Good to be together this afternoon again. Good afternoon.
It is like an all-day meeting, isn’t it? When we visit brothers and sisters in India, they like all-day meetings. They start at about ten o’clock in the morning. They worship God, they break bread, and they have two messages. They are usually done by four o’clock.
Then they have a little rice and get ready for their gospel meeting at six. I think we do not have the Indian stamina. The Lord will have to help us. He is able to quicken our mortal bodies by the work of the Holy Spirit.
If you are overcome with deep repose, well, take a little nap. The rest of us will press on.
We want to return again to the book of Nehemiah. Just for context, we want to read the whole of the first chapter. I will read the chapter in English, then my brother will read it in Chinese.
The words of Nehemiah the son of Hacaliah.
Now it came to pass in the month Chislev, in the twentieth year, as 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, that were left of the captivity, and concerning Jerusalem.And they said unto me, The remnant that are left of the captivity there in the province are in great affliction and reproach:
the wall of Jerusalem also is broken down,
and the gates thereof are burned with fire.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,
and said, I beseech Thee, O Lord, the God of heaven, the great and terrible God, that keepeth covenant and lovingkindness with them that love Him and keep His commandments:
let Thine ear now be attentive, and Thine eyes open, that Thou mayest hearken unto the prayer of Thy servant, which I pray before Thee at this time, day and night, for the children of Israel Thy servants,
while I confess the sins of the children of Israel, which we have sinned against Thee.
Yea, I and my father’s house have sinned:
we have dealt very corruptly against Thee,
and have not kept the commandments, nor the statutes, nor the ordinances, which Thou commandedst Thy servant Moses.Remember, I beseech Thee, the word that Thou commandedst Thy servant Moses, saying, If ye trespass, I will scatter you abroad among the peoples:
but if ye return unto Me, and keep My commandments and do them, though your outcasts were in the uttermost part of the heavens, yet will I gather them from thence, and will bring them unto the place that I have chosen, to cause My name to dwell there.Now these are Thy servants and Thy people, whom Thou hast redeemed by Thy great power, and by Thy strong hand.
O Lord, I beseech Thee, let now Thine ear be attentive to the prayer of Thy servant, and to the prayer of Thy servants, who delight to fear Thy name; and prosper, I pray Thee, Thy servant this day, and grant him mercy in the sight of this man.Now I was cupbearer to the king.
Let us pray. Our Father, we thank You for Your precious Word. How the Lord Jesus quickens and makes alive the Word of God to us.
We thank You for the Holy Spirit, Who has been given to us to enlighten us in the inner man. We know we must walk by the voice that is with Him in order to find and walk in the footsteps of the flock.
You have captured our hearts, and we do not just want to walk among some flocks, wandering and looking and never satisfied. We want to be part of Your flock, Lord Jesus.
We need so much strength from the Holy Spirit. We have heard the message of the cross even again this morning.
Oh, give us such a heavenly vision of our Lord Jesus running before us that we are willing to strip aside all sins and lesser things and pursue after Him, our great Shepherd. Strengthen the hearts of those who have set their path in the highways to Zion.
Draw others whom You have kissed, that they as well may run after You. Even today, we pray that You will reveal Your heart to us again, so that we are dependent upon You.
Only You can move the spirit of men. You move us, Lord, we pray, that we might be fully pleasing unto You. This is our prayer, in Jesus’ name.
Yesterday we began in Ezra. At the very beginning, we saw that our God is a sovereign God. He does whatever He pleases.
But we know that in His pleasure, He has designed that all things should be headed up under Christ Jesus, His Son. All His purposes and plans down through the centuries have been toward that end.
Here we are near the end of the last days, and our sovereign God is still drawing ones into the Lord Jesus.
We have seen that the way of the church is not some outward form, but an inward relationship to the Lord Jesus. The church is a shared life together—the Head and the Body.
We are His fullness. We are to live together, abiding in Christ, and in this abiding, also one with one another.
Yesterday it seemed as though the Holy Spirit was stressing this matter of our knowing the heart of our God. He loves all of us much more deeply than we know.
We are given the story in the Song of Songs, where a Shulamite woman—a nobody, darkened by the sun, a laborer—is desired by Solomon the king. He starts to pursue this woman.
