opposition, what we will see is, is not men. I mean, they’re people, but what we will really see is the kingdom of darkness seeking to destroy the Kingdom of God, because the devil wants to overthrow God.

And, and this, this kingdom battle culminates when Christ comes. This is why, by the way, you see so much demon possession when Jesus is upon the earth. It’s not just that back then it showed up, but now it doesn’t. It’s because the entirety of the spiritual warfare culminates in the moment of the earthly ministry of Christ. And so, every evil spirit is flooding their way to Jesus and the disciples. Why? Because they want to destroy the Kingdom of God before it fully gets established in Christ, and they throw their weight against it. And they win, right? Because they kill Jesus. And as the devil chuckles in victory, he gets 3 days of joy, doesn’t he? 3 days, he celebrates his victory over the Kingdom of God. He’s finally done it. There would be enmity between the seeds, and he’s won the battle.

Ah, but what happened on Easter Sunday? Up from the grave, he rose. And what the devil didn’t realize was that the moment of his so-called victory was the sealing of his own demise and the destruction of the kingdom of darkness, so that Paul can say to the church in Colossi, “He has, in His crucifixion, He has put them to public shame.” He is, in His crucifixion, He’s put all of His enemies to shame, because He’s victorious. He’s risen from the dead.

And then comes to pass those wonderful words of Matthew 16:18. “I shall build my church, and the gates of Hades will never overthrow it.” And so, from Acts onwards, what do we see? We see the Kingdom of God advanced in the Church of Christ, and the Church of Christ labors forth, and the darkness seeks to overwhelm it, but it’s never able. It’s like John 1, “The light has come into the world, but the darkness could not overcome it.”

And so, as the Kingdom of God advances through the Church of Christ, we only see victory, because the Church of Christ never suffers a defeat. Yes. The Nigerians dying for their faith are not being defeated. They’re being crowned with victory and glory. And in their deaths, they are saving people into the kingdom of light.

This is the war of 2 kingdoms, and it’s very important for us to see, brothers and sisters, that God is in the midst of this. In the Book of Nehemiah, and in our day, advancing His kingdom and fighting the kingdom of darkness, He is doing His business, and He’s doing it through us, so that the Apostle Paul can say in Ephesians 6, “You wrestle not against flesh and blood,” right? It’s not people. People aren’t the problem. You have to get your head around that. The people butchering Nigerians are not the problem. The people that oppose us, the people that slammed the doors in our faces on Thursday as we went door-knocking, they’re not the problem. We battle against principalities, spiritual forces of darkness.

And so, what are we called to do? Well, it’s not, “Take up thine easy chair.” It’s, “Put on the armor of God and fight the fight of the faith.” You’re all enlisted. You’re all conscripted, you don’t get a choice. It’s not just men that go to this war. Men, women, and every child of faith has a part to play. They must put on Christ’s armor and labor for the kingdom.

This is captured really beautiful by a- a qua- a quality Dutchman, they’re always Dutch, uh, a- a man named Kuyper. I’ll forgive you, Chris. Kuyper, Abraham Kuyper said these words, “If at once the curtain were pulled back, and the spiritual world behind it came into view, it would expose to our vision a struggle so intense, so convulsive, sweeping everything within its range that the fiercest battle ever fought on Earth would seem by comparison to be a mere game. Not here, but up there, that is where the real conflict is waged. Our earthly struggle drones in its backlash.” I hope you understand what he’s saying. The reality of the spiritual war which you are in makes World War II look like toy armies. And we must be involved.

We are in Karaka, brothers and sisters, to take enemy forces captive, and to bring them into the kingdom of light, and cons- conscript them to take up their cross and to put on the armor of God and to march forth victoriously.

And so we see in the Book of Nehemiah a covenantal history, a covenantal kingdom, and we also see a covenantal people. A covenantal people.

You see, this is a forest, this book, but every forest has trees in it. And the same is true of Nehemiah. The Book of Nehemiah is made up with real people. Sometimes we forget that the people in the Bible stories, they’re just like you and me. They’re not superhuman. They’re men, they’re women, with strengths and weaknesses. They have successes and they have failures. They’re bold and sometimes they’re afraid, and- and there’s a variety of them.

