Be God's Family
S3 E47. Nehemiah’s Call to Rebuild the Walls
This is the Begots Light Podcast with Ben Greenbaum and Mark L. Sesser. And here in 2024, we've been looking at the Old Testament from the beginning of the year. And Ben, we've come to our last podcast. Ever. Ever again this season. All right. All right. Well, good. Because I was hoping to be able to do some more with you next year. It could be ever, I mean, we never know what life's gotten in store for us. But for this old test, it could be. It could be. It could be. Possibly. It could be. We just don't know, right? That's fair. We don't know the day or the hour. But we do know the day and the hour that the podcast dropped because Doug is on it. That's right. Praise God. Somebody is. He is on it. So he, he makes these things happen. You know, we still haven't made good in our, our deal to do a podcast with Doug. I know. Why has that been delayed? I don't know. He's, he has no microphone. He can only give us hand signals. He looks like right now the third base coach for a baseball team. He's given all these hand signals and now he's doing nothing like that. We'll have to figure that out because Doug's the, actually the witty one. Yeah, incredibly witty. Yeah. Well, not one of the great joys of working here at Fishers is in the middle of a sermon, whether I'm preaching or you're preaching and we say something that lends itself to some good, bad humor. I get an immediate text about it. And so, yeah, so just absolutely genius. And so sometimes I'm sitting in the pews laughing or giggling and it's because something has popped up on my, on my Apple Watch community. And usually nothing that we thought about. It's just a tangent, yeah, because he's that awesome. So I guess the topic today is on the book of Doug. It's a, an obscure book of the Bible that very few people have heard about. Actually, it's on Nehemiah. There's a, there's a book of the Bible called Nehemiah and it's about this guy named Nehemiah who came back from Babylonian exile to oversee the rebuilding of the walls that have been torn down. So he was, he was actually in Persian exile because the Persians had taken over for the Babylonians and he's the guy who's going to come back and begin to, to rebuild the wall. So let's just jump into the story and we'll, at the end of it, we'll talk about what we have in store for the next year after our, our break here, after today's podcast on the Old Testament. I hope, I hope by the way everybody's enjoyed the Old Testament and, and we've started off in, in Genesis, the very beginning of the year. So any listener out there that wants to like, let me, let me just dive into this section. You can, you can go back and the chronological so you can scout through those and find the one that you want to find. And maybe, maybe it'll be helpful to you in some kind of a way. So we're, we're coming to the end of the story. The people of, of Israel had been exiled to Babylonian exile and, and the Babylonians had been taken over by the Persians. And so now we're quite a bit later. And the story picks up in the book of Nehemiah chapter one, verse one, and it says the words of Nehemiah, the son of Hekaliah. Now it happened in the month of Chiz Lev. Does it say, is it Chiz Lev, is that the, how do you say that? We'll say it, Chiz Lev in the 20th year, as I was in Sousa, the citadel that Hannah and I, one of my brothers came with certain men from Judah. So that's a big story saying he's still an exile, but a, a Jewish relative or just Jewish person came from Judah, which is where Jerusalem is. And I ask them concerning the Jews who escaped, who had survived the exile and concerning the city of Jerusalem. And they said to me, the remnant there in the province, who had survived the exile is in great trouble and shame. The wall of Jerusalem is broken down and its gates are destroyed by fire. So this is, this is 90 years after the first remnant returned from exile to Jerusalem. It's 70 years after the temple had been rebuilt and finished and 70 years later, the wall is still not built around the city and the wall, and the wall was so important for protection of the city back in the day. So they were in great trouble and shame and the Bible says in verse four, Nehemiah's words, as soon as I heard these words, I sat down and wept and mourned for days. And I continued fasting and praying before the God of heaven. Okay, then slow stop there for a minute and just have some dialogue about this. We know the wall was for protection. Maybe it has some symbolic meaning as well, all kinds of things. Why was this worth weeping, especially for a guy who had never seen Jerusalem? He was born in exile. I mean, it's 90 years after the first remnant returned, 70 years after the temple was rebuilt. 