My brothers and sisters, turn
to Nehemiah chapter 7. Those who have been looking at it with
some horror about me reading out all the names and the genealogy,
we're not going to do all of that tonight. But we will look
again at what God the Holy Spirit has recorded for us here. The
genealogy and the lists in the Scriptures are not there and
repeated by God just to fill in some pages and to bulk out
the book. They are special and significant. God's children are known, they
are named, they're numbered. And they are numbered, as we'll
see, with precision. But before we get to that stage,
we did read last week that the war was finished in 52 days and
the enemies, and no doubt the people of God, perceived that
this work was done by God. And as we saw, somewhat sadly
last week is that while the walls were broken down and while there
was a temple there and while there was easy access in a sense
for anyone to come and go from Jerusalem and there were alliances
made with Moabites and Ammonites and all others and there seemed
even though there was opposition to the original building of the
temple under Sheol to you. There was for quite some time. maybe nearly 20 years, there
had been this extraordinary peace where even sons of the high priest
had married the daughters of the enemies of God. And when Nehemiah came, these
people were enraged. They were enraged because a man
had come to seek the well-being of the children of God. When
a wall is built, and a wall is built so that there is a door,
a door of peace, a door of righteousness, and obviously a door which represents
the Lord Jesus and His Gospel. When that becomes exclusive,
The wall around Jerusalem provides both separation and protection. And God, according to Isaiah
26, God appoints the wall. And obviously God builds the
wall. And in this passage we'll see
that this wall was built by God. It's God's wall, by God's appointment,
in God's time, in God's way, for God's purposes. And we see
in verse 1 of chapter 7, and I'll just read those first five
verses and look at them for a little bit. Now it came to pass when
the wall was built, and I had set up the doors, and the porters
and the singers and the Levites were appointed, that I gave my
brother Hanani and Hananiah, the ruler of the palace, charge
over Jerusalem. For he was a faithful man and
feared God above many. And I said unto them, let not
the gates of Jerusalem be open until the sun be hot. And while
they stand by, let them shut the doors and bar them, and appoint
watchers for the inhabitants of Jerusalem, everyone in his
watch, and everyone to be over against his house. Now the city
was large and great, but the people were few therein, and
the houses were not built. And my God put into my heart
to gather together the nobles and the rulers and the people,
that they might be reckoned by genealogy. And I found a register
of the genealogy of them which had come up first and found written
therein. And then we have that list that
goes all the way down to verse 61 and further really. We'll find as we go down that
this is a numbered congregation of 40, in verse 66 it's 42,000
360 and with a large number of horses
and mules and camels and the people gave willingly. Also we'll
see that this wall and this genealogy provides a separation. Let's go back and look again
at this magnificent wall. This wall that represents God's
salvation of his people. He set up the doors and now Jerusalem
is a sealed city. And he set up the porters and
he set up the singers and he set up the Levites. We can go
back into 1 Chronicles and we see that David had appointed
all these. And it's extraordinary how much
the people of Israel had in that 400 years been diminished. In David's day, there were 4,000
doorkeepers, 6,000 officers and judges. There were 4,000 singers. In Nehemiah's day, there were
48. There were 38,000 Levites, just
counting those who were 30 years and older. and the whole total of the whole
tribes that came back now just numbers 42,000. God's worship. The worship of
the true and living God is the defense and the lifting up and
the proclamation of a God. And this is his place. It's the
worship of God, it's the defense of His place. And His ministers,
when they mind their duty, says Matthew Henry, are watchmen on
the walls. You can't have watchmen on the
walls without the walls. And they need, the walls are
just stones until God's watchmen stand upon them. and then they
are energized, and then they do their purpose, because the
watchmen on the walls are there to warn the people of danger
to come, and to proclaim the good things of God on the inside. And these gates, these gates
are to be opened at a special time, And these gates are to
be guarded 24-7, as we say. I set up the doors
and the porters and the singers and the Levites were all appointed.
