Just excuse me, I'll just get
the technology sorted. I'll try and speak slowly. I
hope you understand my Australian accent. I was born with it. I can't do much about it. Can you see me standing here?
I hope it's a reminder to you that the Lord does have his people
scattered around the world and I'm here firstly to say On behalf
of our fellowship back in Australia, how much we thank all of you
here. Todd has a ministry here of proclaiming
the gospel because you people are here. And I look out on my
congregation, I often remind them at home, if it wasn't for
that particular group of people that the Lord had gathered, the
Lord had gathered together through the preaching of the gospel.
That remarkable new creation, that remarkable new life that
lives in people. I don't know of another place
on our continent that preaches the things that I trust you and
I hold dear. We live in a sad, sad land. So I'm thankful and one of the
things that has been Just remarkable in the providence of the Lord
is as our fellowship began and grew, we came in contact with
people from here and the number of times we came to an issue
in our church or we had some battle to fight, the number of
times that we would find a message from Todd or one of the other
fellows here and it dealt with absolute clarity about the issue
and it proclaimed the glory of God and so I'm here to say thank
you. I am here on behalf of my friends
down there and we are here because our God in sovereign mercy gathers
his people together and all of the gatherings of us is a is
just a sign of the wonderful eternal covenant that our God
instituted before the foundation of the world and it will reach
its culmination in heaven soon in the new creation where we
without the stain and the blinders of this flesh We'll see the Lord
Jesus. We'll see him as he is for we
will be like him. But the journey there is an interesting
journey and it's interesting to think when I actually meet
other pastors and I have to come here to meet like-minded pastors
when we get together. You know what we talk about? We talk about two things mostly.
We talk about our weakness and our frailties. and we talk about
the Lord Jesus, we talk about the gospel, the beauty of the
gospel, the power of the gospel, the singleness of the gospel,
the simplicity of the gospel. And I'd like you to join with
me in one of, turning to the book of Nehemiah, and turn there to chapter eight, And one of the things that has
really struck me as I have been working through the book of Nehemiah
back home in our church is how long a time it was Jerusalem
was destroyed roughly 600 BC, 586 BC and the events that we
read about here are 444 BC. The decree of Cyrus was almost
a hundred years before these events. The temple was finished
70 years before these events and here In this passage we have
the culmination of that process, that extraordinary process of
God taking these people into Babylon and being a little sanctuary
for them and bringing them back to this great city Jerusalem,
the city where he places his name, the city where on this
earth he gets glory for himself. The city on this earth where
the temple, where the sacrifice, where the Lord Jesus is honoured. And as we well know, the city
was destroyed because of the wickedness and the evil of the
people. God in covenant faithfulness
destroyed Jerusalem according to his promise. But here we have
a gathering of these people back together again. And I'd like
to look at these verses in Nehemiah chapter 8, and then I'd like
to go back and look at the process that brought these things about. Because I think there's something
wonderfully instructive in it. As we stand and contend for the
gospel, we are continually faced with opposition from outside
all of the time. And in this passage in Nehemiah,
we see the culmination of Nehemiah having been taken through extraordinary
trials, extraordinary opposition. The actual building of the temple,
building of the walls of the temple, was done in a mere 52
days. And when you think of what Nehemiah
went through in those 52 days, it's remarkable. And so also
is remarkable this celebration. In verse one it talks about all
the people gathered themselves together as one man. The people
gathered and they gathered to hear the word of God. They spake
unto Ezra the scribe to bring the book of the law of Moses
which the Lord had commanded to Israel. And so here we have
this people gathered, gathered out of Babylon, gathered by God
who had moved their hearts. And Ezra read this book down
to verse 8. So they read in the book of the
law of God, distinctly gave the sense and caused them to understand
the reading. And Nehemiah, which is the Tersheter,
which means governor, And Ezra the priest, the scribe, and the
Levites that taught the people said unto the people, this day
is holy unto the Lord your God. Mourn not, nor weep, for all
the people wept when they heard the words of the law. Then he said to them, said unto
them, go your way, eat the fat, Drink the sweet, and send portions
unto them for whom nothing is prepared. For this day is holy
unto our Lord. Neither be ye sorry, for the
joy of the Lord is your strength. So the Levites stilled all the
people saying, hold your peace, for the day is holy. neither be ye grieved. And all the people went their
way to eat and to drink and to send portions and to make great
mirth because they had understood the words that were declared
unto them. I would just like us to look
at the elements of what is required and what God had ordained and
appointed for this extraordinary service, the first in all of
those years, this extraordinary service to take place. And just think of the scene.