We are surprised to discover that our Lord Jesus pursues us. As a matter of fact, Paul tells us that the Lord has pursued and saved not many noble, not many of high class; but He is pursuing our hearts.
There are many Christians struggling on the outside, but He knows your heart. There are none of us who are worthy to be called His special possessions. But indeed, He gave everything in order to purchase you and me.
This is the heart of the matter, of what the Lord desires to recover. Often the church has an outward form, but the very ark of the Lord in the middle is missing.
The church is found to have everything except His presence in the middle. We realize, even when He talks to us in Revelation 2, that unless we are being ravished by His first love, we are not the church at all.
“Do you love Me?” The Lord not only speaks that to Peter; He always speaks that to us.
We see this tremendous heart matter. Jerusalem was all in ruins, somewhat a picture truly of the kingdom of God today. But God, in His sovereignty, wants a place to dwell with His people.
Why is He interested in dwelling with us? We see at the end of Revelation that the final majestic, triumphal claim is that God dwells among men.
This is the essence of the New Jerusalem. This is the finality of His plan: Jesus, the Father, and His children all dwelling in life and glory together.
We know from Ezra that, when the situation was most dreary in Jerusalem, God sovereignly touched the heart of Cyrus, king of Persia. He made a proclamation for all those Jews from Judah and Benjamin to go back to Jerusalem and build the temple.
God is sovereign, and He stirred the hearts of about fifty thousand of the remnant of the children to go back to Jerusalem.
When we say God is sovereign and He chose, and it says He stirred the spirits of these people, does that mean that He sovereignly looks around and says, “Ah, I pick you, and I pick you,” and just kind of picks people randomly?
Our God is sovereign, but He searches with His eyes to and fro to see whose hearts are complete for Him. At that time, He found about fifty thousand. They were existing in Babylon, but their heart’s desire was to be with God and in His beautiful temple back in Jerusalem.
The whole story of how the temple was rebuilt is a story of God’s sovereignty. The weakest of the weak went back to Jerusalem, and they really had only one thing to give: their hearts, their all.
Somehow they got back. Zerubbabel led them as the governor, and Joshua was the high priest. They built an altar and started worshiping. Then they built a foundation by the grace of God. The enemy came and stopped the work.
But God raised up Haggai and Zechariah. Zechariah’s prophecy caused them to go back and build and complete the temple.
Zechariah testified that it was all the sovereign God’s doing. What did he say? We all know the word:
Not by might, nor by power, but by My Spirit, saith the Lord.
Who art thou, O great mountain?
Before Zerubbabel thou shalt become a plain;
and he shall bring forth the top stone with shoutings of Grace, grace, unto it.
Indeed, that is what happened. It was amazing grace in the end. Some children in captivity even wrote the song as they got back to Jerusalem:
When the Lord turned again the captivity of Zion,
We were like unto them that dream.
Then was our mouth filled with laughter,
And our tongue with singing:
Then said they among the nations,
The Lord hath done great things for them.
The Lord hath done great things for us;
Whereof we are glad.
Now the temple was built. Now they could offer. Now they could worship. Now they could gather around this temple, and they shared a spiritual life together.
Nehemiah is the story that comes after a generation has passed. Actually, Nehemiah is the second part of what in Hebrew was originally one book. Ezra and Nehemiah were one book.
Nehemiah gives us a testimony of how the city of Jerusalem was rebuilt. The house had been built for more than fifty years, but the city was still in ruin.
These dear saints in the remnant gave everything they had. Even after the temple was built, they had to scratch out a living in poverty, and they were persecuted on every side.
Even the leaders in Samaria would come down and persecute them in Jerusalem. There was no wall. There was no protection. More than one hundred years since the children were taken into captivity, the stones around the city were covered over with debris and dust. It was a terrible-looking place.
We might think that God was satisfied when the temple was built. No, no. This is the heart of the matter. These people had given their all for God as a living sacrifice before Him, but our God was not satisfied.
He wanted the city to be built because He wanted the people of God to have a place of life and blessing and fellowship together with Him. It is true they were all for God, but now God wanted to be with them in a city together.