You cannot approach God without God's way. And you cannot approach
God except through God's priest. And he said, let not the gates
in verse three of Jerusalem be opened until the sun be hot. And while they stand by, let
them shut the doors and bar them and appoint watchers for the
inhabitants of Jerusalem, everyone in his watch. You see, the gates
were guarded all the time. The walls were guarded all the
time. It is just a picture, as we keep
saying, of the Lord Jesus and the gathering of His people and
the protection of His people in the worship of God. If we
can just turn over in our Bibles and we'll just have a brief look
at John chapter 10. Because the Lord Jesus in verse
9 of chapter 10 describes Himself as the door. These doors in Jerusalem
are guarded, they are closed, and they are sealed. And around
them are porters and singers and priests. The Lord Jesus says, I am the
door. If anyone enters by me, he will
be saved. and we'll go out, in and out
and find pasture. So what the wall and why there
is such strong objection to the wall is the wall is saying you
cannot get to God except by this door. You cannot get to worship
God except in God's appointed way. There is no other way. If you go back to the beginning
of John chapter 10 we'll see why Jerusalem suffered the way
it did because within Jerusalem were false teachers. Most assuredly,
I say to you, he who does not enter the sheepfold by the door
but climbs up some other way, the same is a thief and a robber. False teachers do not enter by
the door, says the Lord Jesus. False teachers are lost, says
God. They are lost themselves. And
if you read Ezekiel, especially those first 15 chapters of Ezekiel,
you'll see again and again that these false teachers had said
to the people in Jerusalem, peace, peace. When there was no peace,
God had opened a door and God had created a sanctuary for his
people. And believe it or not, it was
himself. And it was extraordinarily in
Babylon because of the idolatry. That's why the Lord Jesus says
to us, you have to go outside the camp. And in his day, in
the day of the writer to the Hebrews, the camp was very evidently
the camp of Jewish religion in all of its forms, and especially
Jewish religion that had a Christian covering on. False teachers,
according to the Lord Jesus, they do not enter by the door.
They offer another hope, and they offer another mediator. Now, under Tobiah and Sanballat,
when the enemies on the outside were so offended by this, and
they schemed and squirmed and plotted to try as best they possibly
could to stop the wall being built. Because without the wall,
there is no door. There is no separation. And they
are welcome in. But God appoints a wall, and
God has created and appointed a door. And the door says, I
am the way. And the false shepherds say,
there are many ways without a wall and with no doors. We can all
go to God. God says, it is not of him who
willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that shows mercy. And the false shepherd says,
God has done all he can. Now it's up to you. If you, and you can fill in the
blanks, If you do something, then God will respond to your
doing. Jesus says, I lay down my life
for the sheep. The false shepherd said, Christ
died for everyone. The Lord Jesus said, by my own
blood I have purchased forgiveness, I've put away sin, I've brought
in everlasting righteousness. The false shepherd says forgiveness,
righteousness, redemption are possible since Christ died. If only you will accept it. God says it is the spirit that
quickeneth, the spirit that makes alive. The flesh profits nothing. The false shepherd says the Spirit
wants to make you alive, but it is really the will of your
own flesh that profits you with salvation and eternal life. The Gospel is simplicity. It is just the singleness, the
simplicity that's in the Lord Jesus. The Lord Jesus as God,
the Lord Jesus as substitute, the Lord Jesus as successful
savior. The false shepherds have another
gospel, and it's any other gospel. They have another Christ according
to God. They have another spirit. And
their spirit is always a compromise. Always they want the wall broken
down. They want to mix works with grace. They want to mix law with the
gospel. They want to call bondage liberty. And they want to call the liberty
of God's children in the freedom of Christ, they want to call
it licentiousness. God appoints the wall, and the
false shepherds want to tear the wall down again and again. 2 Thessalonians 2 describes this
great rescue so beautifully, isn't it? Paul is bound to give
thanks to God always for you, brethren, beloved of the Lord. When were they beloved of the
Lord? Beloved of the Lord before the foundation of the law of
the world. Because from the beginning God chose you for salvation through
sanctification by your works, by your efforts, by your obedience,
by your doing. What does God say? by through
sanctification by the Spirit and belief in the truth. The truth is a wall. Everything that's not true is
excluded by a wall, a big solid wall of God's building. And this
truth to which he called you, verse 14, by our gospel, And what do people obtain? Glory
for themselves because they've been chosen? Glory for themselves? What do God's children obtain? For the obtaining of the glory
of our Lord Jesus Christ. What do these men want? What
do all men want? They just want a little bit of
glory. just a little bit, just a little
bit, just a tiny jewel on a crown that God's made, just a little
bit more sparkly jewel than someone else. We obtain by God's grace and
God's gift, brothers and sisters, we obtain The glory of our Lord
Jesus Christ. What's He like now in glory?
