We're looking at Nehemiah and
I suppose one of the big picture topics of the book of
Nehemiah is that the city of God and the house of God and
the place that God had made a name for himself was in ruin and the
people were in shame And it looked like, from every human perspective,
it looked as if the purposes of God had come to nothing. And of course, we know that's
not the case. We know that the things that
happened in Jerusalem happened because of God's commitment to
His covenantal promises. But also, they weren't the end
of the story. We read Nehemiah's prayer. Of course, the point, I suppose,
in terms of relevance for us is that we live in a time and
we live in a land where it seems as if The people of God and the
purposes of God are very small. There's an awful lot of religion
around, but there's very, very little of true, genuine worship
of the one, true, living God. And when He is revealed in His
true character to people who profess to be people who love
Him and worship Him, people are absolutely horrified by Him. And again, I think I said the
other day, I'm just stunned by the people who write on Facebook. And I saw a thing the other day,
I don't spend much time on Facebook and I don't write on it, but
you know, there's a guy I know in in Northern America and he's
got a PhD in Theology and he lectures at a Bible college,
a conservative evangelical Bible college and he put a thing up
on the internet yesterday for all to see talking about how
wonderful it is that we have a Pope for all Christians. I
don't know, I remember showing you guys, I don't know if you've
seen it, but do the Christian world a world of good to just
get hold of the Catholic Catechism and read what these people say
about God, say about salvation. It is just the work of Antichrist
and yet I have not heard of one Christian criticism of him from
the people I know. like that. People are excited
about this guy and you just think, how can you get excited about
Catholicism? The question is, where's God
in all this? Well, I think God is acting as
he always has acted. If we want to find out what God's
doing now, what God's doing in the future, we look to what God
has done in the past. And also, of course, these things
that relate to God also relate to all of us personally, as Romans
14 says, these things are written for us. Whatever things were written,
Romans 15.4, were written before, were written for our learning.
And there's a result of it, isn't it? That we, through the patience
and comfort of the Scriptures, might have hope our God still
sits on the throne of this universe. Let's read Daniel, a true son
of God, speaking and praying to this God. In the first year
of Darius, the son of a hasheress of the lineage of the Medes,
who was made king over the realm of the Chaldeans. In the first
year of his reign, I, Daniel, understood by the books that
the number of years specified by the word of the Lord through
Jeremiah the prophet, that he would accomplish seventy years
in the desolations of Jerusalem. So he knows that God's promised
time is completed. Then I set my face toward the
Lord God to make requests by prayer and supplications with
fasting, sackcloth and ashes, and I prayed to the Lord my God
and made confession and said, It's interesting, he speaks of
God as Nehemiah did. O Lord, great and awesome God,
who keeps his covenant and mercy with those who love him and with
those who keep his commandments. We have sinned and committed
iniquity. We have done wickedly and rebelled, even by departing
from your precepts and your judgment. Neither have we heeded your servants,
the prophets, who spoke in your name to our kings and our princes,
to our fathers and all the people of the land. Our Lord, righteousness
belongs to you, but to us, shame of face as it is to this day,
to the men of Judah, to the inhabitants of Jerusalem and all Israel,
those near and those far off in all the countries to which
you have driven them, because of the unfaithfulness which they
have committed against you. O Lord, to us belongs shame effaced,
to our kings, our princes, and our fathers, because we have
sinned against you. "'To the Lord our God belong
mercy and forgiveness. "'Though we have rebelled against
him, "'we have not obeyed the voice of the Lord our God "'to
walk in his laws, "'which he set before us by his servants,
the prophets. "'Yes, all Israel has transgressed
your law "'and has departed so as not to obey your voice. "'Therefore
the curse and the oath written "'in the law of Moses, the servant
of God, have been poured out on us because we have sinned
against Him. And He has confirmed His words,
which He spoke against us and against our judges who judged
us, by bringing upon us a great disaster. For under the whole
heaven such has never been done as what has been done to Jerusalem. You can read God's promises in
Deuteronomy 29. You can read the fulfillment