When we look at the book of Nehemiah, two things will strike you right away. The first thing is this: this book is spiritually practical.
Just as Ezra was a heart matter in building the temple, Nehemiah shows how we are built as the city of God together. What do I mean by spiritually practical?
When you go through the book, you will notice that they pray and work. They wait on the Lord, and then they move with decisiveness.
They work with a shovel in one hand, and in warfare they hold a spear. They wait to receive an impression from God, and then Nehemiah knows how to practically work it out.
He brought encouragement, and he tugged the beard in correction. He taught them how both to weep and rejoice. He showed authority and also practical coordination.
It is a spiritually practical testimony. The testimony is about a vessel useful to the Master’s service, for it is all regarding Nehemiah.
It is written, I think you have noticed, as a personal diary. We are seeing the history through Nehemiah’s eyes as he is writing a daily journal and praying about everything.
Everything we know about Nehemiah just comes from this book. But you can see his heart. You can see his faithfulness. You can see his diligence. You can see his godliness. You can see his wisdom. You can see his consecration as you read his diary.
Isn’t it wonderful to read the diary of a godly man? Here is a godly man who is also practical—a strange animal indeed—a man who is spiritual and practical.
The secret, of course, when you read the book, is immediately his prayer life. When you go through this book, it continually mentions his prayer life. The majority of Nehemiah 1 that we read was a prayer of his.
If you look in Nehemiah 2:4, when he comes before the king, the king says, “What do you request?” But before he answered, he says:
So I prayed to the God of heaven.
Prayer was the backbone of this active man’s life. This was more than just the morning devotional, a time of worship, a time of prayer. Nehemiah was abiding before his God.
He would shoot up these little prayers all the time before he said something. It seems like he was in a dialogue with God: “What should I do? What should I do here? What should I do there?”
There is an interesting statement that he makes when he hears some problems coming up, in Nehemiah 5:6-7. We hear about some wrong, unethical things going on among the Jewish men.
In verse 6 it says, “Then I was very angry when I heard their outcry and these words.” But then notice verse 7. It says, “I consulted with myself.”
That is an interesting phrase: “So I took counsel with myself.” Well, we know he was talking to the Lord. But he consulted with himself, and then he immediately took action when he knew what to do.
There is the life of a godly man. Often at the end of his prayers, he had this interesting little statement. He would always say, “Remember me.”
What do you think that means? Do you think he thought the Lord might forget him? No. He knew he was doing a great work. It was a kingdom work.
Do you think he was saying, “Remember me when it comes time for rewards”? I do not think that was exactly it. What was he saying?
When he was ready to do something decisive, he would pray and say, “Lord, remember me,” and then he would go do it.
What does this mean? He was saying, “Lord, You have told me to be diligent in my work. So, as I go forth to my work, cover my back. Help me, Lord. You know that I am imperfect and fearful, but I go forth by faith. Remember me as I go, Lord. Probably I will make some mistakes.”
Outwardly people said, “Whoa, Nehemiah, he is so full of authority and he knows what to do.” Inwardly, he was fearful, just like you and I, and he felt he had to take these actions to rebuild the wall of the city.
So he said, “Lord, remember me.” What a vessel useful to the Master—spiritually practical all the way.
God called Nehemiah to do the great work of rebuilding the walls of Jerusalem. That is what he called it. When the enemy tried to get him to stop, he said, “I cannot stop. This is a great work I am doing.”
Let us look at a few things regarding our brother Nehemiah as we see him doing this building work. First, his calling to the great work.
How does God call a man or a woman into His great work of building the city? This is a vital question today, especially when you look on our landscape.
Where are those men called of God? Where are those workers that are all in for the Lord? Thank God there are some, but unfortunately most of them are getting old.
Where are those called of God with character today? Indeed, we are talking about full-time workers—but not full-time workers like we think of full-time workers.
Nehemiah was not a full-time worker, but he was a full-time worker. What does that mean? He was not a preacher.
When he came to Jerusalem, Ezra had been there a long time. Ezra was a Levite. He knew the Word of God. He could preach the Word of God. But he could not rebuild the walls of the city. He did not have those gifts.
Ezra was there at the time of Nehemiah, but you do not hear about him until the city walls are built. Then Ezra preaches the Word, and revival breaks out in the city.
