Preparing to Rebuild

For those of you who are a little newer here, my name is Tim.

I'm one of the pastors here, and I'm super thankful to be able to worship together with you and to be able to preach.

A double blessing.

And so I invite you to open in your Bibles to Nehemiah chapter 2.

Nehemiah 2 · chapter mention

Our text is verses 9 through 15.

Every great story that you've ever read and that I've ever read has not only a hero, but also a villain.

Not only a protagonist, but also an antagonist.

An antagonist is someone who creates crisis, who causes problems, who messes up paradise.

And then usually in the story, the crisis grows and grows and grows, and tension grows until it comes to a glorious resolution when the hero undoes the crisis, resolves the crisis, and overthrows the villain.

Pretty much every story that Disney's ever put out, that's exactly what happens.

I mean, what would Lord of the Rings be without Sauron?

Or Sherlock Holmes without Professor Moriarty?

Or Harry Potter without Lord Voldemort?

Or Batman without the Joker?

Or Star Wars without Darth Vader.

It'd be pretty lame, wouldn't they?

The tensions actually, the tension and then the resolution actually is what makes the story what it is.

And here in our series this morning in Nehemiah chapter 2, we've been, we've had a couple sermons into the series.

Nehemiah 2 · chapter mention

This is the sermon where we're introduced to the cast of characters that are going to be the villains of the story, that are going to cause the crises that's going to build throughout the book until it comes to a resolution.

Nehemiah, if you may remember, was just a cupbearer, a Jewish cupbearer who was born and raised in the kingdom of Persia.

He was Jewish.

He had been there because his forebearers had been taken into captivity by Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon.

The Persian and the Medio-Persian army came and defeated Babylon, and so now he was living in what was called Persia, modern-day Iran.

He had heard from someone, maybe someone close to him who had traveled back to Jerusalem about a thousand miles, had come back and told him how the city was doing.

And when he heard that the city was actually still in the same shape that it was 140 years prior, when Babylon had destroyed it, he was grieving his heart.

He couldn't believe that 140 years had passed.

From 586 BC when the city was sacked, to 445 BC, whenever he went back to Jerusalem.

He couldn't believe that it was still in rubble, that still it was an eyesore in the land.

This was the city of God, the fame city of Jerusalem, and he said, I will do something about it.

As you may remember, he he prayed for several months before going to the king, and he was so bold as to ask of the king not only permission to take a leave of absence to go back to Jerusalem and rebuild the walls, but to ask the king to fund it.

To sort of build a wall and make the king pay for it, or something like that.

Bad political joke?

Okay.

Build a wall, make Mexico pay.

Come on, guys.

It's only been two years.

This mission of Nehemiah, however, was not for the faint of heart.

He wasn't going to build some little Lego fort.

He was going to rebuild the walls of a city.

And Nehemiah himself was not an architect.

He was a cupbearer.

He was a butler at worst.

He was a vine or vineyard keeper at best.

So it's not altogether different from what we might encounter in Lord of the Rings Froto Baggins and his trek to the edge of the fires of Mordor to drop the ring in there and destroy the evil of the ring.

Or perhaps the 11th hour destruction of the Death Star in the Empire Strikes Back.

It would be a victory, should he succeed, a victory against all odds.

And that's what we're going to see in our text this morning.

We're going to see the odds were quite stacked against him.

Three significant challenges are going to appear in this text that Nehemiah had to face.

And I hope we leave encouraged how he faced them and how he points to Jesus and how he faced them.

We're going to see the challenge of hostility, the challenge of inadequacy, and the challenge of apathy.

The first challenge is in verses 9 and 10 that begin our text.

And then in verses 19 and 20, we're going to meet the villains of the story.

Because after he'd received permission in official letters from the king, Artaxerxes, he had traveled a thousand miles there.

But when he got there, guess what?

He wasn't met with open arms.

Like, thank you for coming to be our Savior.

They looked at him like he had three eyes and they mocked him.

Let's pick up in verse 9.

Nehemiah chapter 2 and verse 9.

Nehemiah 2 · chapter mention

Then I came to the governors of the province beyond the river and gave them the king's letters.