140 years, I think it would be after the people were captured and taken into exile. So he'd never been there, but he wept about the city of his heritage and the fact that the walls were still in a pile of rubble. What do you think's going on? Was Nehemiah normal for the people of the day? Any speculation, a lot of it's speculative, that Nehemiah had such a reaction to this news that the city of Jerusalem, the holy city, still wasn't right. Yeah, I think part of it has to deal with the hope of restoration that centered in Jerusalem, that God's restoration of the people was very much centered or characterized, God had characterized it by the rebuild of the temple, the restoration of Jerusalem as a whole. And so many of the Israelites, a lot of their hope was centered in that because it was seen as God's divine hand of provision and care and blessing being upon them and the restoration of the city is validation of that. The other part of it is too, it's the sense of identity that it's not just for the people of Israel, but many of folks who find their sense of identity rooted in a geographic location, the longing for that place to be whole. And so for him, his identity very much would have been centered in Judah and in Jerusalem. I think about Jewish people that I know who live in the States, who have actually never even been to Israel and yet so much of their identity is centered in Israel itself is centered in Jerusalem because they have been nurtured to see that fundamentally as home. I think about my own children who while they have obviously visited Louisiana, they don't see that there's there's still even though Louisiana isn't home to them, there is still this sense of it as being a place of refuge with, you know, my mom living there. I mean, even Charlotte on on Monday, even after, you know, this was a few Mondays back, but after LSU got it handed to him by Alabama and Charlotte still went to school on Monday morning with an LSU shirt on that she wore proudly. But why is that? It's because she has this sense of identity that's rooted in Louisiana because that's where her dad's from and so there's that sense of pride that exists relative to that essence homeland and it's the same thing I think here for Nehemiah. It's sort of the same thing except right now you're wearing an IU shirt and Doug's wearing an Ohio State shirt and that's kind of troublesome to the Purdue grad here. Yeah, we're going to jump you later as you exit now. I would say my football team is going to protect me but not this year. Yeah, they're not going to protect much anybody. That's going to be so the little sisters of the poor could take them down right now. Oh, easy, easy, easy, okay. So we got this story going on and Nehemiah finds it out, but it's not going to do anything unless he gets authority from the Persian king. Now, the Persian king at this time is a guy named Artaxerxes, the son of Xerxes. So there have been several Persians who had in the takeover over over the years for the previous hundred plus years that Persia was now in charge, in fact, they were in charge of the world really from Egypt to India to Greece and that part of the world. So nothing could happen unless Nehemiah makes a request and he does so in chapter two. In the month of Nissan, by the way, the first and only new car I ever bought was a Nissan and I thought it was like Nissan, the month, but I guess it's a different thing because the car is long since rusted out and gone by by this is in the mid 1980s. So I don't know why that came to my mind, but that little Nissan Sentrip got us well over 200,000 miles in the month of Nissan in the 20th year of King Artaxerxes when wine was before him, I took up the wine and gave it to the king. It's going to become clear later why he's doing that. Now I had not been sad in his presence and the king said to me, "Why is your face sad now? Seeing you're not sick. There's nothing but sadness of the heart." Then I was very much afraid, I mean, it's not his job to tell the king his emotions. I said to the king, "Let the king live forever. Why should not my face be sad when the city, the place of my father's graves, lies and ruins and it's gates and been destroyed by fire?" Just what you talked about then about the heritage of South Louisiana for you was this heritage place of his, when he says his father's, I mean, it's grandfather, great grandfather, great, great grandfathers who had lived there, he goes on to say, "So I prayed to the God of Heaven and I said to the king, 'If it pleases the king and if your servant has found favor in your sight, that you send me to Judah to the city of my father's graves, that I may rebuild it.' He is asking to leave the king's presence as the king's cupbearer, an important job, like I'm making sure the king doesn't get poisoned and say, 'Can I leave and go back to rebuild the wall around the city?'" It's kind of a, I think, a courageous request for him to make because the king could have said, "No, the king could have said off with your head for daring to ask." I mean, the king could have done a lot of things. Now, I mean, this takes it beyond the sentimental attachment to the place of our heritage. I kind of have that feeling about Germany, you know, in France and Switzerland, places that my ancestors came from, I was like this sentimental thing, but that's a different thing if I'm risking my job or risking my life in order to go do that. This was a big deal to me, am I, wouldn't it? Yeah, it was huge, it was huge, and it's one of the things that we see, you know, a constant theme throughout the Old Testament ultimately are, you know, whether it's Nehemiah or Esther, Deborah or David or a hundred other people throughout the Old Testament, ultimately entrusting themselves