We are not talking about another Ezra or another Jeshua, the high priest. We are talking about a man who understands that whatever job he may have, his spiritual vocation is his great work.
In our midst, we have very few who even think about serving the Lord full time in the sense of not being employed in some job. It is not even considered much today. It goes against the American dream.
But actually, we do not want to talk about that. This calling we do not even want to refer to as necessarily a personal calling, although it is. Rather, we are speaking of men who would stand up in this important time.
Where are those men with practical spirituality? Where are those men when the Lord says, “Who will build the walls?” and they say, “Here am I. Send me”?
Let us look and see how Nehemiah was called, and then we will ask the question again. How was he called to this great work?
Did some preacher tell him to go? No. Did he see handwriting on the wall? Did he hear a voice? No.
What was his call? It happened when his brother came back with the report from Jerusalem.
His brother gave the report, but his brother was not called to rebuild the walls, because he could report such devastation and still live on.
When we look out on the ruin, the devastation, the problems, the divisions, and everything that is going on in the church today, we all talk about it and even feel some burden about it.
You would think perhaps God would call somebody to rebuild the walls who was actually living there in Jerusalem, who first-hand could see the poverty, the persecution, and the ruination around him.
But it is amazing how people can adapt to any kind of situation. After a generation, this poverty and persecution and abject destruction was the new normal for the people living around Jerusalem.
There were many others in Susa and in Persia who were captives, who knew of the condition in Jerusalem. But when Nehemiah heard the report, it altogether broke his heart.
This is God’s call: God broke Nehemiah’s heart.
It is almost as if he could envision the scene before him as they related how all of the wall was ruined and wrecked. In his mind, he saw these piles of stones dotting the perimeter of what used to be the city wall.
He saw the wooden gates all burned and lying aside like charcoal—piles of stones here, piles of stones there, overgrown with things, jackals running in and out among them. When he saw these things, it broke his heart.
The reason is because he saw God’s heart for His people. Now, we see things at times that break our heart. But when you see as God sees, then you begin to pray.
You remember the prayer of our brother. He prayed as if he were one of the sinners who was there in Jerusalem and undergoing all of this terrible devastation.
He identified himself as one of the sinners among sinners who had allowed this devastation to come upon themselves by their own unfaithfulness.
He prayed over three months. During this time of prayer, he found a prayer: “God, You remember how You said if Your people are unfaithful, You would scatter them. But You also said if Your people returned to You, that You would have favor upon them.”
“Oh, God, would You remember this remnant in Jerusalem suffering so much? They have come back. Won’t You bless them?” And God said, “Yes, and you go back.” That was his call.
There was no handwriting on the wall, but a heart that could not do anything else. Of course, he had a problem. It was impossible. He was a cupbearer for the king. “Excuse me, can I take twelve years off?” But in fact, he became governor for twelve years.
He just said, “God, You have laid this on my heart. Who is worthy for this? But God, I am going to speak to the king. Give me success.”
We cannot go into the details, but the king’s heart was prepared. Artaxerxes was a pretty tough guy.
One day Nehemiah went into his presence, and there was just too much sorrow in his face. His fasting and prayer was taking its toll. The king saw it and said, “What is going on?”
Nehemiah said, “How can I smile when my family and the place where my parents are buried lies in ruins?”
Thank God, Artaxerxes’ wife was sitting next to him. So the king said, “What do you want?” Nehemiah said, “I want to go back. I want to help rebuild the wall.”
By the time it was over, the king gave him written permission, gave him supplies, and gave him soldiers to guide him back.
When he came back, he said to the people—in Nehemiah 2:17—“You see the bad situation we are in. Jerusalem is desolate, and its gates are burned with fire.”
Come, and let us build up the wall of Jerusalem, that we be no more a reproach.
He told them how the hand of his God had been favorable to him, and also about the king’s words that he had spoken to him. Then they said, “Let us rise up and build.” So they strengthened their hands for the good work.
My dear brothers and sisters, there is a very practical work of building the house of God to be done. But it will not happen by just some volunteers.
There must be some whose hearts see the condition of the city of God from God’s point of view. I can ask the questions, but only the Lord can show our hearts.
