The Wall is Done

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

When I was a, a teenager, there was a, a TV show that I, I loved to watch. I’d come home from school almost every single day and watch this TV show, and it was one of those shows that just sort of ran from episode to episode telling a story, uh, like A little bit like a soap, you know? So how, you know how they s- Run from one episode to another. It wasn’t a soap, don’t worry. Um, but i- at the beginning of every episode, you heard the same thing, “In last week’s episode,” and then you’d get, like, a 2minute summary of what happened last week. And at the end of every episode, you’d get, “In next week’s episode” I guess it was an effective way of not having to create as much story, because you could delete 10% of your work every, every single episode. But every week, y- every day, every episode, you got this little recap that was helpful to remind you of where we’ve been.

And sometimes it’s helpful for us to do the same thing when we walk through stories, right? Because we can sort of get lost in among the trees and lose sight of the forest that’s going on. And the Book of Nehemiah is a forest. It’s been telling a story, hasn’t it? Because as I said earlier, it’s Nehemiah’s life and diary. He’s giving us his journal account of the rebuilding of the wall, the resettling of Jerusalem, the reestablishing it as a city.

And so it all began, didn’t it, with Nehemiah getting a visit from one of his brothers, Hanani, and a group of leaders from Jerusalem? They came and, in chapter 1, they informed him of the state of Jerusalem. The walls were down. They were burnt with fire. They were open to shame and derision and scorn, and they were threatened. And, and within Nehemiah welled up, if you remember, welled up this love, this love for the people of God, this love for the city of God. Even though he had lived in Persia his whole life, he never forgot Jerusalem, did he? As the Psalm says, Psalm 137, “If I forget Jerusalem, may my tongue stick to the roof of my mouth, may my right hand lose its ability.” He never forgot his homeland. And so when he heard of its situation, he was filled with bitterness, filled with anger, filled very much with passion to see something done.

And so he sought God’s face. He prayed. He sought the Lord, and he prayed and he prayed, and he fasted and he fasted. And then when the Lord provided an opportunity, he spoke to the king, and he said to the king- Why should I not be sad? My city is in ruins. The gates are destroyed. The s- the wall is gone. My people are exposed. Of course I’m sad. And the king asks that telling question. It’s a very dramatic moment in the book, isn’t it? When the king says to him, “What would you have me do? What are you asking for, Nehemiah?” And with all courage, Nehemiah asks for permission to return home, to go back and to seek the welfare of the people of God, to rebuild the walls. He gets the blessing of the king. He- he’s bold. He asks him for wood. He asks him for the storehouses of Persia to go back and do the work, and God gives him favor. God gives him favor with the king.

Nehemiah returns, and he investigates the city, and he checks out the walls, and he inspires the people, and he encourages the people, and he calls them to work. He calls them to labor. And he sees fruit, doesn’t he? With one mind and with one heart, the people rally together and- and begin to work. And- and you remember, don’t you? We see- d- we see perfumers working, and goldsmiths working, and blacksmiths working. And we see priests, and we see rulers. We see the rich and the poor alike. Everyone’s there. We saw some daughters gathered together, laboring with hammer in hand. And it was a wonderful picture of the covenantal community of God seeking first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness.

And as they labored and as they worked, what happened? Well, opposition sprung up, didn’t it? From without at first. The local neighbors decided they didn’t really like the idea of Jerusalem having its walls again, and so they began to conspire. And they threatened, and they slandered, and they derided what they were doing, and they made comments like, “Well, if a fox hops on the wall, it’ll just fall over. Look at these clowns,” effectively. “What these guys are doing will never succeed. Will they make a sacrifice and God just magically make the wall appear? They will never succeed.” And then seeing that their derision didn’t work, they took to arms, didn’t they? They took up weapons, and they said, “We will go, and we will kill them. We will sneak in when they’re not expecting it, and we will murder them all. That’ll stop the labor.”

But what did Nehemiah and the people do? They resolutely And we saw them with sword in one hand and hammer in the other, guarding their women and children while laboring at the wall, day and night, week in, week out, tirelessly laboring. But then- but then we saw cracks starting to show within as well, didn’t we? And sadly, infighting, bickering, and an internal problem began to set in, far more dangerous than the threats of the surrounding nations. And yet the Lord dealt with this through Nehemiah. You see, the poor were being oppressed, weren’t they? The- the rich- the rich were making money off- off the victimization of the poor. They were oppressing them. And Nehemiah showed them that, uh, kingdom- kingdom building requires self-sacrificial generosity. And day in and day out, they labored together.

