What A Pointless Chapter?

*The sermon manuscript below was generated from the recording by AI, take it with a grain of salt…

Well, why Nehemiah 7? I wonder how many of you were wondering that question. Why Nehemiah 7? That’s a lot of names and a lot of numbers. Uh, 1, one commentary In fact, one of my favorite commentaries on the Book of Nehemiah just skipped right over it. It just went straight from 6 to 8. It became less my favorite commentary after that, but it just passed over it. A, a lot of the commentaries have, like, 2 paragraphs on this chapter. Commentators are not particularly helpful when it comes to a chapter like this, ’cause there’s not that much to say. And so, you might be thinking, “What a blessing. It’ll be a, a small service and an early night. Back to dinner.”

But no, this, this has been given for our food, our spiritual diet tonight, Nehemiah 7. One of the joys of working systematically through books is you have to deal with sometimes awkward things, difficult things, challenging things, and other times awkward things which are just a bit strange and you’re not sure what to do with. What do we do with Nehemiah 7?

Well, as I looked at it and considered it, I, I sort of asked myself that question. Why, why would we come here on a lovely afternoon when we could be at the beach and sit down and listen to a man reading a long list of names with a whole bunch of numbers of people and things that we do not know about? Unless one of you is very familiar with the Sons of Perida. These are foreign things to us, right? So, why would we give up our afternoon, come here, sit in a relatively stuffy room, and listen to this passage?

And I wanna suggest 5, 5 reasons for us to think about this passage. Just wanna work through 5 things, and it helps us understand this passage at the same time.

The first and most obvious reason that we unpack this chapter together is because it’s the Word of God. This is God’s Word that God has recorded. As 2 Timothy tells us, all of scripture is what? God-breathed. And useful, all of it. He doesn’t say, you know, the best parts. He doesn’t say Isaiah 53 and the Psalms are God-breathed, all scripture. And he’s talking about the Old Testament. All scripture, the entirety of the Old Testament, Nehemiah 7 is inspired by God. It comes from His very mouth, which means it’s perfect, and it’s true, and it’s without error. And it’s beneficial to make you wise, to perfect you, to make you a fully complete man of God, Paul says. That’s one wonderful reason to read it.

Another comes from Paul also when he’s writing to the Romans, and he says, “Everything that was written in former days was written for our encouragement-” Yeah. ” that we might have hope.” So, Nehemiah 7 is written to encourage you in your walk, to build you up in your faith, so that you might walk before your God.

So, the first reason we study it, is it, is because it’s God’s Word. And, and we do just need to pause here for a quick second, because I made a comment to you before that Ezra 2 has this same list and that there’s a few differences. Well, the few differences, there’s actually quite a few differences. There’s different names, there’s different numbers, and you find differences all the way through, and this has led some commentators to say, “Well, this is the evidence that the Bible is not infallible.” You know what infallible means, right? It doesn’t have any mistakes, any errors. It’s They say, “See?” And this was the sort of stuff I had to put up with at places like Laidlaw Bible College. “See? This is why the Bible is not infallible. This can’t be inerrant because Ezra 2 has a list, Nehemiah 7 has a list, and it’s different.”

Well, what do we do with challenges like this? And this affords us an opportunity to think about this. Well, I think it’s really important that you understand 2 things. When we talk about the infallibility of the scriptures, the inerrancy of the scriptures, we’re not talking about your translation. Because translations err, they get it wrong. Translators make mistake when they translate the Word of God. We’re talking about the or- what we call the original manuscripts. When the Word of God, when Nehemiah 7 was written down, it was written down perfectly as God’s Word without error.

Unfortunately, I don’t know if you’ve ever tried copying anything before. It’s easy to make mistakes. I, I write out a lot of scripture. part of my sermon preparation is writing Greek and Hebrew and then translating it and stuff like that. It’s amazing how easy it is to accidentally skip a line or accidentally misread the number and write something completely different. And so, sometimes we just get copyist errors. And when we look at all the texts together, we begin to see, oh, actually it’s different. But here I think there’s a little bit of a different reason.