What do you see when you look out over Christian things today? Even as our brother talked this morning, let us take that little wall just for a start.
A wall stands for a testimony of unity. It is the strength of a city. It is the identity of a city.
If you lived in Jerusalem when it was in ruins and people said, “Where do you live?” you would say, “Jerusalem.” They would say, “What is that?” There were no walls. There was no city. You lived in a pile of rocks.
God wants a city with walls, covering, surrounding, and protecting His people. In New York City, we are just uncovered.
What does it look like? A bunch of individual rock outcroppings here and there. There is nothing binding it all together. There is no covering, protection, or unity.
Our brother was talking about the wider sense of all these denominations. They are all like pillars in the city. As a result of that, is the church strong? No. The church is in poverty.
Can you imagine what would happen if the church in the city were one? Satan would have to flee.
But as it is, he can send in his jackals over the wall any time he wants. The enemy runs in, picks off some of our teenage children, and pulls them back into the world. There is no protection at all.
I do not want to talk about the city as a whole and all these other places, because this is sadly the picture of the state of our assemblies. What do we have? Isolated outcrops. Independent testimony.
Thank God there is a sister over there; she is strong in the Lord. There is a family over there where husband and wife worship together, and their children are in the Lord.
You see outcroppings here and outcroppings there, but it is not built together.
We might blame the devil, but it is actually our individualism and our independence that refuses to submit to one another and be built together.
We are isolated, far apart. We need our space, and the Lord cannot build. The testimony remains weak.
When I was a brand-new Christian, I was so blessed by a Baptist pastor in New York. He was a dear man of God, and he wrote a book called Heart Cry for Revival.
Because my father-in-law knew him, I talked to him several times. I remember one time I asked him, “Do you think revival can come to your church in the middle of Manhattan?”
He was honest. He said, “That would be very difficult.” On Sunday, this church was packed with people, but he said, “Seventy-five percent of our congregation lives out in the suburbs.”
“I do not think we could have a revival which is one. Everybody lives in Connecticut and New Jersey and upstate New York.”
Actually, every summer they had a Keswick week there of deeper teaching. But when you looked at the congregation, there was a stack over here in New Jersey and another one up in Westchester. Where is the church being built up together?
I believe in geographical proximity. If you are going to live together, you need to live together. You need to live near one another.
If I wanted to live here in peaceful Flushing, I would buy that house across the street. Would you mind? Because you want to be here with God’s people, do you not? Or do you want your space?
The only person I say should not move there is if you are a doctor, because all the saints will come to you! But we have an isolation built into our mentality.
We all keep our space. There is no real submission to one another. We come together for a little while. How well do we know each other? How well are we being built?
Isolation is not just geographical. In Manhattan, I try to tell the saints, “You should move closer to each other.” Some of them do, but they never see each other. They have no time. They have a time separation.
We have some people who cannot be here because they work. This is always a situation. We are isolated by time and by space, but mostly by heart.
How can the Lord ever deal with us and our isolationism and our individualism? Do you really know what it would mean to be built together?
It would mean discipline. It would mean adjustment. And mostly, it would mean submission.
Where is the Nehemiah? It is not that difficult. There is a way of this wall being built into a unity.
Marvelously, after Nehemiah said, “Let us build. The Lord has been favorable,” then when we look in Nehemiah 3, there are all these names that you do not want to hear. Probably you skip over Nehemiah 3.
Maybe it is the most important chapter in the book, because everybody—whether they were great or small—who began to build has their name written there.
Look, I will show you a few people. Baruch, in verse 20, forever is recorded in the book:
After him Baruch the son of Zabbai earnestly repaired another portion, from the turning of the wall unto the door of the house of Eliashib the high priest.
There were people here who just built the wall that was next to their house. Imagine, right there across from our house, the wall was in ruins. But they began to build that.
Others started from here and started building over there. What else did they do? They had to repair the gates.
The gates are a picture of authority. There is nothing more beautiful than gates on the city. They coordinate all the movement in and out of the city. They bring safety and protection to the city.
What a wonderful thing to have gates. Most of the testimony is this: so-and-so started at this gate, and he repaired.
By interpretation, a man of God took authority over his own family and brought it into godliness.
