We continue with the message of the book of Nehemiah, which, I think, we shall all agree, even with an imperfect survey, is a message for our own time.
We have seen that the inclusive, pervading message in this book is the recovery of that with which the Lord Himself has been most concerned all through the ages, but which, from time to time, has been lost—or, shall we say, suspended; sometimes almost eclipsed. Although it had disappeared, then, by His own initiative and sovereign action, it has been brought back again.
That is the all-pervading message of this book: recovery of that which is supremely in the heart of God.
Now we are going to note another thing which runs right through the book and which represents God’s way of recovery. That, in a phrase, is the spirit of leadership.
Anyone who knows anything about this book will immediately recognize that this is something which runs right through and which accounts for everything in the realization of that desire of God: the spirit of leadership.
I particularly emphasize the spirit of leadership. Undoubtedly, there is an atmosphere about this book; there is a power, a dynamic, a force about it, an energy. It is a tremendously energetic book. It is full of energy, and all that comes through this spirit of leadership.
The leadership, you will see, is not just the leadership of an individual. Something begins, though it may come through an individual, and reaches others. First of all, it takes hold of those called the princes, or the elders—what we would call the co-workers—and then it spreads and takes hold of the people.
So the spirit of leadership is expressed individually, in a group, and then in the whole remnant. It is something which is not just bound up with any one person, but which becomes, in its full expression, a corporate thing.
There is a company, a body, which inspires, sets the pace, or represents the mind of God in the first place. I say that at the outset, although we have more to say about it as we proceed.
But it is about this matter of spiritual leadership that I am burdened to speak this evening. I have said as much as I have just said because I anticipate that there are those who would never regard themselves as leaders, and who would feel, therefore, that any word about leadership has nothing to do with them.
I want you to understand that leadership is as much a corporate matter as it is an individual or personal matter. On the other side, I can imagine that the word “leadership” might find a very real soul reaction in some directions, making an appeal to the natural idea.
It is very necessary, therefore, to get away from the merely personal idea in leadership and recognize that this is essentially a spiritual matter.
True leadership in the things of God is not official, professional, or personal as such. It is essentially spiritual. That could be put in another way, but that is the burden of the message. Given real spirituality, leadership follows without any thought about it.
Now this book, as you see from the very first chapter, is a very autobiographical book. That is, Nehemiah says a great deal about himself—always in a good way, never in a bad or wrong way.
The personal pronoun occurs many times in the first chapter. If you read it and note how he speaks of himself, you immediately catch the significance and meaning of spiritual leadership.
“And it came to pass, when I was in Shushan the palace,
that Hanani, one of my brethren, came, he and certain men out of Judah;
and I asked them concerning the Jews that had escaped,
which were left of the captivity, and concerning Jerusalem.”—Nehemiah 1:1-2
“I asked them.” A simple way of expressing himself, but that contains the spirit of a real concern: “I asked them.”
“And it came to pass, when I heard these words,
that I sat down and wept,
and mourned certain days;
and I fasted and prayed before the God of heaven.”—Nehemiah 1:4
So long before the Lord, you get the note. That is the spirit which runs right through this whole book, and in that you have the essence of spiritual leadership.
There is one thing that I would have you note, because it is vital to this consideration. Nehemiah is one of many names in this book. He may be the chief one, but there are many names in this book. Chapter 10 is almost completely given over to a great list of names.
Nehemiah, like the many other names mentioned in the book, would never have been known in this world, and to us, but for his heart relationship to the Lord’s interests.
It was true of him that he said, in effect, “I wanted to know. I wanted to get the situation amongst the Lord’s people. And when I heard, I went mourning, I fasted.” That is, dear friends, no formal kind of interest in religious work and things. That is a heart relationship.
There is no doubt about it: this man’s heart was burdened, heavily burdened, over the state of things in his time. He thought nothing for himself. He was not just looking for an opportunity to do something.
It was out of this heart condition and this heart relationship to the Lord that everything came, where Nehemiah was concerned. And I repeat, we should never have known anything about Nehemiah, nor about these other people, but for this spirit that was found in them.
He was not a priest. He was not a prophet. He was not a king. Somehow or other, he had come into an honourable position in a pagan court—a cupbearer to a pagan ruler, quite a responsible position.