You see, I think Ezra 2 was written prior to leaving Persia. So, they make the decision to leave Persia and head to Jerusalem, takes them about 4 or 5 months to get there, and so they write the list of the genealogy, and then they travel across there. While certain people make decisions to go and some say, “Yes, I’ll go.” It’s a little bit like the parable Jesus says where one son says, “Yes, I’ll do it,” and then he doesn’t. And another son says, “Nah, I’m not gonna do it,” but then he goes and does it anyway. And so, you would have had people like that. “Yeah, I’m going back to Jerusalem. Let’s go. Let’s get this do- uh, not really that keen.” And so, by the time the people of God got back there, they would have updated the, the list, the numbers, the people that came so that it was accurate. That, that could be one of the reason why there’s mistakes or it could be the copyists. But the important thing to understand is that, by and large, the core of everything we need in this passage is truly the same. majority of the differences are probably put down to scribal error on numbers, but either way, the core aspects of the sections of this passage are the same in both. And what Nehemiah wrote down here, or what Nehemiah found here, was true. It was truly the list that he found. Now, whether that list was identical to the list Ezra had in Ezra 2 doesn’t negate the fact that what Nehemiah wrote down was true. And so, it’s just a small, important thing to consider. But either way, this is God’s Word, and so it does us good to consider it. It does us good to think about it.

Now, the second reason it’s really important for us to stop and consider this is because it shows us a really important thing about Nehemiah’s commitment to the Kingdom of God, and it helps us actually understand the narrative of Nehemiahat this juncture, and then moving forward. Let me show you. Wh- why did Nehemiah come to Jerusalem? Well, he came to build a city. No, he came to build walls, didn’t he? He wanted to build walls, because the people weren’t safe. Well, he’s done that. But Nehemiah knows that the Kingdom of God is not found in walls. The Kingdom of God is made up of what? People.

And in Nehemiah 7:4, there’s a very obvious problem, isn’t it? “The city was wide and large, but the people were few.” He doesn’t tell us how many there are at this point. It’s just few, not enough for a city. And then, we’re told God puts it upon his heart to make this list, to make a list of the people that are there. And then as he goes to do that, as he begins gathering everyone together, he finds Ezra’s list, and it’s interesting, because right now, we don’t get the genealogy of the people that are there. What we get is the old list, and it’s, it’s very intentional. Why? How many people were there in the original list? There’s 42,000. Now, that this list was written some 90 years before the time of Nehemiah. Now, if there were 42,000 people back 90 years ago, what would you expect? That there would be more, right? But actually, the opposite has taken place. Instead, there’s few people in the town, and one of the reasons being that most people have not stayed in Jerusalem, and we see that down in verse 73. “They lived in their towns, and when the 7th month had come, the people of Israel were in their towns.”

So, the people of Israel returned, came to Jerusalem, built the temple, and basically, just immediately vacated. They left Jerusalem, and so the city was left relatively barren. Rather than being 42,000 people laboring together as one family, as one people, propagating and enlarging, and seeking to be a light to the surrounding nations, instead, they had all, they had, many of them just gone their own way. They had forsaken this centerpiece of the Kingdom of God, and so it had been left basically empty.

And so, what Nehemiah is doing in recording this list is highlighting the problem for us. There’s a problem that people are so busy with their own lives in their own towns that they don’t care about Jerusalem any longer. Sure, we’ve got a lovely city with wonderful walls, but everyone’s left. No one really cares. What’s the point of building a city if it’s gonna sit here empty? It’s a fair critique, right?

And what this does, this highlighting of the problem in the book of Nehemiah leads us then into chapter 8 through 11, and so in chapter 8 through 10, we’re going to find what’s, what you might call a spiritual revival. One of the most wonderful revivals of the Old Testament is in the coming chapters, which I’m really looking forward to. Chapters 8 through 10 have this enormous spiritual breakthrough among the people of God, and all the people come together. Everyone comes back to Jerusalem in order to seek God. And the outcome of all of this, in chapter 11, if you have a look in chapter 11, it says this: “The leaders of the people lived in Jerusalem, and the rest of the people cast lots to bring one out of 10 people to live in Jerusalem, the Holy City, while 9 out of 10 remained in the other towns. And the people blessed all the men who willingly offered to live in Jerusalem.”