There are the people of Israel, about 43,000 in number, in a
city which is desolate, in a temple with a temple in the background
which had largely been ignored in its purposes. But God had
built the temple, God had gathered the people together, and then
God had sent this remarkable man, Nehemiah, to come and build
the walls of Jerusalem. And so, in the worship of God,
There needs to be those elements, doesn't there? A place of sacrifice,
the word of God, and a separation and a gathering of God's people. The walls, of course, are walls
that God appoints. If you turn in your Bibles to
Isaiah 26.1, In that day, this song shall
be sung in the land of Judah. We have a strong city. Salvation
will God appoint for walls and bulwarks. And it's fascinating
to leave the italicised words out of the last part of that
verse. Salvation will appoint for walls
and bulwarks. While you're in Isaiah if you
turn over to Isaiah 60 verse 18 Violence shall no more be heard
in thy land, wasting nor destruction within thy borders, but thou
shalt call thy walls salvation and thy gates praise. David prayed at the end of that
great Psalm 51. Do good in thy pleasure unto
Zion, build thou the walls of Jerusalem. The walls are built
by God's decree. God's people are gathered by
God's decree in a place where God reveals himself, reveals
his sacrifice. I just love the picture of how
this comes about when I think of what the Lord has done in
our little congregation. The reason I like thinking about
these walls and these bulwarks is that the walls are salvation. They represent our saviour. Our church is founded on God
coming to us and gathering us out of the Babylon around us
and revealing the Lord Jesus. And in that revealing there is
this separation. There are these walls that are
built, and we continually, as no doubt you do, we continually
meet people who want for us to reduce the walls down, to leave
the walls low. And think about what Jerusalem
was like for all of those years. You have a temple, and you have
a people there, but Jerusalem is a desolate city. and the walls
are ruined. And so what it meant was that
anyone could go in and out to the temple. They could come in
and out as they see fit. And when the people here, these
people around who are people of prominence, Sanbalat and Tobiah
and others, when they hear that a man has come to seek the good
of the children of Israel. What a great description of Nehemiah. What a great description of our
Saviour. These people in chapter 2 are
very disturbed. In 2.19, they laugh at us and
despise us. And then they say, what is this
thing that ye do? What is this thing that you do
here? What is this thing that you,
that we do in Australia? They claim that these people,
Nehemiah and his others, are rebels against the king. And
as the wall is built by the hand of God upon these people, And
Shambhalat in chapter 4, verse 1, when Shambhalat heard that
we had built the wall, he was wroth and took great indignation. And then he talked about us so
beautifully, isn't it? Will they revive the stones out
of these heaps of rubbish? God's people are gathered out
of heaps of rubbish. And then in verse 8, the walls
were restored and the breaches closed. And these people became
very wroth and they planned to attack Jerusalem and create confusion
and they wanted to discourage Nehemiah. Not only does he have
problems from all of these people on the outside, in chapter 5
you'll see that he has problems from the Jews inside, exacting
usury from their brethren. And then the wall is finally
built at the end of chapter 5 but there are no gates. And then
the opposition changes. When the walls are there and
there are no gates, there is still easy access to come and
go, just like the religion around us. We can come and go to God
easily. We can come and go to God in
the way of free will. We can come and go to God By
our own efforts, we can come and go to God through this religious
institution or another one. The enemies of God change their
tack in chapter 2, and they come and say, we're all fighting the
same battle. Come, let us meet together, chapter
6, verse 2. Nehemiah, this man sent from
God, says something wonderful in verse 3 of chapter 6. I am
doing a great work. I cannot come down. What a great description of God's
people in this world. I am doing a great work. Anything
other than our efforts for the glory of God. to raise up our
Saviour for Him to be seen as glorious. Glorious in His divinity,
glorious in His sacrifice. Anything else, brothers and sisters,
is coming down. And then they come to them and
say, come now for let us take counsel together. All of this
happened in the space of 52 days, brothers and sisters. Let us
meet together in the house of God, says a man called Shemaiah
in chapter 6, verse 10. Let's come and meet together
in the house of God within the temple. Let us shut the doors
of the temple. Let's come and join hands together. And then we have this remarkable
statement, don't we? Shambalat and Tobiah had hired
him. The false teachers and the false
prophets can be bought and they can be enticed and intimidated
to compromise money and covetousness. It's horrible, horrible evil.