But officially in Israel he was nothing, as far as we know. Whatever he was, we are not told. Here is a man, and a man with a burden; and that was God’s opportunity.
Who were all these people mentioned in Nehemiah 10? Difficult names, many of them. We never heard of them before; we never hear of them again. But they are in the Bible. They are on the page of Holy Writ.
They literally fulfil the word:
“The righteous shall be had in everlasting remembrance.”
—Psalm 112:6
God has written them. Their names abide century after century, thousands of years. As long as the word of the Lord remains, their names are there—had in everlasting remembrance.
Why? Not because any of them, Nehemiah included, was anything at all, but because they had a heart for God and a heart for what God wanted most of all.
They, in their heart of hearts—which meant with everything that they had—were linked with God’s purpose in this world in their time. They were prisoners of the purpose of God for its realization.
And believe me, you may be a nobody in this world amongst men, but if that should be true of you or of me, there is an eternal significance given to every such one—an eternal significance, and a significance which altogether outstrips any natural human importance.
You may never make a great name, even in the things of God, but there is a value attached to you which heaven gives and God gives, which is of eternal account, if it should be true, as with Nehemiah and these others, that your heart is committed so utterly to the thing that God wants in your lifetime, in your day and generation.
From being nothing and nobody, you move into eternal account before heaven and before God. That is a thing to be taken account of.
Again, it is a matter of your spiritual life and the effect of your spiritual life upon something positive. As I said to begin with, the method of God in realizing His purpose is by spiritual leadership.
But spiritual leadership is not something to which you are appointed. It is not a work which is given to you by man. It is not an office, or anything official. Spiritual leadership is spiritual influence—the contagion of a deep spirituality, or commitment to God.
It springs from the heart, and it counts with God. The names go down, and the book of remembrance is kept. Such righteous ones are had in everlasting remembrance.
You may not get your name into the Bible, but there is a bigger Bible than this one being written in heaven, in which there are many more names than in the whole of this one: the names of those who think on His name, to use Malachi’s words.
That was what Nehemiah was doing: “I inquired. I fasted. When I heard, I wept. I mourned. I fasted.” That was not the end. Then he acted.
He acted. We know the action of Nehemiah. Well, you see, it is pre-eminently those of that spirit that God makes His choice.
There is a sovereignty, I know, in the choice of leaders and in leadership. Yet two things always go together: God’s sovereignty works hand in hand with the spirit of a man.
He chooses, but He chooses according to His knowledge of the heart. If He chose Nehemiah sovereignly, He had read Nehemiah’s heart. If He chose David, He had read David’s heart.
If He chose Paul, with all his mistaken-ness and blindness, He had read the man’s heart and said, “There is a man who will be utter for Me. There is a man whose heart is, at least, not a divided one. It is whole in what he is doing. There is a man who will give Me everything, withholding nothing.”
God reads the heart. He tests the heart. He looks upon the heart. He puts us into difficult situations, through long-drawn-out trials and adversities and disappointments. But in all, He is watching the heart.
“Is that heart for Me? Is their heart for Me?” And if, in reading the heart, He sees failure, sees our miserable, contemptuous disappointing of the Lord in many activities and ways, yet He can see the heart that is really toward Him beneath and through it all.
That is going to count with Him, and His sovereignty may use everything economically about that to see that there is no loss to God of anything that is really of the heart toward Him.
Believe me, dear friends, that is true. God is watching your heart, looking on your heart, testing your heart, finding out your heart.
And if He can find in your heart what He saw in Nehemiah’s and in the hearts of these others mentioned—something that would go with Him whatever it costs, go with Him not for gain but just for Himself, for His satisfaction—then something will come out of that with practical effect.
It is out of that that leadership is born. It is so: a commitment to God, and a standing by the commitment through thick and thin. That is what we have here.
Yes, they had their very heavy times, and they had what we might call very thin times at the hands of their adversaries. But they stuck to their commitment. God honoured them and took note of it. It was God’s purpose that had captured their hearts.
Now, when you have got that far and recognize that it is the purpose of God in any given age, or time, which really governs the heart—when it is like that, God’s purpose—then you notice certain things issue from that.
First of all, it was the purpose of God, to which these people were so utterly committed, that brought God Himself into evidence. That is a tremendous thing.
You see, God can be latent, or He can be patient—waiting, inactive, inoperative. People have to say, “What is God doing? God is not doing anything.” And such a time is a terrible time.