And then we ran into Chapter 6. And in Chapter 6, the- the final attack came pre-wall being finished, and it was attack on Nehemiah himself. We can’t get the people. We can’t get inside, but we can try and bring Nehemiah out. And they put conspiracies together to try and destroy Nehemiah and kill his life.

And after all of these battles in every direction, what must have felt like an absolute lifetime to him, has been several weeks to us, led to success. Success. The wall’s finally finished. They’ve done it. 52 days we’re told. The wall is finished. And that’s where we land today.

And- and it might be tempting to view this like, uh, one scholar does, who in his commentary basically just says, “Ah, verse 15 to- to 19,” and short- sort of through to 7:4, ’cause it’s a unit. It’s just kind of like a boring post-script that gets chucked on the end. You know, you get all the excitement of chapter one through 6, with all this different stuff happening, and then Nehemiah goes, “Oh. Oh, by the way, we finished the wall,” and appends a couple of things at the bottom.

But that’s a complete negligence, isn’t it? It’s a, it’s a complete missing of the picture. You have to put yourself in the shoes of Nehemiah, who’s battled on every front, who’s worked tirelessly, who’s labored for the chu- for the church, the Jerusalem, who’s labored for the people, who’s labored at the wall, who I have no doubt that has had sleepless nights, threats upon his life, is utterly exhausted. And when he writes, “The wall was finished,” that’s a significant moment in his life, isn’t it? I mean, if he’s writing this later on, like a journal, you can imagine him writing that with a smile upon his face, right? Or writing that with tears of relief upon his eyes. “We finally did it. We finally did it. The wall is finally done.”

52 days. It’s hard for us to, to get a handle on what that i- what that looks like. I mean, 52 days is across, what, just over 7 weeks? That means you’ve gotta take 7 sabbat- sabbath days off, the 52. So we’re less than 52 days of actual work. 2.5 kilometers, approximately, of wall. Pressure on every front. 4 to 6 meters high, scholars guesstimate. 2 to 3 meters wide. Now some of it was pretty close to already built, and it was a patch-up repair job. Others, it was decimated completely, and it was a full build. But that, the level of work was huge. It was a massive, a mammoth effort, and it would have been a huge effort to do that if they didn’t have the pressure of the oppression of the poor, the pressure of enemies trying to kill you. The pressure of political, uh, intrigue going on at the same time. The pressure of people inside, like Tobiah’s friends and family, trying to stab you in the back. False prophets trying to get you destroyed. Yet, the people of God did it with all of that happening. They did it while running out of food. Remember, they were selling their children as slaves because they were running out of food. That’s the type of pressure they’re under, and in 52 days, they get this work done.

It’s not without precedent. If you look throughout history, you find lots of amazing examples of huge builds done, but most of those builds have been done in times of affluence and peace, or as an enemy’s approaching, but you still are at peace. They haven’t quite landed, so you chuck all of your resources into this one thing. But to be simultaneously building and being attacked and achieve this is no small feat. It must have been an incredible relief for Nehemiah.

But I think what must have been the most significant release and relief for Nehemiah is the effect of achieving this mammoth effort, the effect of building this wall. It’s a wonderful comment, isn’t it? They built it in 52 days, and then in verse 16 it says, “When all our enemies heard of it, all the nations around us were afraid and fell greatly in their own esteem.” It’s a wonderful picture, isn’t it? I mean, you’ve gotta teleport yourself back to where it all begins in chapter 2. In chapter 2, we’re told that, that the, the enemies of God, Tobiah and the like, they were, they were angry that someone would even come and seek the welfare of the city. They were furious that someone would even help Jerusalem. And very quick, it says in chapter 2 that they derided the people of God, and we saw it again, didn’t we, in later chapters? In 4, in chapter 4, where we see them mocking the people of God. You know, the fox story. It’s, it’s a great one. If a fox jumps on the wall, it’s gonna fall over. The enemies of God mock. “They’re never gonna get it done. There’s no way. There’s no way this wall ever gets finished.”

A- and so as they mock and as they deride, it’s almost like one day they look over and they realize, actually, the wall’s built. They actually did it. Now, we threw everything at them. We attacked their physical safety. We derided them. We tried to discourage them. We tried to make them despair. We threw everything we had against Jerusalem. And they, and they still got it done. The wall’s finished. And, and it’s like the, the mockery, the mockery that they laid upon Jerusalem now falls on their own head, right? They’re now mocked. They’re now the fools. Because the bigger fool is the one who calls someone else a falls- a t- fool, and turns out to be one.