Do you see where we’re going here? Nehemiah is highling- highlighting for us a, a significant issue, which is that the people of God have lost sight of the, the importance of kingdom building. Remember, this is a book about kingdom building, right? They’ve lost sight of that because they’re wrapped up in their own world, and Nehemiah is showing us. He’s highlighting for us the problem and- before showing us what’s gonna happen to bring about a solution and how it’s going to result in this committed kingdom building story.

And, and this, I think, points out a challenge for us, doesn’t it? Where our heart is. You know, it’s tempting for us to focus on, kingdom edifices. You know what an edifice is, right? Kingdom building, kingdom statues. To, to think we’ve gotta build a wall, or we’ve gotta build a lovely church and forget that without the souls in the church, it’s pointless. That we’re just as much a church in this room, in the hall, or if we had a 2,000-person venue. We would be just as much the kingdom of God. And we have a calling. It’s to labor to see the kingdom of God advance.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I love good, solid church buildings, and if you’re going to build a church building, build a good church building to the glory of God, and build Christian buildings that last. It’s one of the things I love is that there’s these living testimonies around our country of the Gospel, of Christ, and the kingdom. And it’s important, and yet it’s a- also a condemnation, isn’t it? That all around New Zealand, there are churches rotting with no people inside them any longer because the Gospel has been forsaken. The, the commitment has been lost. The people left, and I think it’s maybe just a small challenge for you and I, isn’t it? Do we share the same commitment as Nehemiah? Do we look around ourselves and go, “Well, there’s work to be done. There’s a kingdom to build.” Yes, we need buildings, and we need things, and we need programs. We need structures. And structures tell stories, but we need people. We need new people. We need to build up the current people. We need to make sure people don’t leave, we need to be welcoming to people when they come in.

Nehemiah’s commitment to the kingdom of God was greater than just a structure, and I think that also reminds us of his humility, right? He coulda plastered his name on the side of the wall of Jerusalem and said, “Nehemiah did this.” But he’s not satisfied with a building being completed. He wants to see the kingdom of God come and God’s will be done among the people of God.

So, the second reason this chapter is important and helpful is because it tells us a story of the commitment of Nehemiah.

The, the other reason, and probably the- it may be the ultimate reason of why this is really important is that it communicates to us something about God’s commitment to his promises.

Now, you have to teleport yourself back a few years to before when Israel went to exile, before Babylon came and took them away, and just before they went away, uh, Jeremiah would prophesy several times, “Babylon is going to come, and they’re going to take you away, but after 70 years, I’m going to return. I’m going to visit. I’m going to restore you back to the promised land, and when I do,” and this is really important. “When I do, I will fill Jerusalem again. I will fill the promised land with the people of God.”

Now, God has visited, hasn’t He? Uh, 70 years went by, and God turned up, and Cyrus made a decree. Anyone who wants You can find this in Ezra 1. Anyone who wants to return can go home. They can go back, and they must rebuild the temple of God, the God of heaven. And yet, it’s not, it’s not fully fulfilled, is it? Because Jerusalem’s not overflowing, and the land’s not filled with the people of God, and that’s because God’s promises often have multiple fulfillments.

And so, God promised to return His people, and He promised to fill His land to overflowing with the people of God, and one of the things this highlights for us is that God has bigger things in store. This is not it. He’s not finished with His promises. He has a greater work to do, and a day is coming when this whole Earth will be filled with the people of God. There is a day coming when everything with- he- will have “Holy to the Lord” written upon it. There is a day coming where everything will be dedicated to God, where everything will be temple.

And so, we come here, and we realize that w- we’re experiencing the reality of being there but not quite there yet. God’s at work, but He’s not finished. And brothers and sisters, the same is true today. God’s been faithful to us, hasn’t he? Incredibly faithful. He has faithfully established us as a church in this place, but he’s not finished with us. He has promises to fulfill. He has covenants to fulfill, and he will continue to be faithful until he has brought forth the fulfillment of every promise of God, until every one of his for- until every one of his promises is fulfilled.

And one of the other reasons this passage is really important is it highlights for us the necessity of obedience before the reality of pragmatism. When need is high, one of the temptations is to set aside obedience, right? When need is high, one of the temptations is to set obedience aside. And yet, have a look at verse 61. There, there come up these people who could not prove their father’s houses. In other words, they couldn’t prove that they were priests. So, the governor Sorry, verse 64. So, they were excluded from the priesthood as unclean. The governor told them that they were not to partake of the most holy food until a priest with Urim and Thummim should arise.