of them in Lamentations. As it is written in the Law of
Moses, all this disaster has come upon us. Yet we have not
made our prayer before the Lord our God that we might turn from
our iniquities and understand your truth. Therefore the Lord
has kept the disaster in mind and brought it upon us. For the
Lord our God is righteous in all the works he does, though
we have not obeyed his voice. And now, O Lord our God, who
brought your people out of the land of Egypt with a mighty hand
and made yourself a name, as it is this day. We have sinned
and done wickedly. O Lord, according to all your
righteousness, I pray, let your anger and your fury be turned
away from your city Jerusalem, your holy mountain, because of
our sins and for the iniquities of our fathers. Jerusalem and
your people are a reproach to all those around us. Now therefore,
our God, hear the prayer of your servant and his supplications,
and for the Lord's sake, cause your face to shine on your sanctuary,
which is desolate. O my God, incline your ear and
hear, open your eyes and see our desolations in the city which
is called by your name. For we do not present our supplications
before you because of our righteous deeds. but because of your great
mercies. O Lord, hear. O Lord, forgive. O Lord, listen and act. Do not delay for your sake, my
God, for your city and your people are called by your name. How
much do we need that to be our prayer in this day? O Lord, hear. O Lord, forgive. O Lord, listen and act. Do not
delay. For your own sake, my God, and
for your city and your people, call by your name. Nehemiah is
a book about revival, about rebuilding the walls of the Temple of Jerusalem. And it's great if you have the
opportunity to go and read Ezra who came back and began building
the Temple and then was delayed. Nehemiah came and built the walls
and then Esther's, the exiles returned in Esther. They're just
great books and then you can read how the prophets Haggai
and Zechariah came amongst the people and encouraged them. It's a great picture of the rebuilding
of God's temple. And of course, my brothers and
sisters, we are the Temple of the Living God. How much do we
need to cry out that God would send revival into our hearts
again and again and again, that we would call out to God, that
we would be like these men and live expecting God to do amazing
things in our time. He has done amazing things. He
is doing amazing things now. Wouldn't it be great if we saw
more and more of it? Okay, let's read Nehemiah chapter
2. I really wanted to focus on one
verse which I can't find even mentioned. in the commentaries,
but it's a verse that really struck me and has struck me for
some time now. It's in verse 10, and it says
that there was come a man to seek the welfare of the children
of Israel. Let's read from verse 9 and get
it into context. Then I came to the governors
beyond the river and gave them the king's letters. Now the king
had sent captains of the army and horsemen with me. So he came
with an entourage, he came as a representative of that great
king, the most powerful king in all the world at that time. It grieved them exceedingly that
there was come a man to seek the welfare of the children of
Israel. What a great description of our
God. What a great description of the
Lord Jesus. there was come a man to seek
the welfare of the children of Israel. So I came to Jerusalem
and was there three days, and I arose in the night, and some
few men with me. Neither told I any man what my
God had put in my heart to do at Jerusalem, neither was there
any beast with me save the beast that I rode upon. And I went
out by night by the gate of the valley, even before the dragon
well, and to the dung-port, and viewed the walls of Jerusalem,
which were broken down, and the gates thereof consumed with fire. Then I went to the gate of the
fountain, and to the king's pool, and there was no place for the
beast that was under me to pass. Then I went up in the night by
the brook, and viewed the wall. That's the Kidron. And viewed
the wall, that same place where those apostles spoke to the Lord
Jesus about these great stones. There was no place for the beasts
that were under me. I went up in the night by the
brook, viewed the wall, and turned back, and entered by the gate
of the valley, and so returned. And the rulers knew not whither
I went or what I did. Neither had I as yet told it
to the Jews, nor to the priests, nor to the nobles, nor to the
rulers, nor to the rest that did the work. Then I said to
them, You see the distress that we are in, how Jerusalem lieth
waste, and the gates thereof are burned with fire. Come, let
us build up the wall of Jerusalem, that we be no more a reproach. Then I told them of the hand
of my God, which was good upon thee. and also the king's words
that he had spoken unto me. And they said, let us rise up
and build, so they strengthened their hands for this good work.