to God's sovereign hand in his leading and putting themselves at risk for the sake of his greater glory. So we just saw that with Esther and reaching out to the king and approaching the king, Xerces about saving the Jews, and what does she do? She ultimately, she puts herself at risk, and fundamentally Nehemiah is putting himself at risk, and what's interesting while, you know, he's got kind of a dangerous job potentially. But he, just as Esther, they were living a life of absolute luxury in the midst of this. And so Nehemiah's life is good, and yet his heart in many of ways is so set apart to God that he is compelled to make this ask of the king because he's so overwhelmed with grief and lament about what is happening in Jerusalem and to God's people who are living there. Yeah, so even if his job doesn't end or even if his life doesn't end, his life of luxury is going to change. I mean, he's going to go from the king's palace to a pile of rubble and try to organize the rebuilding of a wall. Yeah, knowing that there's going to be opposition as well. Yeah, and in the story, we don't have time to get to all of that today. There's massive opposition, and so he turns like construction engineer to administrative leader, to politician, to warrior, I mean, he has to become all that. The guy said, the guy brings the king his wine. It's not like he had a background, you know, as a civil engineer, I wouldn't think. So he has to learn all this on the fly, doesn't he? Yeah. Yeah, he's put in a position to where he has to ultimately be the one who fundamentally runs point on this massive, massive undertaking. If people do that today, like say, I feel God's called me to this, I'm going, like I'm doing it. I have no training, no background, no experience, but I got a call from God. I mean, do we see that a lot? No, but it does happen and that shouldn't diminish our need for training because it's interesting that you mentioned that because there are stories, especially in some missional work that's done internationally, where a call goes out for a missionary to serve in a particular place, and then they run headlong without any kind of cultural context or understanding of even where they're going, and there's a piece of you that's like, wow, that's amazing faith. And then there's the other piece of you that's like, wow, you know, spend some time getting to know the people and getting to know the culture, getting to know the language, that type of thing. But yeah, with Nehemiah, just the absolute magnitude of this undertaking is unbelievable. And then he's put in position where ultimately he is. He's forced to run point on things and which happens. It happens in every vocation in every field. It happens in ministry. There was a time that I got appointed to a church and the midst of being appointed to the church, some things weren't necessarily revealed relative to like debt load and some other things and got to the church and they're like, hey, we need to pay off these promissory notes in two months and we need to secure a loan. And at that point, you have no choice. You figure it out, right? You figure it out. You come a banker on the fly and you talk to people and you organize. So he did that, the upshot of the story is that he went to the king and then in chapter two verse eight, the end of it, it just says, the king granted me what I asked for the good hand of my God was upon me. That's really cool because his God worshiping the God of Israel wasn't the same as the God of Persia, the false gods, our exerxes would have worshiped, but he understood, we've talked about this before, he understood that the sovereign hand of God was going to work even if it's through a pagan, even if it's through an atheist, even if it's through a Methodist, you know, but like me, you know, like the good hand of God can work, right? Because God's not dependent upon who we are. So Nehemiah recognizes this, well, I think it's a pretty cool part of the story, a little line. So that's where there's the difference in some ways between like his lament and grief over the situation. And then he doesn't allow that to create a condition of despair or, you know, where he catastrophizes everything and thinks, you know, all hope is now lost is what we see a lot of times in the modern world is that there is this element of catastrophe, you know, catastrophizing so many different things where we just exist. There's, there's so many folks out there, sadly, who exist in almost like this state of despair that think, well, the present circumstances as they are, are, are our condition forever. You know, even if like a string of wonderful things had happened the week before for, for a person and then something bad occurs and they think this particular, this is the end. It's not what Nehemiah says, and again, he's got, if you read through the book of Nehemiah, there are a multitude of obstacles that this guy is going to face, multitude of obstacles. And yet Nehemiah does not lend himself to despair. Why is that? It's because he knows his God and he knows that his God is sovereign over all things. He knows that his God is king of kings and Lord of lords, and he can ultimately entrust himself to God, that doesn't mean that he doesn't grieve or lament when evil