Now the king had sent with me officers of the army and horsemen, but when Sanbalat the Horonite and Tobiah the Ammonite servant heard this, it displeased them greatly that someone had come to seek the welfare of the people of Israel.

Just great upstanding people.

Look at verse 19.

And when Sanbalat the Horonite and Tobiah the Ammonite servant and Gishim the Arab heard of it, they jeered at us and despised us and said, What is this thing that you are doing?

Are you rebelling against the king?

Then I replied to them, The God of heaven will make us prosper, and we his servants will arise and build, but you have no portion or right or claim in Jerusalem.

Nehemiah responds to this hostile reception by being resolute in the face of ridicule.

Resolute in the face of ridicule.

As we read this text, it's obvious that that uh there's pungent hostility in the air as Nehemiah goes a thousand miles and enters, crosses the river and goes west of Jordan into Israel, and he is being mocked.

Now just imagine you already go through all this trouble, you've prayed, you've been asking God to lay out a you know a red carpet for you.

You travel a thousand miles on a little donkey.

I'm sure that wasn't very pleasant.

And then when you get there, the people aren't even happy you're there, all the things you're sacrificing.

But it turns out it's not really the people themselves that are upset, it's the enemies of God's people that have infiltrated them.

And in the in the area of Samaria is where San Balat the Horonite lived, and apparently uh this other figure that was one of his servants, and then um to the east, Gisham the Arab, these sort of form an unholy trinity, an axis of evil, if you think about it, that are going to oppose the work of God in the area.

And if you go all the way back to Genesis chapter 3, you find that ever since the inception of sin on the earth, in every story, there's always this antagonist.

Genesis 3 · chapter mention

There's always some thread of evil that's opposing the work of God.

It did it in the Garden of Eden, it did it in the days of Abraham, in the days of David, there were always the Philistines, there were always someone opposing God, and here in Nehemiah.

Yet again, we have what Jesus called the um the children of Satan himself that oppose the good and want to cast uh a shade on the light.

There is a second well, actually, let's see here.

There's two ways that we see that Nehemiah had actually foreseen the problems.

So often we we kind of go through life kind of like Pollyanna thinking everything's gonna turn out for the good.

We we we don't actually plan on things to go uh with difficulty.

And yet Nehemiah actually had learned from history, he was always wise, had learned from history because 10 years earlier, 10 to 12 years earlier, Ezra, who was a priest, had led a second coalition to Israel from from uh from Babylon and Persia.

Uh eighty years earlier, a guy named Zerubbabel had come and rebuilt the temple there.

And now Ezra, 10 years earlier, had come and taught the Torah, tried to bring about social and and cultural uh reform.

And then Nehemiah comes as the third wave of uh immigration or immigration back to Israel, and he's gonna rebuild the walls.

So Nehemiah had learned that from ten years earlier, Ezra had encountered these very same wicked people that were entrenched just north of Jerusalem in Samaria.

And so he actually had planned on their opposition.

He wasn't surprised by it.

I think there's a lot of a big lesson there to learn.

We go through life and we think, I'm gonna have some holy ambition, I'm gonna, I'm gonna um do something for the Lord, I'm gonna, uh whether it's some leaf that needs turned over in my family, some some piece of rubble that needs swept up and carried out.

And we act, we, we, we pretend in our minds that we're gonna get through it without any casualties or without any sacrifice.

But here Nehemiah expected exactly what was gonna happen, as we see in verse 7 of our text.

Just before verse 9, he says, If it pleases the king, let letters be given to me for the governors of the province beyond the river, that they may let us pass through until I come to Judah.

He anticipated the people that he was gonna have to go through, like requiring letters, otherwise they might stop his advance.

And then we see in verses nine and ten that when he came to those governors beyond the river and he gave them those letters, they were very displeased.

So he his plan was working.

Instead of him coming to say, Hey, I just need to go through your land, and they're like, No.

He showed him letters from the king of Persia who was ruling the territory and said, Let me pass.

I've got papers.

And they had to, but they were very displeased.

So Nehemiah anticipated the hostility and he was unfazed by it.