It must be, it must be sweet irony for Nehemiah, right? You could imagine him just like writing them a letter. “Hey, I just wanted to update you on the build progress. Things in Jerusalem are going really well. Our wall is really solid, and we’re enjoying our safety. P.S. I haven’t seen any foxes lately.” It must have been sweet, sweet victory.

You see, Nehemiah and the people of God labored faithfully in the midst of great turmoil and difficulty, shutting their ears to the derision of the enemies of God, trusting in God to build the house, and they saw it happen. And in doing so, they saw God vindicate their name. You see, we don’t have to vindicate ourselves. We never need vindicate ourselves. God is the only one that can truly vindicate. And when you try and vindicate yourself, it normally ends horribly. But God vindicates fully and truly and completely, which is exactly what we see here.

But, but what I think Nehemiah probably loved even more was the comment he makes after that. He says, “We finally built the walls. The enemies were ashamed. The enemies were afraid of us,” but see why. He says at the end of verse 16, “For they perceived that this work had been accomplished with the help of our God.” In, in the Hebrew it, it turns it a little bit different. It says, “They, they saw that God was with us, and that he did it. He accomplished it.” So, they looked, and think with the, the mind of a deriding person, “There’s no way those people ever built this wall,” and then the wall’s finished, and all, all they can do, all they’ve got left is to say, “Well, it wasn’t them. It must have been their god.”

That’s a striking picture, isn’t it? It’s not just, “Ha-ha, the enemies had their taunts turned back on them.” The wonderful thing about this picture is that the enemies of God must give glory to God as God shows his power and strength. A- and you know, that shouldn’t surprise us, because we see that elsewhere in the scripture, don’t we? I- in the start of the Exodus events, w- what, what is the attitude of Pharaoh? Do you remember, right in the very beginning? Do you remember what he says about Yahweh? He says, “Who is the Lord that I should acknowledge him, that I should fear him? Who is he? He’s a nobody. We have our Egyptian gods. I’m not interested in hearing about Yahweh, Moses. You’re distracting my slaves from working.”

By the end, what is he saying, “I have sinned against the Lord.” Now, he doesn’t change his heart, but all of a sudden he becomes a lot more realistic about the Lord, doesn’t he? And what does he think about the Lord when his chariot gets stuck in a river, in the sea, and the floodwaters come folding back in on him? The power of the Lord is made clear, and what they experienced here is the enemies of God had to stop and say, “Only the Lord could do this.”

And this is why the Apostle Paul says, “We’re at our best when we’re at our weakest.” Remember those words? He says, “When we are weak, then we are strong.” He doesn’t say, “When we are weak, God makes us strong.” He says, “When we are weak, then we are strong, because the power of Christ is made perfect in our weakness.” Why? Because the Lord delights to glorify himself through weak vessels, through the small things, the poor things, the shameful things, in order to shame the wise, the strong, and the rich, because it’s just not how humans work, right?

If you’ve got a big job to get done, you don’t find a bunch of poor people with not many resources, do you? You find the local businesspeople. You find the local rich people, and you go to places where the movers and the shakers are, and you find the politicians, and you find the fancy, successful people. You don’t go to people like us. I mean, that makes no sense. If you wanna build a new tower, you don’t come see Reformation Bible Church. Why? Because we haven’t got the money to build a tower, do we?

But the Lord delights to use a tiny little church, unknown by everyone, a tiny little people in the middle of Jerusalem, surrounded by enemies, in order to display His glory and power.

And you know, this has got some wonderful practical use for us, doesn’t it? For one thing, it should make us incredibly positive about seeking first the Kingdom of God. We ought not to be doomsdayers who sit around moping, thinking, “It’s all over. New Zealand’s a train wreck.” Well, i- it is. I mean, it is, let’s be honest. And so there’s no point. We might as well just pack up and go home. We might as well just give up trying.

Brothers and sisters, the Lord is on our side. He who is for us is greater than he who is in the world. And so, we ought to look at this atmosphere outside, we ought to look at the darkness and say, “Praise the Lord. This is a glorious opportunity for the light of the Lord Jesus Christ to shine into the darkness and transform our nation.” Because that’s what the Gospel does. It’s happened throughout history, over and over again. When the darkness is at its deepest, the light shines the most brightly, doesn’t it? This is why one of the catchcries of the Reformation was Post Tenebrae, Lux. After the darkness, light.