In chapter 6 verse 17, the nobles of Judah sent letters to Tobiah
and so what we have is this situation, brothers and sisters, this wall
broken down and as the walls are built, By God, sending Nehemiah
there, we have compromise again. The nobles of Judah sent letters
to Tobiah. Tobiah sends letters back. And
Tobiah, remarkably, is the son-in-law of Shekeniah. one of the principles
of Israel. And Tobiah's son is married to
Meshulam, one of the priests inside. Not only were they compromised
by their activities, they were compromised by who they joined
with. And then In chapter 6, we are
told about Tobias' good deeds. Surely this is a good man. Surely
we have to look kindly upon this man because of his good deeds,
the good deeds he does for us. Nehemiah's opposition was intense. But Nehemiah was a man commissioned
by God. Nehemiah was a man who had met
God. Nehemiah was a man who was humble
before God. Nehemiah was a man of prayer. And so you can see why for Nehemiah
this gathering and this time and this day where the law is
proclaimed and it causes weeping as they see this city and they
look at their history and they know that these things have happened
to them and their brothers and sisters because of their sin.
And all of these things have been done by God. to reveal himself,
his great character as faithful, his great character as a covenant
keeping God. Nehemiah rejoiced on that day. What a day it must have been.
We suffer so many trials and then we find and we look to what
God is doing and look to who he is. I look out on my congregation
back home and you see people who are going through struggles
that I just cannot believe that they have gone through. I cannot
believe how they are sustained by the grace of God in the midst
of the trials that they go through. Trials like these ones that Nehemiah
went through. Trials to compromise. Trials to find peace through
compromise. knock down the walls and we can
all be friends. Let everyone come and go from
the temple and all of our opposition in a sense ceases. Our God calls
upon us and calls upon his people in response to who he is to stand,
to stand firm for the gospel and he must do it. He must show
us who he is. If you turn back briefly in chapter
one, we have one of the most remarkable prayers in the scriptures. Nehemiah comes before the Lord
having heard of the distress of his people, the reproach of
his people. I don't know much about your
country. But our people at home, and no
doubt many of you feel it here, there is a reproach on the name
of our God. And he's distressed. He's distressed
that this great city, this place where God has determined to place
his name to get honour for himself, is broken down. And he comes
before God acknowledging him. As weeping, he acknowledges and
prays, verse 4, before the God of heaven. He acknowledges that
God is absolutely sovereign. He acknowledges that God is absolutely
faithful. And he acknowledges that without
God, he can do nothing. He appeals to God's character,
and he appeals to his word. In verse nine, he talks about
the fact that these people will be scattered, but God has promised,
that if you turn unto me and keep my commandments and do them
though they were of you cast out unto the uttermost part of
heaven, yet I will gather them from hence. and bring them into
the place that I have chosen to set my name there. This is God's choosing of his
place. Nehemiah appeals to his word,
appeals to the character of God. He appeals to the fact that his
God is a covenant-keeping God. He keeps his word. They have
been cast out because of God's promises, but they have been
gathered together. And there's a wonderful description
of this people gathered together. They are a people who desire
to fear thy name. Read it there in verse 11 with
me. O Lord, I beseech you, let now thine ear be attentive to
the prayer of thy servant and to the prayer of thy servants
who desire to fear thy name and prosper, I pray thee, thy servant
this day. And as we read on, we see that
the remarkable hand of God was upon the circumstances. Nehemiah
prayed and wept, and he went before the great king. and the
great king saw him and dealt so amazingly gracious with him
and he did so because of the good hand of his God upon Nehemiah. Now God is perfectly just and
he's perfectly righteous in all of his dealings. He's just in
his punishment And as we'll see in the MRI, he's just in his
forgiveness. He's just in restoring, redeeming,
gathering, and he's just in separating. And he's just and perfectly just
in the revelation of himself to his people. And when God comes in those ways
before people, opposition is stirred up. Opposition which
in large measure had been silent for all of those years. What a day this was. Let's look now in chapter 8 and
just see why Our friend Nehemiah rejoiced
so much. Having been through these trials,
just as you will go through trials and we will go through trials,
trials of God's appointing, trials that God brings on us. It's remarkable,
isn't it, to think how much money did Artaxerxes have in Babylon?