occurs, but he knows who he can put his trust in, which is, which is what he's going to need for the story. So let me just, we're going to finish out this chapter two, listen to readers, listeners, you don't have to read this on your own. It's a great story, which we had time, but so Nehemiah takes off and chapter two verse 11, he says, so I, he's writing all this in the first person, which is pretty cool. So I went to Jerusalem, that little phrase there is significant, it took a long time. He was not next door to Jerusalem, so he took this journey and took people with him, took the letters that the king had given for the governors, that he had entry to come through into Judah. He took the letters the king had given to say, okay, the king's forest is going to be available for timber and construction, he took all this with him with an entourage of people in that little phrase, so I went to Jerusalem. And when he got to Jerusalem, he says, and I was there three days. So to your point, the first thing he does is inspect the place. He's taking a look, he's walking around the wall, he's meeting people probably, he's, he's just getting the lay of the land and sensing like, I've heard this report that it was down. Oh boy, it's worse than I thought. Verse 12, "Then I arose in the night, I and a few men with me, and I told no one what my God had put into my heart to do for Jerusalem. There was no animal with me, but the one on which I rode, I went out by night, by the valley gate, to the dragon spring, and to the dung gate." Now there's three places for you, the, I don't know where you'd rather build your house, by the valley gate, the dragon spring, or the dung gate. So he's looking like, in other words, going all around the walls to the places which are preferred places, and of course, you got to have a place to get rid of your waste in that time of the other ways, looking at all of it. And I inspected the walls of Jerusalem that were broken down and its gates that had been destroyed by fire. Jerusalem, wall was largely built of rock, stone, it was knocked down, the gates made of wood were destroyed by fire. He says, "Then I went on to the fountain gate and to the king's pool, but there was no room for the animal that was under me to pass, just so much rubble. Then I went up in the night by the valley and inspected the wall, and I turned back and entered by the valley gate, and so returned." I just think that's a really cool part of the story, that he's doing exactly what you talked about, he's figuring it out, he's looking at it. He didn't come back and on day one, snap his fingers and say, "Everybody start rebuilding." He's assessing the situation, taking a look at it, and even though he knew God had called him to do this, he wanted to do it right. Yeah, he's not hasty about it, and so he's not hasty about it, he's proactive in doing what he needs to do to get to lay of the land, to come up with a plan, pressing forward. He talks to the people he needs to talk to, but he's not. He's not impatient, he's not, yeah, he's really, I mean honestly, at the end of the day, he's just saying, "Lord, this is more than I can ever accomplish, and I'm going to have to entrust this to you. I know this is what you want, this is what you've called me to do, and we're going to do it in your time." So we're going to come out of this point of the story when there's some good and there's some bad, there's some approval and some disapproval, and if you're treating anything, almost anything in the world, but it's definitely anything big, you're going to have people for you and again, as my grandma would have said. I loved my grandma. I lived in Daleville, Indiana, a little bit town, and we'd go there and spend time at her house, and she'd always give us a dollar, so we'd go down to the pink store. There was this store that the block building was painted pink, and get some candy. Just use that sweet lady, sweet lady when I was in my childhood memories. So we're back in a chapter 2, verse 16, and Nehemiah's talking says, "And the officials did not know where I had gone or what I was doing, the officials of the city, and I had not yet told the Jews, the priests, the nobles, the officials, and the rest who were to do the work." So it's just got a couple guys with him as he's inspecting it, but then I said to them, I guess it means to the Jewish people, the priests, the nobles, the officials, the laborers, I said to them, "You see the trouble we are in? How Jerusalem lies and ruins with its gates burned. Come, let us build the wall of Jerusalem that we may no longer suffer derision. And I told them of the hand of my God that had been upon me for good, and also of the words that the king had spoken to me. And they said, "Let us rise up and build." And here's the phrase to hold on to, "So they strengthened their hands for the good work. So they strengthened their hands for the good work." The next verse contrasts that, "But when Sanbala, the Horonite, and Tabaya, the Ammonite servant and Geshim the Arab heard of it, they jeered at us and despised us." There's two voices that are coming at him. One says, "They strengthened their hands for the good work. They said, 'Let's go. Let's build this thing.'" The other one said, "They jeered at us and