What more could anyone want than Him? And Him alone. These walls are adorned with
God's servants, aren't they? Porters, singers, Levites. I have a time appointed for them
to be open. When the daylight has come, when
the light has come strongly and the shadows flee away, when the
enemies can be seen clearly, the door will not be open. Unless
the Lord builds the house, those who build labour in vain, unless
the Lord watches over the city, the watchman stay awake in vain
all of these people appointed by God's servant Nehemiah are
just reflections of God's protection of God's wall and even with the
wall now completed and with the doors set up there's still a
need for watchers to be appointed and that and verse 3 says that
everyone to be in his watch and everyone to be over against his
house. The people of Israel had a personal
responsibility and a personal care to be personally involved
in this great work that God had called them to. And one of the
most remarkable parts of this whole section of scripture is
that Nehemiah was a man of faith. Verse 4, just read it. Now the
city was large and great, the wall was long and high, but the
people were few therein, and the houses were not built. They had been back there for
a long time. They had a temple, but they had
because the walls were down. They had an unpopulated city,
a place where anyone could come and go. You see, Nehemiah built
in faith. Was God going to populate this
city? Was he? Whose responsibility is it to
bring people back into this city? Nehemiah had a promise from God. I often read to you, one of my
favorite passages in Scripture is that wonderful description
of our father in the faith, Abraham, in Romans 4. He did not waver
at the promise of God through unbelief. He was the father of
the faithful, but was strengthened in faith in giving glory to God. That's what God's children desire
always, isn't it? strengthen my arm, strengthen
our faith. And why did he do it? Verse 21
of chapter 4, being fully convinced that what he had promised, he
was also able to perform. Zechariah had been there before. Nehemiah knew his words. Thus says the Lord, chapter 8,
verse 3, I will return to Zion and dwell in the midst of Jerusalem.
He's going to be the first one to go back there. God is going
back there, isn't it? And dwell in the midst of Jerusalem
and Jerusalem shall be called the city of truth. It will have
a wall. It will have gates. It will have
truth within and error without. It will have a way in who is
the door and no other way. The mountain of the Lord of hosts,
the holy mountain, thus says the Lord of hosts. Old men and
old women shall again sit in the streets of Jerusalem, each
one with his staff in his hand because of great age. The streets
of the city shall be full of boys and girls playing in the
streets. Thus says the Lord of hosts,
if it is marvellous in the eyes of the remnant of this people
in these days, Will it also be marvellous in my eyes? You see, God delights in populating
His walled and guarded city, and He delights in His people
in that city. But to go back to verse 2, we
see that Nehemiah was on his way after these appointments
He was on his way back to Babylon. I don't know how long he spent
there, but he then came back to Jerusalem as governor. And on his way, before he left,
he gave, I gave my brother Hanani. His brother Hanani was the one
who came to him when he was in Babylon. No doubt, Nehemiah would
have known of the building of the temple in Jerusalem. But
Hanani, verse 2, one of my brethren, came with men from Judah, and
I asked them concerning the Jews who had escaped, who had survived
the captivity. And they said to me, the survivors
who are left from the captivity in the province are there in
great distress and reproach. Not because there's no temple
there. The wall of Jerusalem is broken down and its gates
are burnt with fire. Hananiah, like his brother Hananiah,
was a faithful man. And here we have a great description
of God's watchman, don't we? Just a wonderful description,
two characteristics of God's watchman, God's appointed man. They are faithful men. They are faithful to God. They seek the glory of God. They seek to proclaim the glory
of God. They are faithful and they fear
God. You cannot be faithful and not
fear God. And fear of God brings faithfulness. It is God's gift. According to
Isaiah 33, it is a treasure. As we know from Proverbs 9, the
fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. In Proverbs 1.7, the
fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. It is the fountain
of life. And it is the cause of men to
depart from evil, Proverbs 16, 16. It is quite simply how God's
people walk in this world. There is a real sense that the