And don’t we sit in that wonderful place, where we can be positive as we seek first the Kingdom of God with faith and hopeful expectation. Not worldly hope, you know, wishing, “I really hope it works out.” Biblical hope. Faithful expectation that a God of power will work. Not presumption, but expectation. And this should color our prayer, shouldn’t it? Shouldn’t it color our Wednesday night prayer? I mean, if God, if God works like this, or I s- since God works like this, since God works like this, when we gather to pray, shouldn’t we pray big things?

I’ve told you the story before, but I think of the man that prayed for a convert in India every day. He said, “Lord, I want to see one man get saved every day.” Hmm, you might think to yourself, “Well, that’s a bit outrageous.” You might think to yourself, “Well, I’m, I don’t even know if I’ve seen one in my lifetime.” At the end of a year, he saw 365 converts. And so the next year, what did he do? Well, he rested. He didn’t say, “Oh, this is fantastic. Now I can enjoy a holiday.” No, he said, “Lord, I’d like 2 every day. Work in India.” And at the end of a year, there were 2 every day.

Now, we can’t tell God what to do. We can’t bend his arm and say, “Now, do the same for me,” but we can come to him with big vision, with big hope, with big expectation. Not because of any power in us, but because he has a mighty arm of salvation, doesn’t he? And he can do it again.

I think there’s another instructive lesson in this for us as we think about our enemies, as we think about those who oppose us as individuals, and who oppose this church. Brothers and sisters, we don’t need to vindicate ourselves. We don’t need to defend ourselves. Do you know why? Because the Lord will vindicate his people. The Lord will vindicate his people. He will defend us. If we are of his people, and if we are serving him faithfully, by faith, trusting in the Word, using the means of grace, honoring Jesus Christ by the Word and by the Spirit, we can trust him to vindicate us through faithful perseverance.

What was it that led to the vindication of these believers? Well, you know what? For 52 days, they got up and did what they were meant to do. They got up, they picked up a hammer. They got up, they picked up a brick. They got to the Sabbath and they rested. And the next day, they got up and they went back to bricklaying and wall-building and defending, trusting in God to defend them. They didn’t worry about, you know, starting a anti-propaganda campaign. You know, “We’ve gotta really counteract the slander that’s going on in the surrounding nations so that people realize we’re on God’s side.” No, it’s, “No, no, God’ll sort that out. God’s got this thing sorted. We will just do what God’s called us to do.” And God vindicated them.

And brothers and sisters, we can take that attitude. When you hear people slandering us or attacking us, you know what you can do? You can just shrug your shoulders. And you can say, “Let the Lord vindicate, let the Lord judge. I will leave it to the Lord.” Now, we’re not talking about whether it’s right to speak the truth or not. I’m not suggesting we shouldn’t speak the truth and declare what’s true. We talked about that this morning in the 10 Commandments, didn’t we? The need for truth, the need for setting records straight, the need for justifying people and standing up for the innocent. We’re not talking about that. What I’m talking about is not feeling needed, not feeling the need to justify yourself to others, because it’s only the opinion of God that matters. And what this does is it liberates you. It liberates you to love your enemies. It liberates to love those who oppose you, and not to join in their evil.

You see, one of the temptations for us is to return slander with what? Slander. To repay evil with what? Evil. But if God is the one who vindicates, instead we can put burning coals on people’s heads, and so we can pray for those who persecute us, and we can love our enemies instead, and we can labor faithfully, trusting God with the results. That’s a freeing principle, isn’t it?

There’s another thing here, and it’s, it’s that unless God is with us, we might as well just pack up and go home. Would they have succeeded if the Lord was not on their side? The only reason they succeeded, Nehemiah says, is because God was with us. He was our help. He was accomplishing the work. And so we begin to recognize that we are utterly dependent on him, aren’t we? For all good.

You see, on one hand, we can be incredibly positive about the kingdom, and on the other hand, we can be incredibly realistic, because no matter how hard we labor, we will achieve nothing unless the Spirit of God works in our midst. And I think there are 2 challenges that come from this. 1, as Paul would say, “Do not grieve the Spirit of God.” There’s no faster way to destroy a work of God than to welcome sin in the camp. Isn’t that like the story of the Exodus and the wilderness wandering? We’re going to the Promised Land, but 10 minutes later, there’s sin in the camp. We’re entering the Promised Land, and then Achan steals some stuff, and everything falls on its face. We’re in the Promised Land, and sin enters the camp, and the Philistines take over. And over and over and over again, where sin abounds, the Church languishes.