But when Sanballat the Horonite, and Tevye the servant, the Ammonite,
and Geshem the Arabian heard of it, they laughed us to scorn,
and despised us, and said, What is this thing that ye do? Why ye rebel against the King? Then answered I them, and said
unto them, The God of heaven, he will prosper us. Therefore we his servants will
arise and build. But ye have no portion, nor rite,
nor memorial in Jerusalem. It's a great, great tale. There
was a man come to seek the welfare of the children of Israel. And as we saw last week, he was
a man who was raised up by God. He may well have been born in
that period of captivity. But God had kept him faithful. He had risen to a place of extraordinary
power and prominence in that land of Babylon. And yet, in
his heart, the land that mattered and the people that mattered
to him were the people of Israel, the children of Israel. And God moved this man's heart. moved him, as we saw last week,
to grieve and to lament over the sins which were done in Israel. Unless God moves people's hearts,
and He does move people's hearts, there is no spiritual good come
at all. Flesh gives birth to flesh. The
activities of man reach no higher than men. No amount of evidence and witnessing
will move stubborn hearts. But when God moves, when God
moves in those hearts of stone and removes them and puts the
heart of flesh in, that heart of flesh longs for the glory
of God and longs for the glory and the protection and the welfare
of God's people. And so we have the children of
Israel. The children of Israel are in need of a man to seek
their welfare. In chapter 1 we see that they
are a people, even though sent back with letters from a great
king, even though accompanied by Ezra the priest, they are
a people in great distress and reproach. The temple not yet
finished. No walls in Jerusalem. It wasn't a place of safety. There was no protection and safety
in Jerusalem from wild animals, and there was no protection and
safety in Jerusalem from wild people. And these people, as we see in
verse 19, they were laughed at for their activities. They laughed
us to scorn and despised us. What are you doing? What are
you people of God doing? What are you doing gathered here
on a Thursday night? What are you doing gathered around
the Gospel on a Sunday morning? What a waste! What a waste. The world provides huge places
of entertainment and you can be entertained and call it worshipping
God as well. And the world provides so much
ordinary worldly entertainment. What a waste. What a waste. It's vanity. Laughed us to scorn. So there in Jerusalem, anyone
could go in and out as they pleased, day and night. There was no way
of ensuring the Sabbath sealing of Jerusalem from trade, from
people coming and going. And of course, as we know, all
of these things, all of these things are but shadows and pictures
of the Lord Jesus. Where was the glory of God in
a place which is ruined? But there was a man, a man come
to seek the welfare of the children of Israel. And as I said earlier,
we have this man prepared by God. He was separated from birth
to be a child of God. He was separated to be one who
was going to be an honourable man in the eyes of this world
and raised up like Joseph to a position of prominence. An
honourable man and an honourable servant, but a man whose heart
Man who's heartless for the glory of God and for the good of his
children. And the two go hand in hand,
don't they? The glory of God is intimately
linked with the glory of his people. And he was a man, as
we saw last week, a man of prayer, a man of relentless prayer, a
man who prayed and waited for God to act for months and months. He had the power. He had the
position. He possibly had the means to
persuade that great king. And yet he waited. He waited
for at least four months till the time came when God moved
the heart of the king. God's people learn to be patient,
but God's time is always perfect. And he calls this God in his
prayer, he calls him again and again, he says, he's great and
awesome. And he's a God who keeps covenant. He's a God who keeps
his promises to his people. He's a God who keeps his covenant. And his covenant, of course,
is the Lord Jesus, that eternal covenant in his blood, that blood. will not be wasted on this earth.