I think you and I in our walk with the Lord, we we we get so disillusioned sometimes, we get frustrated that life isn't easier.

Instead of anticipating the hostility, the opposition, and being undeterred by it because we know we're on a divine mission.

Our second challenge is the challenge that he faced of inadequacy.

The challenge of inadequacy, namely that he was forced to trust in God to do the impossible for him.

This task was not something that he was physically or emotionally or uh financially able to do of his own.

He had to trust in God to do the impossible.

And so far, God had already turned the heart of King Artex Xerxes to fund the mission, but now you were left with the physical enormity of rebuilding these walls.

I've got a hill in my backyard, and I've been thinking for about three years about building a hundred-foot-long retaining wall, maybe four, maybe six feet tall, sixteen inches deep.

And I have been putting it off because it's gonna be a lot of work.

A lot of money, a lot of work, a hundred feet long, four feet tall.

Do you realize the walls around Jerusalem were two and a half miles in circumference?

Ancient Jerusalem, two and a half miles in circumference, on average, 40 feet tall and 8.2 feet thick.

Nehemiah, no way in his own strength could do this.

And I think as he walks through these walls, there's no way in his heart that he's trusting in himself that he can do this of his own accord.

He's trusting in God to do the impossible.

Let's look in verses 11 through 15.

When he inspects the walls and he sees just what kind of task that he had never seen.

This was a sight, unseen visit.

When he finally visits, this is what he sees.

Verse 11.

So I went to Jerusalem and was there three days.

Then I arose in the night, I and a few men with me, and I had no one, and I told no one what my God had put in 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, and I inspected the walls of Jerusalem that were broken down, and its gates that had been destroyed by fire.

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.

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.

Did you notice that as he's inspecting these walls around Jerusalem, that there's so much rubble that at times his donkey can't even make it through the rubble and he has to dismount and walk on foot.

This was a mess.

Whatever it looked like 140 years prior, when a million-man army of Babylon had had leveled the place, that's what it still looked like.

Rubble and chaos everywhere.

But he didn't turn his little donkey around and head back to Persia and say, Well, that was a pipe stream that didn't happen.

There was something in Nehemiah that made him resolute, that made him actually believe that God would do something impossible.

We don't have a glimmer of discouragement in his voice as he's narrating this.

And I think from the text, there's two clues as to why that is.

The first comes in at in verse 8 of chapter 2, where he says the phrase, the good hand of my God was upon me.

The good hand of my God was upon me.

Have you ever felt that God's hand was upon you?

There have been Christian generals throughout the centuries that would write memoirs of how they would go into battle and they literally felt invincible because they believed they were on a divine mission.

Here Nehemiah apparently felt rather invincible because God's hand was upon him.

Another clue in verse 20 when he tells the enemies of God, he says, the God of heaven will make us prosper.

Do you and I walk with that kind of confidence in God?

Not in ourselves.

We know that we're not adequate to rebuild those walls.

The challenges are too great for us in our own strength much of the time.

But do we walk knowing that we are a son, a daughter of the king, that we have, as it were, letters from the king, and we have the spirit of the king within us.

There's a song we're probably familiar with it, What a Friend We Have in Jesus.

That I often think of.

I often sing it.

I sing it to my little daughters.

I hum it to myself at work.

What a friend we have in Jesus.

All our sins and griefs to bear.

What a privilege to carry everything to God in prayer.

And this is what really gets me.

Oh, what peace we often forfeit.

Oh, what needless pain we bear, all because we do not carry everything to God in prayer.

Have we trials and temptations?

Is there trouble anywhere?

We should never be discouraged.

Take it to the Lord in prayer.

There's one thing we've learned about Nehemiah from chapter 1, verse 1 to our text today.

It's that he took everything to the Lord in prayer.

Chapter 1, most of chapter 1, is a prayer that he recorded for us where he was confessing sins to God.

And he was confessing his confidence in the covenant-keeping nature of God to bless his people in rebuilding the walls.

And then chapter 2, we learned that he prayed for several months before he even brought up the subject to the king of funding the mission.

He was a man of prayer.

He had taken over and over again his burdens, his worries, his grief, his pain, his discouragements, his trouble to the Lord in prayer.