Seems to me as if he owned the whole lot. He could have just said to Nehemiah,
You stay here and be my cupbearer. I'll send 100,000 troops over
there to Jerusalem. We'll sort that wall out in no
time at all. But God uses his people in remarkable
ways. He uses his people so that he
will get great glory by taking weak things. and doing remarkable
things, so that he is seen to be the one that does it all.
In chapter 6, when these people saw that all this had been done
by God, they were disheartened. But when they see it as disheartening,
God's people see it as a cause for rejoicing. We rejoice over
things that the world finds disheartening. We rejoice over things that the
religious world finds disheartening. We rejoice to proclaim the absolute
sovereignty of our God. And we love the fact that he's
sovereign. And we love the fact that we are not. We love the
fact that God deals honestly with us and says that we are
sin. And because we are sin, we do
sins. We love the fact that God chooses
his people, chosen from eternity. We love the fact that he chooses.
We wouldn't be here if he hadn't chosen us. We won't get to heaven
unless he chose us. We love the fact that the Lord
Jesus because of his great love for the bride that was his in
eternity, came with a specific purpose. He was sent, but he
came with willingness. He came for the joy set before
him. He came because, as Song of Solomon
says, his bride that the father gave him had ravished his heart. We love the fact that he came
and on that cross, he bore the wrath of God for us. See, we
build a wall on these great things, a wall that gathers us, a wall
that provides us with protection, a wall in which we feel comfortable,
a wall in which we see the temple and see the sacrifice, a wall
within which we see God's word lifted up And on the outside are those
for whom those very things are things that cause their wrath
and cause them to despise us. We love the fact that God saves
by grace. We love the fact that we are
kept by grace. It's been nice talking to Todd
about how weak we are. It's great to be honest, brothers
and sisters, isn't it? We are weak. We are so weak. We have nothing. We've achieved
nothing. I love the way Robert Hawker
finishes his great poor man's Old Testament commentary. He
reached the age I was at and he says, now I've finished 60
years. 60 years of sin and vanity. What a wonderful description.
We love the fact that we are nothing and that the Lord Jesus
is absolutely everything. We love the fact that he preserves
his people. And most of all, we stand again
and again, separated and divided, and the thing that gathers us
most together is the Lord Jesus and him crucified. That's what
this temple's about. That's what these walls are about. That's what the gathering of
these people is about, that we love to proclaim. as often as
God gives us opportunity, we love to proclaim particular,
real, effectual redemption. And the reason we love to proclaim
it is the reason that without it we don't have a God of this
scripture. I was talking to Todd about it
a while ago. There is not, to my understanding,
there is not one revealed character of God that is not destroyed
totally by a denial of particular redemption. You deny his sovereignty. You deny his character as knowing
all things. You deny his holiness. You deny
his justice. You deny his love that can never
fail. Go on and on and take every doctrine. and take it back to the cross
of the Lord Jesus, and you will see, unless we stand on that,
we do not stand at all. It protects us. It's gathered
us, and it protects us, and it separates us, and it divides
us. And like Nehemiah, we're doing
a great work. We're not going to come down.
Lord, help us. We won't come down. There's no
point debating with people about issues of doctrine. Our job is
to proclaim a saviour. A saviour who is God. A saviour
who really saves. A saviour who robes his people
in righteousness. On the front of our bulletins
back home, We put that verse out of 1 Corinthians 1 verse
30, which says, as you may well know, it is because of him, but
of him, but of him God the Father, i.e., in Christ Jesus, who of
God is made unto us wisdom. It's wonderful. I don't have
any wisdom, but I have all the wisdom in the world. He's made
unto us wisdom, and this wisdom is our righteousness. I have no righteousness other
than God's righteousness. I have none of God's righteousness
unless I am in Christ Jesus. And remarkably, despite what
so many of our brethren say, he is our sanctification. We have no personal sanctification. He is our sanctification and
He is our redemption. He's our redemption in this world
and He will be the redemption of our bodies. He will do the
gathering. He will do the gathering. That's why when Nehemiah was
there and Ezra the priest, the scribe and the Levites taught
the people and said unto all the people, Nehemiah 8, 9, this
day is holy unto the Lord your God." You see, the law had gone
and done its work, done its work of conviction. What they saw
before them had revealed to them. And Nehemiah's prayer says it
again. They are there in that situation.