fear of the Lord is a reverential awe of Him. But the fear of the
Lord for Nehemiah and the people of Jerusalem was a real fear
because they had experienced God's real judgments. You see, to reject the Word of
God and to reject His Watchman is for people to be put by their
own activities in places of great, great danger. Great and eternal
danger. It is a matter of life and death
for eternity bound people. It is a matter of eternity for
souls. God appoints the walls, God appoints
the door, God appoints the watchman. And they are people who fear
God. And the fear of the Lord in Acts
is a remarkable description. It talks about the churches throughout
Judea, Galilee, and Samaria. This is after Paul's conversion,
Saul's conversion, had peace and were edified. walking in
the fear of the Lord and in the comfort of the Holy Spirit. And they were multiplied. So
the fear of the Lord brings peace. The fear of the Lord brings edification. And the fear of the Lord is the
way God's children walk. And it is a way of comfort in
the Holy Spirit. Our friend Mr Hawker wrote a
beautiful little piece, and I'll just read you a paragraph. He
said, our almighty governor, imagine Nehemiah going back and
leaving this desolate city with walls and a temple and enemies
all around in the hands of these faithful men. Our almighty governor,
when about to return to the court of heaven, having finished the
holy building of salvation, in his own blood and righteousness,
set watchmen on the walls of Zion, and in his abundant grace
left a standing ministry for the safety and security of his
redeemed one, bidding them to be very anxious for the everlasting
interests of Zion, under the Holy Spirit, watching out at
the gates. and watching at the doors of
your house day and night, under the hand of the Holy Spirit,
watching these things, and giving the Lord Jehovah no rest nor
peace until he has made Jerusalem a praise on the earth. Isaiah 62. That's the quote there
that he gives. God appoints walls, God appoints
watchmen, and God watches over the watchmen with a jealous care. He calls these men faithful. The Lord Jesus says that if someone
is faithful in little things, they'll be faithful in big things. God's ministers are to be faithful
to the gospel. They are to pass on the gospel
to faithful men. We are to proclaim God's message
faithfully as ambassadors for God. It is God's word. It is not my word. The message
doesn't belong to me. The message belongs to God. It
is His. The job of His ambassadors is
to say, this is the message from the King. If you have a problem
with the message from the King, you go and deal with the King.
There's no point clobbering the ambassador for what the King
says. It's the King's message. He will
have it passed on in his way by his people, and his word will
not return to him void. Paul sought that he might be
found faithful. It is just one prayer that I
have for myself again and again, that I would just be faithful. At the end of the day, we can't
help what people are going to say about us. We can't help that
people are offended that there is a wall. We can't help that
people are offended that there is a door which is guarded 24-7. A door that is shut. A door that is barred. A door
that is exclusive. They're God's words and it's
God's building and He will build it. And woe to us if we, like the
Tobias and the Sandalats, want to knock the wall down and leave
it so that it's just without any watchman and protection and
anyone can go in and out as they see fit. The thieves in Tobias'
world don't even have to climb over the wall. They can just
walk over the rubble. Let's quickly look at this genealogy
It is wonderfully instructive and important. I know it's hard
sometimes when we're reading our scriptures and we come to
these places in Numbers and Leviticus and we see things repeated again
and again. God has purposed that these things
be written so. And they are written for many,
many good reasons. And this one is written at God's
appointment. Read verse 5. And God put into
mine heart to gather together the nobles and the rulers and
the people that they might be reckoned by genealogy. And I found a register of the
genealogy of them which came up at the first and found written
therein. And here is this written genealogy.
The Jews had kept this genealogy and kept it until 70 AD. and
as many accusations as they made against the Lord Jesus about
the illegitimacy of His birth, about Him coming from despised
Galilee, a part of Israel that was rejected by the Israelites
and even rejected by the Gentiles. When Solomon wanted to offer
it to the king of of Tyre, he refused. He came and had a look
at those cities and said, I'm not going to have any of those.