And of course, the chief- chief figure is who? Well, Nehemiah, of course. That’s why Protestants name it after Nehemiah, it’s Nehemiah’s book. Nehemiah’s an interesting character, I’m not sure if all of you will like him very much. He’s definitely not a Kiwi, I can assure you of that. This book is a little bit like, uh, The Life and Diary of Nehemiah. I don’t know if you’ve ever read a life and diary of someone, my favorite book of all time is The Life and Diary of Robert Murray M’Cheyne. One of our sisters is reading it at the moment. Uh, a second favorite of mine is The Life and Diary of Andrew Bonar, who wrote Robert Murray M’Cheyne’s one. And- and in A Life and Diary, you don’t just get the diary, and you don’t just get biography. You get this intermingling of both with his storytelling, and there’s interspersed comments, and we’ll see that with Nehemiah so that all of a sudden he’ll just cry out, “God, remember my righteousness,” in the middle of the book. And it just leaps off the page and you hear his heart.

But I say he’s an interesting character. He’s- he’s quite strong, one might say. Have, have a look at chapter 6. I want to illustrate this to you, so you can prepare yourself for the figure of Nehemiah. N- Chapter 6 is all about a whole bunch of suffering and difficulties, and in Verse 2, 2 bad guys, Sanballat and Geshem, send to him and say, “Come, let’s meet together, at Hakkephirahm in the Plain of Ono.” Oh, that’s pretty harmless, isn’t it? Let’s have a meeting. Let’s discuss what’s going on. And Nehemiah writes back and says, “I’m doing a great work, and I cannot come down. Why should the work stop while I leave it and come down to you?” In other words, “No! Not interested. I’m busy. Go away.” You’re like, “Well, that’s a bit rude, Nehemiah. Mm-mmm. Why don’t you just meet with them?” Maybe they’re friendly.

Or, take us another example. In Verse 6, it’s written, “It is reported among the nations and Geshem,” you know, everybody knows it, “that you and the Jews intend to rebel.” That’s why you’re building the wall. “And according to these reports, you wish to become their king, and you’ve also set up prophets to proclaim concerning you and Jerusalem, ‘There is a king in Judah.’ Now, the king will hear these reports, so now come, let us take counsel together.” And this is one of my favorite verses in the Book of Nehemiah, and probably the Bible. If you’re ever running into problems, remember this one. “I sent to him saying, ‘No such thing as you say have been done, for you are inventing them out of your own mind.’” You’re crazy. Go away.

Or, see his courage in Verse 10. “Let us meet together in the House of God within the temple. Let us close the doors of the temple, for they’re coming to kill you. They’re coming to kill you by night.” But Nehemiah says, “Should such a man as I run away? And what man, such as I, could go into the temple and live? I will not go in.” He’s a man of, of a steel spine.

He’s also gonna do some things you might not be rapt about. He’s going to threaten to pluck people’s beards out, and beat them with rods. Do you know what for? For selling stuff on the Lord’s day. He, he is a take-no-prisoners type of guy, but he’s also a w- a wonderful man of prayer. And so as soon as he is confronted in Chapter 1 with the problem, his immediate response is to fall upon his face in fasting and prayer and seek God, because Nehemiah knows that there is no success without the Lord being at work. He’s also a man of great suffering. He will suffer all throughout the book from friends, from family, from locals, from other nations, over and over again.

We also get a hint of the work of the Lord in his name. You see, his father’s name is Hakaliah, we’re told in Verse 1. Hakaliah means wait patiently on Yahweh. And his brother’s name means the Lord is gracious, and Nehemiah’s name means the Lord comforts. And so you picture little Jerusalem with its broken wall, threatened by people, and Nehemiah’s father, wait patiently upon the Lord, says, in naming his children, “the Lord is gracious.” People, wait patiently on the Lord because the Lord is gracious and the Lord comforts. And it’s like, in the very naming of this family, we get a testimony of what God is gonna do in the Book of Nehemiah. He is going to come to his people as their refuge, as we sung in Psalm 46, as their strength, and he will still the nations, because the battle belongs to the Lord.