Or God can be on the move. He can really be coming out in evidence and evidences.
If you look at the Bible, and at this book, you will see that it was this heart commitment to the purpose of God for that day and for that time that brought God out into evidence. It made God forsake all of a non-committal attitude, all passive conditions, and come out.
Oh, we said this afternoon that this book is a book of divine sovereignty. God is here, and in the companion book, Ezra, acting in sovereignty. It is tremendous how God Himself seems to take the initiative.
It is as though God has said, “I am going to take this matter in hand and see it through. Come what may, I am going to see this thing through.”
You know, in the companion book of Ezra, the phrase constantly recurs: “According to the good hand of my God”; “According to the good hand of my God upon me”; “The hand of my God was upon me for good.”
So, though God has set Himself sovereignly to see this through, fancy, dear friends, God does not do that without a basis. The basis was this: when He found this heart condition and this commitment, that made it, if I may put it this way, impossible for God to stand there and do nothing.
The Lord had to say, “I must commit Myself. They have committed themselves; I must commit Myself. There is a people who mean business; I must mean business. They are going all the way; I must go all the way too.”
“With the merciful Thou wilt show Thyself merciful;
with the perfect man Thou wilt show Thyself perfect.”—Psalm 18:25
We could add a lot more phrases to that. God is to us what we are to Him. If we are careless, slack, indifferent, well, God will be like that where we are concerned.
So God was drawn out into evidence by this concern for His own interests in that time.
Again, I say, not only was God brought into evidence, but His servants and vessels were brought into evidence by their own heart attitude to the Lord.
Do you want to count? Do you want to be a profitable vessel? Do you really want to function? I am telling you, it will not be by your being given a job. It will be by your spirit, which God takes note of, and it will be spontaneous.
It will not be organization. It will be the spontaneous reaction of God to the values that He sees in you as a heart for Him. You begin to count without putting on any uniform, wearing any badge, or being appointed to any work. It will happen. It will happen.
You see, I am keeping to my context. There is nothing in this book, or anywhere else in the Bible, to say that Nehemiah was officially appointed to this work.
There is nothing to say that the priests anointed him, or the king appointed him, or the prophet chose him, or that in some way he was officially set apart for this job. He came into it. He simply came into it.
There was no ordination service for Nehemiah. There was no church meeting to set him aside for the work. In this case, he just came right into it. He was in it. It was like just walking in.
You have to take notice of this. The Lord saw. When He found what He wanted in the man, this relationship to God’s purpose brought God into evidence, and it brought the vessels of His purpose into evidence.
It did a third thing. It always does. It was this abandonment to the Lord’s purpose that brought all the enemies into evidence.
But for their spirit, what would Sanballat and Tobiah and Geshem, and all the rest of them, have been? We should not have known of them. Their names would not have been in the Bible with dishonour. They would not be remembered but for this.
I am touching something that is very real and true to life. Make no mistake about it: if you are like this man and these people, with a heart—a real heart—for the Lord and His full purpose in your day and lifetime, that very spirit will bring enemies into evidence. You will not lack enemies.
Really, you know, there are two ways of looking at that. One is feeling sorry for yourself. You are always tempted to that when the enemies come into evidence and begin to fight, as they did here.
There is another way of looking at it. It may be complimentary to have a lot of enemies. It may be a compliment.
“A great door and effectual is opened unto me,
and there are many adversaries.”—1 Corinthians 16:9
He did not say, “But there are many adversaries.” He said, “And there are many adversaries.” The enemies pay a compliment to a spirit of devotion to the Lord.
We will give the enemy credit for this much—however much else we will not give him credit for: he never wastes his energy or his time. He sees when it is worth his while to fight.
He seeks to break that spirit, to break this that I am calling the spirit of leadership, to break and nullify that spirit which is a tremendous influence upon others from God.
That was the object of all these many adversaries, in the various forms in which they set themselves to stop this work. Reading through it all, we should be saying, “Yes, their attitude was this: ‘We must break the spirit of this man and these people. We must break this leader. We must nullify this influence, this energy. We must, in some way, wear them out.’”
Wear them out so that they give up. They just give up. They lose heart. That was the one object. Many, many were the ways of trying it, but only one thing was in view: “We must break the spirit.”