What’s going on here? Well, these people come up and they basically claim to be priests, and they should be welcomed into the priesthood. But even though they’re low on numbers, even though I’m sure they could delight to have more priests, they say, “No, not until we can validate your claim,” because obedience to God and his regulations is more important than pragmatism.

The temptation for us is to set obedience and rules aside in order to see if we can get ahead. think it’s just a it’s a helpful reminder for us that obedience to God comes first. We must obey the Lord. We must obey his law. We must follow him faithfully regardless of whether it’s expedient or not, because true expediency is found in obedience.

This is The great example of this is King Saul. Do you remember that moment when, when King Saul is told to wait for Samuel to appear? And, and as King Saul waits, he waits, he waits, Samuel doesn’t appear. The people start to get a bit agitated. The people start to get afraid, and so Saul says, “You know what? I’ll just do the sacrifice myself.” So he makes the sacrifice, and Samuel says to him, “Does the Lord delight in sacrifice more than obedience?” And Saul gets rejected because of it. And Samuel’s whole point is trust God and obey because there’s no other way but to trust and obey.

And so we’re reminded here just to pursue faithfulness, not what works. If we’re gonna do that, we have to know what faithfulness is. We need to know what obedience looks like, and so we need to search the word of God and seek to honor God with all of our hearts.

And the fifth and final principle and helpful thing here, I think, is recognizing the importance of a generational principle, the fact that God works through generations. Our God, brothers and sisters, is a generational God, and, and it’s been this way from the very beginning, hasn’t it? The, the consistent refrain and promise of the scriptures is to you and your offspring after you, to you and the generations that follow. Our God is a God who delights in children. Our God is a God who delights in generations.

And so, what we see here is this reality of sons, sons, sons, sons, over and over again, because God has been generationally faithful to his people. He has pre- preserved a remnant, he has preserved his people, and he has preserved their line. And we have the joy of seeing that playing out in our very midst, don’t we? We’ve got little children, and we’ve got babies, and we see God raising up the next generation, and we can look from, from gray hair down to little baby and see God’s generational faithfulness among his people. He’s doing this in our very midst, and this, this should drive us to do the same, shouldn’t it? It should drive us, not for just a personal, individualistic faith, but a covenantal faith, a faith expressed through families, a faith expressed through headship, a faith expressed from the oldest to the youngest, with grandparents raising up grandchildren and children.

You can think, can’t you, of the passages where Jesus says things like, “If you cause one of these little ones” Speaking of children, “If you cause one of these little ones to stumble, to sin, well, it’d be better for you to tie a millstone around your neck and jump in the ocean.” Why? Because they’re God’s children, and God is very passionate about his children. He is very passionate about his covenantal children. He comes to Israel in the book of Ezekiel and he, he says to Israel, “This is, this is what I have against you. You sacrifice my children to Molech.” That’s striking, isn’t it? He doesn’t say, “You sacrifice your children to Molech.” He says that in lots of other passages, but in Ezekiel he says, “You sacrifice my children to Molech. How dare you do that with my children?”

‘Cause I hope you realize, parents, your children are not yours, they’re God’s. They’ve been lent to you for a time, for you to care, and nourish, and train up, in order to return back to Him. So as a church and as families, it, it behooves us to be faithful with the little ones in our church, that we might see them following after their forebearers. I mean, the different people in Nehemiah’s day would have been able to look at this list and know these people, wouldn’t they? To go, “Oh, that was my grandfather. Oh, that was my great-grandfather. Oh, that was my uncle. Oh, yes, that’s my father.” Some of them would have stood there and said, “Yeah, yeah, I remember him.” God’s faithfulness from generation to generation.

It’s a strange passage, Nehemiah 7, and yet it’s a passage filled with, with really the faithfulness of God. It’s a passage filled with the goodness of the Lord and the land of the living. And we serve the same God today, don’t we? He hasn’t changed. He continues to be faithful to his people and continues to care for them. And so, let us, let us lift them. Let us give thanks to him, for he is good, for his steadfast love endures forever.

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