despised us and said, 'What is this thing you're doing? Are you rebelling against the king?'" So immediately before the first stone is removed from the rubble in order to be replaced, these got two voices, go for it, and we're going to stand in your way. And of course these guys stand in his way throughout the whole rest of the story. We don't have time to go through like they're in the way, they're in the way, in the way, and we're really trying to cross trouble, even threatening death along the way. You've experienced this in ministry, in life, whatever, like you want to do something, and there's some people who say, "I'm all with you," and some people say, "The dumbest idea I've ever heard, Greenbomb, what are you thinking?" And you've got to sort it out, right, because you don't want to just automatically dismiss the people who don't like your ideas, maybe they're right. But there is a sense of which I've got to figure out what's from God, which voices is and is not, and he had opposition from the get-go. Yeah, he has opposition from the get-go. He also, in the words that I know you're about to share here in a second about relative to his response, he does remind me of David when he goes before Goliath, and Goliath is mocking David, and David, his instant response is to reflect upon the reality, which is not Goliath's size or his armament or his weapons, but that God ultimately is behind David. And so David knows that he will be victorious, because this is what God has called him and led him to do. And we see that with Nehemiah, we see this certainty that comes with him and how he has seen God's hand already at work, and the king's provision for him and the king sending him back. And so he already knows that this is what God has called him to do. He's already had that validated to him through numerous circumstances. And so he does. I mean, he rests in God's call, and he finds confidence in what God is, where God's leading him at this point. Yeah, go ahead and give his response there in verse 20 to these guys. I think it's a telling part of exactly what you said about Nehemiah. Yeah, it's said, Nehemiah writing, it says, I answered them by saying, the God of heaven will give us success. We his servants will start rebuilding. But as for you, you have no share in Jerusalem or any claim or historic right to it. And so again, we see the certainty that has come with God's call. It's not to say that living into the call is going to be easy. Again, if you read through Nehemiah, you realize that it was not easy, and yet God had put this upon his heart. He had given him this vision. He had given Nehemiah this call and Nehemiah, again, not to be redundant on this, but he's just like, Lord, in your time, you're going to cause this to happen. I'm just going to be faithfully present. And so I'm going to faithfully do what you have called me to do. And I'm going to trust that you're going to work it out as we as we continue to do the work that you have given us to do. Good word. That's a wrap on the year. Right there. Amen. It's been a fun year. Was there any particular piece of the Old Testament, having had to move through the whole of it this past year that you particularly was like, that I maybe had forgotten how much you enjoyed that piece. Maybe it was something that you hadn't read in a while, or is there something that stood out to you throughout the year that you're like, you know what, that really kind of hit me hard. I would say that one of the things that I wouldn't anticipate in this question, it's a good question. Don't ask me questions for three years, man. So I figured that they're on that. Here's what I, here's what I, my first reaction to that was, and that was in, in slogging through all of these kings of the Northern Kingdom and Southern Kingdom. There's like 40 of them combined. And then all of the responses to the prophets, the prophets response to them and their responses to the prophets. It was a little disorienting to see how much the majority of the kings turned away from God, even though these prophets were speaking for God, say, turn to God, turn to God, turn to God. And like, no, we're going to do our own thing. And so to watch this and read through this and study through it and all the preparation we did that lasted centuries, not just a couple of weeks. That was, that was probably a little, a challenge for me. And then my wife and I went on a, on a journey to places Paul visited here. A few months ago, we went to Greece and to Turkey and saw some of the places like Athens and Corinth and Ephesus and Philippi and Thessalonica and some of these amazing places. And, and when I was there, I was remembering all these kings as well as the New Testament time and Paul was in those, in those particular places. And I, I just was reminded that everywhere that God was active, there were people who resisted God. So in the New Testament time of Paul, Paul would go in, he would minister in a city and when he was done there, there were still pagans. They were still doing emperor worship. They were still worshiping Greek gods. There were, there were still problems within the church as they were practicing these customs that had been a part of their culture. And in the Old Testament, I thought, well, that