Then somebody else started building from their gate and started building toward that next gate, where they were met halfway by those people from that gate coming up.
Some people built just a small part of the wall. Some people built more than a mile of the wall. In the end, we are talking about something more than twenty-five feet high and twelve feet wide. People could live in the wall; there was room for a house in there.
But the point is that everybody had a heart to build. They got it halfway up. Praise God, they got it halfway up.
Two things happened. The enemy attacked. He said, “We are going to get you now.” And the people got discouraged.
“But there is so much garbage. Whoever thought there would be so much garbage among God’s people?” We are talking about the rubble of living stones.
Nehemiah understood that we need to build from here to there. Your house is right there. Would you build that? This is the practical spirituality of coordination.
Here we are in the assembly. What are you concerned about? Your own life? Or do you see somebody toward whom we need to build a wall?
When people first come in and visit us, they do not build a wall toward us. We need to connect ourselves to them.
Do we have the love and the wisdom to do that? Are we selfless enough to do this?
I want to suggest something to you regarding this calling: I really think all the brothers in an assembly are called to this building work.
We need prayer and the eyes to see where there is need for reconciliation or forgiveness in this city.
We have a very practical situation here in Flushing. We have a big Chinese-speaking place, a little English one, and then a little bigger Brazilian Portuguese one.
Are we building a wall toward one another to connect one another? Or, as our brother said yesterday morning, do we think this is just a Chinese thing?
I do not think it is just a Chinese thing. I do not even see Chinese anymore. I know I am Chinese, but we need to build a wall toward one another.
I know they never get any thanks, but the Lord knows. I was very thankful. I have been here now ten years. For ten years, I have been able to hear your prayers—your brothers like Ezra and Andre and Lauren.
In the little ways we can, we build walls to connect one another. But I do not know most of your lives, and I have a problem. I am more like an Ezra than a Nehemiah.
Spiritual practicality is not my strong suit. But I can see when there are people who are trying to connect the walls, and I say, “Brothers, this is a great work.”
When, by the grace of God, we see gates being rebuilt—an authority back in the church—I do not mean lording it over others. I mean coordination and submission.
Our brother Nee has a saying from way back—I do not know what book it is in, to be honest with you. When we come into an assembly, our first question should be, “Who can I submit to?”
There is somebody who has the heart of a wall builder. Amen?
Most of us come somewhere asking, “What can I do? Who submits to me?” We are so independent, but it is so carnal.
Our American independence is killing the church. People meet week after week, and they are dying of loneliness. Nobody cares.
I cannot say that completely, because I know there are some wall builders even here and in Manhattan. It takes all of us building the wall together.
What good is it if we build the wall between the Sheep Gate and the Valley Gate, but this whole area is in ruins over here? We have no protection. It needs all to be built together.
Just like Nehemiah, we have to pray, “Lord, remember me. I want to do my best, practically speaking.”
We reach out to one another. We allow our lives to be built together. We open our houses up to hospitality.
Listen, if you have a house that is so nice you never want anybody over, then sell the place and buy a crummy one where you can have people over!
The whole mentality goes back to England, where a family believed their house was their castle. The man came home from work, went inside, sat back, watched television, and said, “Bring me some meal, and kids, get out of here. I cannot see.”
No, our houses should be a connecting point on the wall. We need to be willing to coordinate with each other and submit to one another.
I am running out of time here, but let me just say a couple of things. It may surprise us to know how quickly a wall of testimony can be built if we are given to that work.
The Lord can revive walls of unity. How long do you think it took them to build the wall? Less than two months.
What happened? The high priest began to build his little section. Eliashib, the priest, built only a small portion, but he consecrated it to God.
Others began to build. Then people started coming from out of hiding—from the suburbs. It says the people from Tekoa came and started building on the wall over there. A work crew came up from Jericho, and they started building there.
God even brought the saints who were hiding out in the outskirts into the city, and they began to live in the city again.
What happened when the city wall got built? Let me mention a few things. Look in Nehemiah 7:5. This is typical of his practical spirituality:
Then my God put it into my heart.
What did he do? He said, “Pull out the census. Let us see who lives here.”