And I believe from the text, based on just his confidence in God's hand upon him, that this is the only reason he didn't hightail it back to Persia.

And it's the only reason that you and I can have a ground for confidence in the face of not only hostility from around, but from feelings of inadequacy within.

At the same time, we don't see Nehemiah on the other end of the spectrum so boastful and arrogant and just sort of delusional that he was trusting in himself.

In our culture, we we often uh we often prize self-confidence, you know, the James Bond kind of character that sort of smirks at trouble.

But the fact is, there is evil out there that could crush us at any second.

Often the Lord reminds me just how frail I am.

Some days I get out of bed and I rely thinking, I'm untouchable.

I got this.

But not because I'm really trusting the Lord, because I just feel good.

But the Lord can very quickly let just a little something touch my life, and I realize just how needy I am.

Nehemiah wasn't walking in his own strength.

I'm afraid that many of us haven't yet come to an end of our own ropes, or it's been a long time, and we started to creep up with this uh self-confidence that's not really faith in God, but it's just a delusionary, uh perceived um trust in our own abilities.

This past week we had um one such encounter.

This past week our furnace went out.

And I was at work and Brandy texted me and she said, You know that furnace that the day before had been making this really weird whining noise?

Well, now it's not making any noise at all, nor making any heat.

And I'm sad to say that I kind of went into Mr.

Fixit mode immediately.

I was like, well, call blah, blah, blah.

You know, we'd just gotten a coupon in the mail like three days earlier for Apollo, right?

They charge you three times the amount, but they're really convenient.

So, anyways, we I get her to call Apollo and they come out there, they assess it.

There's a part, it's gonna take five days.

Everything goes just as planned.

On the fifth day, we get the thing uh fixed.

But a couple days into that whole process, I realized that I hadn't prayed about it at all.

I'd gotten the bad news because the weather was like 19 degrees when the thing went out.

And instead of being like, wow, this is really cold, uh, we're gonna have to have a lot of space heaters, which increases fire risk in your house, all kinds of things.

And I hadn't prayed about that to the Lord.

Me, a man of faith, right?

A Christian, a pastor.

And I was just trying to fix this in my own strength.

It sort of came out of nowhere.

No one said, Hey Tim, you're about to get a trial of faith.

How are you gonna find a pass the test?

No one came out and said that, right?

And I kind of failed the test.

Thankfully, in God's mercy, everything was repaired.

And it wasn't a terrible situation.

There was no anger, there was no drama, it was just a matter of me trying to fix things and yet not trusting in the Lord.

Nehemiah inspires me as we look at the text where he takes it to the Lord in prayer, and then he's confident, not because he's got the number to a company that can repair it, but because he has God's good hand upon him.

Oh, that we would have that kind of confidence ourselves and dependence on the Lord.

The third challenge that Nehemiah faces in our text is that challenge of apathy, which may be the greatest of all.

The challenge of apathy.

And Nehemiah responded to this significant challenge of apathy by inspiring an entire generation of people to rise up and build.

Remember, it's been 140 years, and I did the math.

It's 2022 right now.

140 years ago is 1886.

Just think about how much time and cultural experiences and baggage that gets sort of stored up 140 years since 1886.

People had gotten so used to Jerusalem just being a trash heap.

Yeah, the temples there that had been rebuilt 80 years, but you kind of had to walk around a bunch of junk.

You have to kind of, you know, you get the kids keep throwing rocks and climbing up piles, and it's a mess.

People were so used to Jerusalem being a trash heap rather than being the pristine city of God that it had been at one point under the reign of Solomon.

It had been the city of David, and here it was a trash heap for 140 years.

The greatest challenge that he would face was convincing the people who had set up roots there that it's time to do something about the rubble.

It's time to rise up and build.

I wonder if you've ever had any good ideas.

But then discovered very quickly that they didn't get much traction.

I'm sort of like an idea factory.

But most of my ideas happen like in the middle of the night where I wake up and have this brilliant idea.

You know, with one eye, I text myself a message for the next morning so I can check my phone and be like, ah, that's what I was thinking.