See it, friends. That is the enemy’s object: break your spirit, if you are so set. Take the heart out of you—to use the phrase from the book of Daniel, “wear out the saints.”
Well, this attempt, as you know in the book, was made in many different ways, along different lines.
First, there were threats—threats to bring fear of consequences, fear of what the enemy could do and would do.
When threats failed, there was despising and contempt, ridicule, trying to make them feel foolish, feel foolish and ridiculous.
“Look at their wall. Only a fox goes up against it, and it falls down.” Subtle despising in a wrong way.
There is a dignity that should be found in leadership. For Nehemiah, it was: “Should such a man as I flee? And who is there, being as I am, who would enter into the temple to save his life?”
Ridicule failed. Then there was intrigue—trying to involve him in a subtle scheme.
There was misrepresentation, misconstruction of motives, perversion and distortion of intentions. It is all here.
They said, “Nehemiah is trying to make a name for himself, gathering around him prophets to preach him, to preach his name. This is all personal interest.” It was cruel, but it was not true.
Where did it come from? Dear friends, this achievement would never have been accomplished, this commitment to God would never have been made, and this divine sovereignty in action would never have been effective if Nehemiah, for one moment, had been seeking a name for himself.
God does not do that. God does not do that. If there is any personal motive at all bound up with our attitudes and relationships to the things of God, God stands back until that has gone, until it has been disciplined out of existence.
God saw that this was all lies, all false; it was not true. And God committed Himself. He will not do that if you have in you the ambition to have position or name, or to do some work that will be attributed to you.
Ah, yes, this is very true. You wanted to be a great evangelist. You told yourself that you wanted many souls to be saved, but God read the heart: some ambition to be something great in the Christian world.
You wanted to be a teacher. You wanted people to say something about your gift as a teacher, or something else. The Lord has not done it, and believe me, He will not do it.
It is His name, and His name alone, to which He will commit Himself. The Lord coming out in these evidences that He was in this business was because the spirit of leadership was free from all that which the enemy sought falsely to associate with it and attribute to it.
It was all untrue. We must have purity of heart. That is the point. The enemy must never be able truly to accuse.
Well, what about the work? We know that, so far as the historical things are concerned, it was Jerusalem and its wall. What did it represent eternally, spiritually, and in the heavenly way?
It represented that which was wholly of God—wholly of God, something wholly of God. Everything bears that out.
It would never have been if it had not been of God. It was impossible. See how impossible it was, right from the court and around in the country and around Jerusalem. Everything constituted an impossible situation.
But God wanted this. God’s heart was on this. This was something for God, and that wall was the mark, the boundary, of something wholly of God.
I cannot emphasize that too strongly: God wants something. He has always wanted it, and He wants it in this state—something which is essentially God; not a bit of man and a bit of God; not just men for God, but something out from God Himself, of God.
Something that says, in every way—where the people are concerned, where the spirit is concerned, where all the means and resources are concerned—“It is God. It is God.” You cannot argue on any other ground about that.
Look, and if you really know the truth about that people, about that work, and about that situation, you have to say, first, “It is just God.” You cannot explain it any other way. It is the Lord.
That is what the Lord wants. That is what the wall represented: a mark between what was wholly of God and what was not of God.
You find the merchants coming to the gates. That is the other element trying to impinge, insinuate itself, get in, and make merchandise of the things of God. But Nehemiah was up against that.
He said, “You shut the gates, and if you see them, you drive them away.” Nehemiah himself was quite ruthless with those elements that did not belong. They were foreign to what was there.
He was ruthless. It was almost humorous, the way he dealt with them: “I chased them from me. I plucked off their hair.”
Well, uncompromising. “This thing is of God. Take your hands off. It is of God.”
In order to have it like that, you know how much there is here in the book about the great and very thorough purging of these people.
The mixed marriages had to be cleared up, and all that was mixture had to be put away: a thoroughgoing purging of the situation.
Israel was called to be a people separate from the nations. They must not intermarry and intermingle in that way which brings about a taint of any kind.
In that prescription of God there is the abiding spiritual principle that God will not tolerate mixture between two kingdoms—His own and another.
Anything that is a mixture of the kingdom of heaven with the kingdom of Satan, which is the kingdom of this world, God will not tolerate.
And so we have this great time set apart for purging all mixture, clearing out all that was confusion and contradiction. This thing must be pure; it must be of God.