We must make, m- uh, we must leave no room for the flesh, brothers and sisters, but put the deeds of the flesh to death, because it is godliness and holiness that will maintain our witness and maintain our standing. It is boldness in Christlikeness that is how we shine brightly, right? When, when, when Jesus speaks on the Sermon on the Mount and he talks about shining your light, what is the light shining he talks about? It’s not sharing the Gospel, though of course you need to share the Gospel. What is it? It’s good works. Let your good works be shown so that they would give glory to your Father who is in heaven.

And so, on one hand, we must put sin to death if we’re going to seek to be a people of God burning in the bri- in the darkness. On the other hand, we must live with passion for the glory of God. We must labor for holiness so that we do shine brightly, so that, as Paul says, or is it Peter, maybe? Who says that when, yeah, it is Peter, that when we’re attacked and we suffer for doing good, what happens? They are put to shame on the day of the Lord’s visitation. That’s exactly what we see here, right? The day of visitation is a very different day for them as it is for us, that Peter speaks about. And yet, what’s happening? They suffered for good doing, and the Lord was with them, and the Lord vindicated them because He visited.

I had originally inten- intended on, on preaching this whole section, but I thought late in the piece, actually, brothers and sisters, sometimes we desperately need to refocus our eyes to see things the way kingdom-minded people see them. Because it’s so easy for us to s- to slip into, into, into bad ways of thinking about these things.

You know, we, we have a lovely hall, and then we’re shifted into another building, which is not quite as good as the hall. And then we’re shifted from that room into another room which feels less good than the previous room. And I, I don’t know about you, but, I’m, I feel like it’s a bajillion degrees in here right now. A- and then we’re tempted to, to complain and to murmur. And, and then, you know, people say slanderous things and people attack us, and, and we’re tempted to become discouraged, and we’re tempted to, to give up. We’re tempted to wonder if it was all really worth it, if we didn’t actually just waste our time. And maybe we see less numbers in one service, and we look around, and we think to ourselves, “What is going on? Where is the Lord?”

And sometimes we need a reality check, a kingdom-minded reality check. The Lord Jesus Christ said, “Seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness.” This is what laboring for the kingdom looks like, and these are the results. This is what God accomplishes, brothers and sisters. And we need to keep that in the forefront of our minds, that it’s, that it is possible. It is possible, without a sweat, for God to convert the entirety of New Zealand in a day. Do you believe that? That it is possible, though we haven’t seen it, it’s possible for someone f- in that pool over there to all of a sudden wake up one day and say, “You know what? I’m skipping the pool, and I’m gonna go be really hot with that group of people in a classroom, and I don’t know why.” And for them to get converted. Do you truly believe that?

Because let’s be honest with one another for a second. Are you tempted to think to yourself, “That’s fine, Logan. But I’ve prayed for that, and I’ve asked for that. And you know what? We’ve been at this for 6 months now, and it hasn’t happened.” Are you tempted to be discouraged and to think to yourself, “You know what? Maybe, maybe it’s just a matter of passivity, being passive, and just relaxing until Jesus comes back”?

You know, if those attitudes had prevailed, would the walls had finished? Now, I, I want you to hear s- hear very carefully, brothers and sisters, I’m not saying you’re doing any of these things. As your pastor, I’m not saying you are doing these things. Please don’t hear this as a rebuke. What I’m doing is reminding us of the power of God to keep on putting bricks on the wall, to keep on laboring, to keep on hoping, to keep on praying, to keep on serving. Why? Because a day of power is coming. A day is coming, whether it be at the return of Christ, whether it be revival breaks out in New Zealand. Either way, a day where the Kingdom of God is finished will come, right? And we have a part to play.

And so, let us, let us labor together. Let us not grow weary of good doing, but let us labor and be able to say with Nehemiah, “The wall was finished.” the kingdom was finished. And you know what? Our enemies fell in their own site. They were put to shame. All of those who’s, who ridiculed, all of those who heaped shame upon us, they were all put to shame. Why? Because God was with us. And if God is for us? That’s right. Who can be against us?

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