Suddenly, these people who came back as a remnant became an identity. “This one and that one was born in Zion.” Now they knew who they were. “I live in Jerusalem.”
When those walls were built, there was identity among God’s people. They knew who they were. Nehemiah 7 is a complete list of everybody who came back to do the work.
Then in Nehemiah 8, the people went to Ezra. Ezra was studying his books outside the temple, and they said, “Will you come and speak the Word of God to us?”
All the people, on the first day of the seventh month, met outside the Water Gate. The first day of the seventh month is the day of the blowing of trumpets.
They all gathered there, and Ezra opened up the book. All the people stood up.
Ezra began to read the Word and explain it, and the people began to weep. We cannot even understand the truth of body life until we are submitted in body life.
These Jews had heard about the feasts, but now they were in the city where the feast was. They started to read, and they came to the place where it says that on the tenth day they needed to have the Feast of Tabernacles.
They said, “The feast of what?” They were told what happened and how they needed to build booths in Jerusalem and up at the temple. They had the greatest Feast of Tabernacles they ever had.
Because they were all one together, now they could understand the deeper truth of the Word. When we are built together, the Word of God has greater impact upon us.
How important it is to hear the Word of God assembled and united.
Then in Nehemiah 9, the whole assembly, as it were, had a prayer of confession and rededication before the Lord. In Nehemiah 10, they began this work of sanctification and separation within the city of God.
There is really more to go into there than we have time for, but I want to pause here finally and wonder whether the Lord would not give us some prayer along this matter.
It is wonderful. Probably almost everybody here openly confesses that they have a heart for the Lord and for Him only. We know that is only half of it.
Do we have a heart for the Lord’s people and to be in unity together? This is what it means to be all in.
I did not even mention Nehemiah himself. He was one of the hardest workers on the wall. Not only that, but as governor for twelve years, he had the right to demand taxes from all the people.
He not only never got a penny from the people; he opened his home, and he fed one hundred and fifty people every day from his own wealth.
This is a godly man. This is a man who sensed the great work of that city of God.
He had no idea of the greater mystery behind what he was doing. There were already prophecies of the city of Jerusalem to which the Messiah would come. Without that city, Jesus could never have come.
He was faithful, practically spiritual, and he had overridden his own sense of unworthiness by responding to the call of God.
I think for many Christians, this is the last vestige of religious flesh that keeps us from obeying.
Many Christians hear in their broken heart a call coming from God. Like all the servants of God in the Bible, they say, “Oh, no, no, not me. I am not worthy. I am not worthy.”
Have you noticed in the Bible how everybody pretty much says that? Have you noticed how God just ignores that? He says, “Have I not called you? Then go in this strength that I have called you, and forget about yourself.”
Our last vestige of religious flesh is that we are always saying, “Oh, I cannot. I am unworthy.” It is a fleshly excuse for not obeying the call of God.
May God’s heart overrule our flesh, and we say, “Where else can I go? By the grace of God, I will do this great work.”
Brothers and sisters, there is nothing more beautiful on the face of this earth than unity.
It is more important than anything—any job, any vocation, any goal that we may individually have. This is a great work that remains mostly unfinished today for want of men who will stand up and say, “Yes, Lord, I see Your heart.”
May the Lord help us. He has taken us by His sovereign grace partway, but He wants to build the city of the living God.
It takes humility, faith, prayer, godliness, and practical spirituality—to know how to join the parts of the wall that are separated now.
May the Lord give us all such a love for God’s purpose and end that we are willing to submit to one another. This is the issue.
God sovereignly worked in building the house of God, but when it came to building the walls of the city, He waited for a man whose heart was all for Him.
Lord, have mercy. We thank You, Lord, that we can come to You. All hearts are before You. There are no secrets here.
Oh, we have our excuses, our reasons for separation. But Lord, we surrender them at Your feet.
Lord, You told us that You desire the church to be built up, for each member to give the joint of supply in building this wall together.
Oh, Lord, raise up Your body in practical spirituality, so we may find You in one another and see the testimony of the church strengthened.
Oh, may it be in these last days that You could find a people who have first love for You and for one another. This is a great work. It is marvelous that You can do it.
Lord, have Your way.
Maybe let us just have a few more prayers before we end.