You and I must be like that. No heart compromise with this world; no intermixture spiritually, in an inward way, with what is not of God.
The Lord takes great pains, dear friends, to get us clean. So much of discipline, much of the difficulty through which He puts us, may take years over it. It may be a very, very hot fire through which we go, but He is after getting rid of these mixed elements in us.
These things would just spoil everything if He did not deal with them. He is seeking to get us to a pure place, where it is the Lord—it is the Lord, not ourselves in any way, but the Lord, just the Lord.
He must have it like that. These people were a purged and purified people, essentially so, to express the nature of God and thereby to have His testimony established in the earth.
So the wall was the boundary. We might say, intrinsically, in an intrinsic way, the true spiritual nature of God’s people was represented by that wall and by what was within that wall.
Now, what I am going to say is this: that wall and city did not signify division or exclusiveness amongst the people of God.
Read again. There was no division or exclusiveness so far as the Lord’s people were concerned. Do not let us make a mistake about this. It is very important for us, dear friends, to keep this in mind.
You may stand for uttermost-ness for God, for pure testimony, and for the fullness of Christ—put it how you will—but never allow the idea to creep in that makes you and your testimony a divisive thing amongst the Lord’s people, or makes this an exclusive kind of thing.
So far as this work was concerned amongst the Lord’s people, it did not create division, nor did it represent division or schism amongst the Lord’s people; certainly it represented nothing exclusive amongst the Lord’s people.
If that wall spoke of dividedness and separation, it was solely and wholly between what was of God and what was of the world.
That is the meaning of the wall. That is the meaning of the gates. That is the meaning of those gates being closed on the Lord’s Day. That is something of God, sacred to God.
Therefore, the merchants and tradesmen who tried to come in, bring their goods, and trade upon what is of God had no place with Nehemiah. It was the wall and the gates that said no to the world, to the spirit of the world.
And, you know, there is a great deal of commercialism in Christianity. I do not believe in that.
The wall is not division amongst the Lord’s people. Let us be careful that we do not ever imply that a testimony of uttermost-ness and fullness for God divides us from other people of God.
Never allow that to be suggested. Certainly, it does not represent anything exclusive. But it does represent this very definite division between what is of God and what is not of God—that is, what is of this world.
This wall was a protective thing, a defensive thing, against the world’s spirit. There is a spirit which is of God on the inside, and there is a spirit of the world outside. The wall was there to defend and protect against that world spirit.
I will just say one other thing—if I can only say one more thing out of so many—as I close this evening.
This wall gave a great opportunity to the Lord’s people to let it be known exactly where they stood in relation to the Lord’s interests, to God’s purpose.
You know, it was the least pleasant thing to live in that city. It was not the thing that the natural heart would choose.
Only a tenth of all the people agreed to live in the city. The others preferred the country outside.
But look again: a special blessing was conferred upon that tenth. A special blessing was conferred upon the tenth, the tithe of all the people, who agreed to live in the city.
I think there is something there to take note of. This position for God, of unmixed devotion to the Lord, uttermost-ness for the purpose of God, the fullness of Christ—all that this represents—is a test. You know, it really is a test. It will find us out.
There are the greater number, the nine-tenths, if you like, who prefer a bit easier way—not this way. Yes, still the Lord’s people; still loving the Lord, serving the Lord, working for the Lord, living for the Lord; but not going this way.
They shrink from this way. “This is too exacting.”
But this wall gave a real opportunity for people to show where their hearts really were—whether their hearts were in the purpose of God or not.
The Lord does this. He raises up something, and it is a tremendous test to people, and many will not face it. Many will not go that way.
Many say, as did some in the presence of the Lord, “This is a hard saying; who can hear it?” Or, “This is a hard way; who can go it?”
It is a few, perhaps, who stand the test and live in the city.
I think we will stop there for this evening. You have got quite enough.
Do you see clearly what all this means? I am convinced that this is a message for today, and for us here.
I am cast upon the Lord that you see the significance, that we may know in this place a greater need than we have ever known today: the need of consolidating and reconfirming our vision of God’s purpose—really what the heart of things is with God.
We can miss the way and lose, if we do not see and if we are not captured into captivity by that which the Lord would have specifically—not generally, but specifically—in this time: a recovered testimony to the influence of His Son.
We pray.