The Jews didn't want it, the Gentiles didn't want it, but
they examined our Lord Jesus microscopically and yet they
never said a word about his genealogy because they had the records. And God destroyed the records
in 70 AD, and there is not a person on this planet that can establish
that they are a Jew. There is not one on this planet. In fact, here before me are true
Jews. They, according to God, are not
Jews any longer. Believers are the true Israel
of God. We are the Jews. So these genealogies
were incredibly important because they point to the Lord Jesus. Just look at a few things as
we go through them. The first thing I'd like you to point out,
as you might read some of them, is the precision of the detail,
isn't it? In verse 8, the children of Parosh,
two thousand and a hundred and seventy-two. You'd think you'd
round off the numbers these days, wouldn't you? You'd say around
about two thousand or so. Verse ten, you have the children
of Ara, six hundred and fifty-two. 818 and the next one. You go down and down and you
see how detailed it is. God numbers the hairs on your
head. The knowledge of God is infinite. He knows exactly where His children
are all of the time. and we come down in verse 26
and we see that little town Bethlehem just a hundred and eighty-eight
people in all of Bethlehem and what did Micah say years before
Bethlehem Ephrathah though You be little among the thousands
of Judah, yet out of you shall come forth unto me, that is,
to be ruler of Israel, whose going forth hath been of old
from everlasting." Little Bethlehem, little despised Bethlehem, and
little despised Judah. Haggai warns us, do not despise
the day of small things. God numbers his people precisely,
and he numbers his people preciously, and not one of them is outside
of his gaze ever. Now God watches over his people
with delight, no matter how humble their circumstances, no matter
how unseen by the world, no matter how unesteemed or despised in
this world, and no matter how they're viewed by their fellow
Christians. The genealogy both includes and
numbers God's people, and like the wall itself, it excludes. If you go to verse 64. These sought their register among
those that were reckoned by genealogy, but it was not found. This is a tough word from God.
Therefore were they as polluted put from the priesthood. They
wanted to be there. They'd come back and come to
this congregation, but the genealogy excluded them. What's your genealogy? Where does your genealogy go?
Can you name your genealogy? I've got no idea about my earthly
genealogy. But let me read you a little
bit of the other one that I have. For our lives are hidden with
Christ in God. And we can name all of God's
children, can't we? We can name our genealogy all
the way back from Jesus. We can see that there he was
as this king like a rubber ball. There he was all the way back
to Jacob, Isaac, Abraham, Peleg, Noah, Methuselah, Enoch, Enosh,
Seth, Adam, God, the son of God, the sons and daughters of God. That's our genealogy now. I don't
know much about my earthly genealogy. One day I'm going to even care
less about it than I do now. I have a different one. What a great thing that God records
our genealogy, all the way from Him, all the way back to Him,
numbered and counted and never outside of His personal days.
And the other thing that we see in these last verses of Nehemiah
is that God not only brought back the people of Israel, but
if we check with the other records in the scriptures, we find that
in that time in Babylon, rather than being diminished, the people
of God grew. and even though it wasn't the
same as when they came out of Egypt, they come back laden,
don't they? They had manservants and maidservants,
of whom there were, verse 67, 7,337. They had singing men and
singing women, their horses 736, mules, camels, And they had asses, 6,720 asses
for a small group of people. They had been blessed by God
in Babylon and coming back from Babylon. And God moved their
hearts. And some of the chiefs of the
father gave unto the work and they gave to the treasure. all of these amounts of gold. And they gave 530 priest's garments. God moves the hearts of His people
to open-handed generosity. They gave 20, verse 71, the chief
of the fathers gave to the treasurer for the work 20,000 drams of
gold and 2,200 pounds of silver. And that which the rest of the
people gave was 20,000 grams of gold, and 2,000 pounds of
silver, and three score and seven priests' garments. So the priests,
and the Levites, and the porters, and the singers, and some of
the people, and the nephilims, which are the ones appointed
by David to care for the needs of the Levites and the priests.
And all Israel dwelt in their cities, And when the seventh
month came, the children of Israel were in their cities. At the
time of the Feast of the Tabernacle, they were in their cities. It's a great picture, isn't it?
God not only building a wall, but building a place for his
people. As the Lord Jesus says in John
10, they'll go out They go in and they go out and they find
pasture. I am the Good Shepherd. The Good
Shepherd gives his life for the sheep. I am the Good Shepherd
and I know my sheep and am none by my own. As the Father knows
me, even so I know the Father, and I lay down my life for the
sheep. This is the door, isn't it? The
door we enter into the worship of God is through the death,
the blood and the body, and the life of our Lord Jesus. And is
he going to gather them, and other sheep which I have, which
are not of this fold, not of this Jewish fold? What does he
say? Them also I must bring in. He must bring them in. He's God, He must, and He will,
and He has. And they will hear my voice,
and there will be one flock and one shepherd. Therefore my Father
loves me, because I lay down my life, that I may take it again. This is our God, isn't it? This
is the door. This is the way to the temple
of God. This is the temple of our God.