They had been in that situation for all that time, all that distress. Because of their wicked rebellion
against God, all the people wept, for they heard the words of the
law. When the law is brought to people,
there is a weeping. There must be a crushing. There
must be a crushing. There must be a death before
there is life. There must be a stripping before
there is a robing. What a great proclamation. This
day is holy unto the Lord. This day is separated. This day is a day for God to
be glorified. Mourn not, nor weep. Then he said unto them, go your
way, eat the fat, drink the sweet, send portions unto them for whom
nothing is prepared. Again he says, for this day is
holy unto our Lord. That's how they describe him.
Nehemiah and Ezra describe God as our Lord. 19 times in Nehemiah,
20 times in Israel, our God, our God. We proclaim God and
we call him our God. Some of you, Luther said a remarkable
statement, he said so many people end up in hell because they can't
use personal pronouns with reference to God. He's my saviour. He's our God. He's my God. Go your way. Go your way. Christ is our way. He's our way of access to the
Father. He's the way, our only way of
acceptance with the Father. He's the only way of atonement.
It's an old way. It's a narrow way. It's the only
way. Go and enjoy the good things
of God's providence. Eat the fat, drink the sweet,
and send to others for whom nothing is prepared. Care for others,
for this day is holy unto the Lord. So the Levites stilled
all the people, saying, hold your peace, for the day is holy. Neither be ye grieved. When God
gathers his people together in the proclamation of the gospel,
we come grieving and we come often carrying our burdens and
we are caused to look in by life's experiences at ourselves. And
we need, we need the freedom and we need the liberty of the
gospel. Why do we have to come to church
so often? Why does God repeat things so often? Because if you're
like me, brothers and sisters, I forget. I love to hear the
gospel again. I need to hear it again and again. Hold your peace. Christ Jesus
is our peace. For the day is holy, neither
be ye grieved. And all the people went their
way to eat and to drink and to send portions and to make great
mirth. For they had understood the words
that were declared to them. Let's just finish by looking
at this remark, this wonderful phrase at the end of verse 10. Just read it carefully with me.
It's for the joy of the Lord is your strength. What's God's joy? The joy of
the Lord is in his son. This is my beloved son in whom
I am well pleased. For the joy set before Him, our
Saviour, suffered all of those things on that cross. What joy is that, brothers and
sisters? What joy? What joy took Him like
Nehemiah and takes many of us through times of great pain?
The joy of the Lord is the revelation of himself in his son, in his
son's work on behalf of his people, his son's work in gathering his
people, and his son's work in glorifying his father in his
life and in his death and his resurrection. And his son's joy
in us is the father's joy in us. Fear not, little flock. It's the father's good pleasure
to give you the kingdom. All of what we have is because
of Him. All of what we are is because
of Him. The joy of the Lord is your strength. And this is God's to bring and
to provide as He reveals Himself to us. There are times in your
life, no doubt like mine, when we struggle so much. And God alone can bring healing
where he has brought pain. In verse 43 of chapter 12, we'll
see how God gets great joy for himself. His glory is great in thy salvation. There's another day where they
met again and they offered great sacrifices and rejoiced. Why
did they rejoice? They rejoiced four. God had made
them rejoice with great joy. The call of our God upon us,
his people here in this time, is to build those walls, those
walls of a declaration of who he is. To stand on those walls,
as watchmen. You cannot have watchmen on a
wall unless there is a wall. And you cannot have a gate unless
there is a wall. And so in declaring the particulars
of the Gospel, in defending them and holding them up, all of them
centre on the person and work of our dear Saviour. Watchmen
stand on the walls, and they see eye to eye, and they raise
up the voice, says Isaiah 52. Who do they raise up? We just
want Jesus. We just want the Lord Jesus,
as his character is revealed in this book, to be lifted up. We love and long to see him at
work in the lives of his people. May he grant us his joy. May he grant us the grace to
stand, to stand building the walls, to stand upon the walls
and not to be ashamed of them, not to cave in. God will do it. Amen, brothers and sisters.