Then we’re gonna meet Ezra the priest, a wonderful, godly man who delights to uphold the Word of God. And you know what? We’re gonna meet Jehoiada and the sons of Hassenaah. We’re gonna meet Melatiah. We’re gonna meet Eliashib and Malchijah and Hanun and Shallum, and I’m sure you all know who they are. We have a wonderful history of nothing about them. We’re gonna hear of goldsmiths and fishermen and priests and all sorts of different people. We’re gonna hear about old people and young people and all the way in between. And you know what they’re all doing? Seeking first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness. Why? Because one Nehemiah can never rebuild the wall. One Nehemiah cannot build the Kingdom of God.

You know the old saying, “It takes a ho- uh, takes a tribe to raise a child, a village to raise a child”? takes a church to build a kingdom. I can’t do it, and you can’t do it, and yet, here’s the thing to learn, the Lord delights – and this is the thing that I think is so relevant for us in this book – the Lord delights to use ordinary men, women, boys, and girls through ordinary means to advance His kingdom.

Let me say that again. The Lord covenantally delights to use ordinary people like you and like me, using ordinary means. You’re gonna note there’s no miracles in this book at all. Not one. Nothing spectacular happens. Just ordinary things, picking up a hammer, picking up a chisel, picking up a sword, doing their part, and through that, a great work is accomplished, and that should be a great encouragement to you and I, shouldn’t it? Because we don’t need superstars to advance the kingdom into Karaka. We don’t need mega-pastors. We don’t need incredible programs. We don’t need miracles. We don’t need epic conversions. We just need people like you, just ordinary people taking up the plow and doing the work of the kingdom, and he will be delighted to use that to push back the kingdom of darkness in this place. Maybe not today. Maybe not tomorrow. The wall of Jerusalem was not built in 6 months, but He will use it to advance His kingdom one day at a time.

And so as we, as we stand back from the Book of Nehemiah this Lord’s Day, and as we seek to look backwards in order to move forward, it’s really important that we- Ah! we throw ourselves wholeheartedly into this book.

Let me encourage you with one very simple, practical way to benefit from the Book of Nehemiah. Read it every week. Ah! It’s not very long. Ah! It’s 13 chapters. Divide it across a week, or maybe if that’s too much- Ah! you’re a busy mom and you’ve got no time, or you’re a busy workman and you’ve got no time, split it across 2 weeks. Read a chapter of Nehemiah every day and engross yourself in the story. Make it your own story and see what the Lord might do in your own heart, that you might be drawn into being not just a Christian, but a kingdom-builder like Nehemiah, that you might take up the hammer, that you might take up the chisel, and do the work of the kingdom here in Karaka, because at the end of the day, we all have to seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, right? It’s not just a command for the disciples. It’s a command for all of us to live for a kingdom that doesn’t perish, a kingdom that doesn’t fade, a possession which no one can break in and steal, and the moth cannot eat, and rust cannot destroy.

Th- the commentator Matthew Henry, reflecting in his introduction upon this book, he summarizes Nehemiah and Ezra in a really beautiful way. He looks back into history at these 2 men, and he says these words.

“In my esteem, Ezra the scribe and Nehemiah the governor, though neither of them wore a crown, commanded an army, conquered any country, or were famed for philosophy or, or oratory, yet both of them, being pious, praying men and very serviceable in their day to the church of God and the interests of religion were really greater men and more honorable, not only than any of the Roman consuls or dictators, but than Xenophon, Demosthenes, or Plato himself, who lived at the same time as them. And they were the bright ornaments of Greece.” End quote.

So the greatest philosophical minds of Greece who lived at the same time as them don’t even come close to 2 simple men seeking first the kingdom of God.

Brothers and sisters, may God grant to you and to me the faith to seek first the kingdom and His righteousness and to see it take place here in our very midst.

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