That covenant will be fulfilled, and it will be honoured, and
it will be honoured by God, and it will be honoured in the sight
of men, even if for a time things look desperately, desperately
bad and sad. And he was a man who acknowledged
that the punishment was just. Israel deserved what they received
from God. And he was a man who acknowledged
that he personally was a sinner. I have sinned. And he looks to
God for mercy. Israel had sinned. He, as a child
of Israel, had sinned along with them. And it was the sin, as
is the root of all sins, the sin of unbelief, the sin of not
just trusting God. And this man came. He came on that long journey,
hundreds of kilometers across those desert lands, and he came
to seek the welfare of the children of Israel. He was sent from a
great king. He came with letters of authority,
and he came with men of authority. But remarkably, he came in quietness. We are not led to know by the
Holy Spirit where the entourage that came with him were. But Nehemiah, like Ezra, entered
into Jerusalem with quietness. He didn't reveal his power. He didn't reveal his authority. The Lord Jesus spent 30 years
on this earth in quietness. honouring his mother and father,
working as a carpenter, and no one knew he was there. Nehemiah came as a man not acknowledged
by the leaders of the people and not acknowledged by the children
in need of welfare. The children, in a sense, didn't
see the urgency of their need and they were put to shame by
the enemies around them who stood opposed to them. And he didn't come to make a
show. He didn't come to seek a name and honour for himself. The world does not know us. It
didn't know the Lord Jesus. We wait, children of God, we
wait. But even though they didn't take
any notice of Him, the leaders and the priests and the people
Like our great man who came to seek the welfare of the children
of Israel, he didn't waste those three days. They didn't notice
him, but he took great notice of them. He took great notice
of the state that they were in. And we read about it in those
verses, didn't we? He not only noticed the state
of the people, their great shame and their distress, that he took
these men with him. And the remarkable thing is,
of course, that there in the ruins of Jerusalem, underneath
these fallen down walls, the foundations are still there,
aren't they? The foundations of God stand
firm. And it was the walls that had
broken down and the gates that had been destroyed. He arose
in the night. He arose at a time of darkness
when he wouldn't be seen by others. And he did, in verse 12, he didn't
tell them what his God had put in his heart to do until he had
inspected. He had gone right round of Jerusalem,
those walls which surround and those walls which protect. And the question that we might
well ask is why? Why did God send this man all
this way to build the walls of Jerusalem? The walls we shall
see, I hope, in some of these Bible verses that are before
us. The walls are a picture and a type of the Lord Jesus. This is why God goes to the trouble
that He goes to. It's because the glory of His
Son is at stake. he came as a man to build the
walls and the gates of Jerusalem Isaiah verse 68 chapter 60 verse
18 violence shall no longer be heard in your land neither wasting
nor destruction within your borders but you shall call your walls
salvation you shall call your walls the Lord Jesus Christ and
your gates praise. We looked at it briefly last
week in Isaiah 26.1. In that day shall this song be
sung in the land of Judah. We have a strong city. Salvation
will God appoint for walls and bulwarks. You can leave out the
italicised words. Salvation will appoint walls
and bulwarks. Salvation is a person. Salvation is the Lord Jesus. Every time We come to the Scriptures
and we need some comfort. We turn to those words of the
covenant that we spoke about last week. This God, this great
God who remembers His covenant and keeps His covenant and His
passion about this covenant. The covenant in His blood, the