was the same thing back with all this time. God had clearly said, here's how to live your life. And it seems like the majority of the Old Testament and New Testament and life today is us saying, thanks for your advice, God, I'm going to do it my way. There's my knee jerk reaction to that. That's impressive. Well, next year I should just start asking you questions and you can, that's probably the best answer that's been given all years. Well, that was my one, you know, so it's kind of, kind of hit me. I mean, it was, it was a big moment when I was in these places. I think maybe particularly in, in Corinth, it, it hit me when I was, when I was there and the ruins of Corinth and watching where Paul was when he was put on trial, he was, he was brought to the beam of seat and, and, and there he was listening to judgment seat and, and, and the spot where that seat is location, the place of judgment. If you look one direction up the mountain, you can see where this goddess was worshiped. If you look another direction, you can see where another God Apollo was worshiped. If you look slightly another direction, you can see from that location where the emperor's wife was worshiped and it was like, this is not remote. I think in terms of the United States and the courthouse is really far away and you have to get your GPS to find where it is, like no, when they brought him to this spot, all you do is do a 360 degree turn and you can see you're, you're, you're disrupting all of our ways and, and it hit me. It really, it really hit me hard and then I kind of thought about the whole sweep of Scripture and even in a modern day world, when we just say, I don't care what you're saying, I'm going to do what the culture around me is saying, actually, which is what he was pressured to do and same for these prophets that we've walked through with the Old Testament. So, well, here's, here's what we're going to do next year, Ben, you and I have kind of worked out this plan and this year it's called Be God's Light because in the very beginning, God said, let there be light in that throughout the Old Testament, like people are called to be God's Light, these prophets kept calling them to do so. Next year we're going to do a thing called Be God's Family and we're going to look at these New Testament books of the Bible that were either written to a Hebrew Christian audience or about the, the question of should people become a Jew first in order to become a Christian? Kind of all those are mixed in there. We'll be taking a slower look rather than racing through the whole New Testament or the whole Old Testament and just four books the Bible next year, ten months, we're going to, we're going to hit that. Matthew, we'll look at that first from Christmas to Easter. That's the most, many scholars think like the most Jewish of the gospels. Then the book of Hebrews, which is kind of Hebrew, it's a New Testament book which really steps back and looks at Jesus through the context of the Old Testament practices and customs and, and the things we've looked at in the Old Testament here. And then the books of Galatians and James as well. So that's kind of our plan for next year and, and everybody gets break for, for a bit. And then toward the end of the year, we'll get this ramped up again so that the beginning of 20, 25, we'll be ready to hit it running. The last words of wisdom for we say, happy Thanksgiving and happy Merry Christmas and happy New Year's and all the things that are coming up in the next several weeks. No, no, it's a busy time of year, that's for sure. But looking forward to next year, looking forward to diving, I think moving more slowly and intentionally through these books. And I'm looking forward, I'm really looking forward to that. Yeah, so am I. It's really an honor to do it with you and with so many great, great people in our church. Let me, let me pray as we sign off for the year. Thank you, God, so much for this day that you've given to us. And, and we are honored and privileged that we've been able to walk through the Old Testament this year. We know that we've, we've skipped over tons and tons of it had to because there's so much there. We ask that you would fill in the gaps of anything that we skipped or any areas where we misspoke that you would bring clarity to that. And as we, as we lean into the rest of this, this calendar year, we ask for each person to be aware of their blessings from you as time will be spent during the holidays with family and friends that each one of us who are listening to this and beyond would be aware of your blessings for our, our lives and how, how abundantly good you are to us. We pray that you would give us a clear sense of who we are and whose we are. And as we then reopen these discussions in 2025, that you'd help us to, to know our calling, purpose, who we are, our character developing you and to live into it in ways even beyond what we've done this year. We thank you for these things and pray for them in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen. God bless you all. See you next year. You
Mark Ellcessor and Ben Greenbaum close out the year on the Old Testament as they discuss the book of Nehemiah, and his call to return to Jerusalem to rebuild the walls around the city.