blood of His dear Son. It's always categorized in words
of I wills and you shalls. Children of God, when we need
comfort, we go to the I wills and the you shalls of God. Not
the I will of myself. Not the I might of myself. God's
people. God's people find comfort in
that strong city. whose walls are the Lord Jesus. Zechariah says the inhabitants
of Jerusalem are my strength and in the Lord of hosts their
God. Our brethren are a city, a family. Jerusalem is a picture of the
family of God, a family to care for, a family to provide for,
a family whose strength is in their unity. the unity of purpose
and we'll read about it wonderfully next week as the Lord moves the
hearts of people again and again and they stand next to each other
and next to Him and next to Him and next to Him and all of the
wall of Jerusalem is built in 52 days and the gates shall be
praised it says in Isaiah 16 and the singers were numbered
both the singers that came back with Ezra and the singers that
came back with Nehemiah were numbered and then in Nehemiah
I think it's chapter 7 you have this amazing picture of Nehemiah
dividing the two choirs into two and they march around the
walls singing your walls are salvation your gates shall be
praise salvation is a person the walls are a person. They represent the Lord Jesus
Christ. Zechariah 2.5 I will be a wall
of fire around about, and glory in the midst of her. Jerusalem,
this great city, His name means foundation of peace. Salem, Shalom,
as it's known, is peace. He is our peace. He has one peace for us. Peace
with God and peace with each other. Another name for this
city was Ariel, and it means the Lion of God. And we have a remarkable picture,
it's on your notes there, in Revelation Chapter 3, as the Lord sends these letters
to the churches. In Revelation Chapter 3, verse
7, the angel of the church of Philadelphia wrote, These things
says, He who is holy, He who is true, He who has the key of
David. He who opens and no one shuts,
and shuts and no one opens. He is the door, the gates are
about the Lord Jesus. Verse 11, he says, behold, I
am coming quickly. This is the man who came caring
about the welfare of the children of Israel. Hold fast to what
you have. Hold fast to what you heard from
the apostles. Hold fast to the Lord Jesus who
has been revealed to you by these people and by this word. And
then verse 12, he who overcomes, he who overcomes by God's work
of grace and sovereign mercy, I will make him a pillar in the
temple of my God. He shall go out no more. I will write on him the name
of my God and the name of the city of my God, the new Jerusalem,
which comes down out of heaven from my God. and I will write
on him my new name. His name and the name of this
city is the same. We have his name. The walls are salvation. The walls are protection. The walls are separation. They divide the children of God
from the world out there. They protect the children of
God from the world out there. And it's the Lord Jesus. The
Lord Jesus and His righteousness is like a wall around us. Inside, we are shame and reproach. As the Shulamite said, I am black. In my flesh, I am black. But
I am comely. Inside, I am nothing but sin
and shame. But in God's eyes, I am nothing,
nothing but holy and glorious. And this great wall surrounds
us. He surrounds us sovereignly.
He surrounds us providentially. He surrounds us savingly and
he protects us. What protection we have from
the judgment of God. There is a time when everyone
walking this planet will stand before an infinitely holy and
an infinitely just God. I spent some time yesterday with
a man who's very prominent in Christian things around here
and I pleaded with him. I pleaded with him, the issue
is not what happens in this world, the issue is not how you are
seen by men, the issue is what will it be for you in that day. You must meet God, you must stand
before The Lord Jesus, the true Jesus,
surrounds, He protects. He protects us from judgment. We have passed from judgment.
He protects us from violence. No harm shall befall the righteous. He protects us from Satan, who
is represented by these enemies of the building of the Church
of God. He protects us from His law by fulfilling it and bearing
its curse. There is now nothing between
us and God but love. That's the wall that surrounds
us. is like those mighty walls that
they build. His power and His wisdom is our
defense. We have in Him a strong city. The very first thing that Ezra
did when he turned up in Jerusalem was to build an altar a sacrifice
to God, he and the people with him, whose spirit the Lord had
moved. And again, both Daniel and Nehemiah
appeal to the mercy of God. Our great and awesome God, you
who keep the covenant and mercy of those who love you and observe
your commandments. Turn just briefly as we finish
to Psalm 118 and Lord willing we can look at these gates and
see them being built and go home rejoicing. Open to me the gates of righteousness,
and I will go through them, and I will praise the Lord. This
is the gate of the Lord through which the righteous shall enter. They're gates of righteousness. I will go into them, and I will
praise the Lord. God opens the gates of righteousness are gates that are truth, aren't
they? They open for us and they open
into a place of truth where the One who is the truth is revealed
in His glory. That's what the glory of Jerusalem
is about. It wasn't about stones and it
wasn't about priests and it wasn't about any of those things. It
was all about the Lord Jesus, that gate. And there are gates
of righteousness. There are many truths. And I
will go through them and I will praise the Lord. This, in verse 20, is the gate
of the Lord. The Lord Jesus says, I am the
door. There are many gates, aren't
there? We want to, as often as we have opportunity, to proclaim
the deity of our God. We want to proclaim the total
depravity of man. We want to proclaim with loudness
and clarity, and with the strength that the scriptures bring it,
of God's unconditional grace, God's electing grace. We want to proclaim that the
Lord Jesus as God came with a purpose. and He came to save His people
from their sins, we want to proclaim particular redemption, limited
atonement. We want to say that this grace
of our God, because it is God's activity, is irresistible grace. And as we have seen, when the
Lord Jesus takes people to Himself, He becomes that wall that surrounds
them and separates them and protects them forever. These are the gates of righteousness,
the very character and nature of our God. The cause of salvation
is the love of God. It's unchanging. It's everlasting
and it's free. And as John 17, 23 says, it is
the overflow of the love that God has within the Trinity. The love of the Father for the
Son overflows into that same love that He loves us with. This
is the gate of righteousness. It's the love of God. But we
see that gate We see it in He who is the gate, the Lord Jesus
Christ, the gate of the Lord. The cause of our salvation is
the love of God. The foundation of our salvation is the purpose
and will of God, as both Daniel and Nehemiah have prayed, that
God is a covenant-keeping God. He has purposes, eternal purposes. He has a will. and a power to
complete those purposes. And again it's revealed in the
Lord Jesus. We have a source of salvation,
the electing grace of God. This is a gate that we enter
into and as you have borne witness to we enter into these gates
and there becomes this kaleidoscope of extraordinary truths that
come out of this book that shine a light on the Lord Jesus and
he becomes this amazing and that amazing and more amazing and
we see more of ourselves in union with him in remarkable ways. But he's the electing one, isn't
he? He's the one. This is my chosen
one, my elect one, Isaiah 42.1. It's the gate that we enter.
The ground of our salvation is the covenant of grace that these
men acknowledged. This everlasting, eternal covenant
in His blood. and we enter into it through
the Lord Jesus. We enter in through the gate
and are protected by him who is the wall. I will give my son
as a covenant for the people. The security of our salvation
is the power and the wisdom This wall is protecting and it
is powerful and we enter there to a place of protection and
we see it revealed in the Lord Jesus. The psalmist says, open
to me the gates of righteousness, the greatest love, the greatest
mercy, the greatest care that we can have as people who come
caring for the welfare of the children of Israel is to open
these gates to reveal the glory of the Lord Jesus to people.
to open these gates. If we turn back to Isaiah 26,
just briefly in closing, you'll see what the result of it is. This wall of protection. We have a strong city. will sing
a song in that land of Judah. God will appoint salvation for
walls and bulwarks, open the gates that the righteous nation
which keeps the truth may enter in. The righteous nation is the
nation of people made righteous by the Lord Jesus, gathered from
the four corners of the world. They may enter in, may enter
into that place where God has made a place for his name, where
God's glory shines in the face of his Son. And the result is
the great promise of God, isn't it? You, verse 3 of chapter 26
of Isaiah, you will keep him in perfect peace, whose mind
is stayed on you. you will keep him, you will protect
him in perfect peace. His mind is stayed on you because
he trusts in you. Trust in the Lord forever. For in Yah, in Jehovah, the Lord
is everlasting strength. That's what the laws of Jerusalem
are about.