Um, but most of the time, uh, they're pretty bad ideas.

Like that one time that I woke up and I was like, what did I think last night?

And it was like convince Brandy to start a puppy zoo to raise funds for soccer players on furlough or something.

I don't know.

It was strange, it didn't go very far.

But yeah, that was one of my better ones, in fact.

So I've had to cut back on the ambient and we're doing better.

But the fact is, we all have ideas, we all have even visions.

Let's just say we have this vision of a preferred future for our family.

We see something that's not right.

Our relationship with our child, our relationship with the Lord, or maybe your marriage.

We we have a vision for a preferred future, but we lack the ability to lead others, lead ourselves and others to making lasting change.

The greatest struggle facing Nehemiah was not the physical size of the walls of Jerusalem.

It wasn't the physical threat and the emotional threat of these enemies jeering and laughing and mocking them.

And later we're gonna find in the book they start threatening.

But so far it's just ridicule.

His biggest challenge was one of leadership.

Because he couldn't physically rebuild these walls.

He, his biggest challenge was not one of logistics.

It wasn't a challenge of bricks and lumber, it was a challenge of leadership.

And I think that's the reason why so many homes are in disarray.

Because our men, myself included, we need to grow a lot.

In leadership, in leading by example, in getting those around us, our wife, our children, to buy into a vision for a preferred future instead of just barking orders or taking the easy way and just being passive and sort of stepping over the pile of rubble in our living room.

Nehemiah had to get the people to have ownership of a lofty vision to rebuild these walls.

So often we're like, you know what, I'm sure my marriage will fix itself in time, right?

Maybe when the kids are out of the house, then we'll reconnect.

Maybe next year, next school year, we'll be able to really make some inroads into our kids' lives.

We've gone distant, we really haven't been building in, discipling them about Jesus.

But you know, we'll do that next semester.

Or, you know, we we really want to get into a mission group, but we'll do that next term.

You know, I'll let's get really personal.

You know, I'm gonna stop indulging in sleazy pictures on my phone and videos and stuff.

I'm just, you know, when I get caught, I'll stop then.

Or maybe it's something like, you know, I'll get around to telling my neighbor about Jesus maybe some other time.

In other words, we get so used to the rubble in our lives, it's as if we become blind to it.

I've heard it said that, you know, you you walk into someone's home and every home smells different, but when you live there, you don't know.

You know, it's kind of interesting.

We'll come home from a trip, we go to Memphis to see my parents, and we'll we'll get back into town.

And I think just the other day we we came in from town, into town, and what did I say it smelled like?

No, it didn't smell like trash.

Thanks, honey.

Honey, no, it did not smell like trash.

But it was a surprising smell.

It wasn't bad in my recollection, but it was something that I had not smelt when we left.

Goodness.

It was that it was that dead mouse under the sink.

That's right.

So, anyways, moving on.

We get so used to the aroma of our own homes, we get so used to the rubble in our relationships that we stop even thinking about it.

And I and Nehemiah has to come along, and so do we.

Have to catch a fresh vision and then know how to inspire ourselves and others to bring about change.

There are three things that Nehemiah did in our text, in the final verses of our text, um, to instill a sense of personal buy-in and inspiration and motivation to the people of Jerusalem.

The first is in verses, verse 17a.

We find that he gets honest about the way things are.

Number one, he gets honest.

He says, You see the trouble we are in.

Many of them had probably stopped seeing the trouble they were in.

You see how Jerusalem lies in ruins with its gates burned?

I wonder if you and I are able to have honest conversations with ourselves, with the Lord, and with those around us, our mission group, our spouse, our kids.

Are we able to have honest conversations about where we really are?

Or are we living in denial?

How we just grown blind to our struggles?

Have we just gotten so used to the plaguing doubts that won't leave us alone or discouragements?

Instead of reaching out for help, for outside help, for intervention, for answers, we just sort of neuroscientists call it neuroplasticity, where you literally create channels in your brains like ruts that you just can't hardly get out of.

Thankfully, God made us where we can actually get out of those with neuroplasticity because the brain is pretty teachable once we recognize it and begin to teach it different ways.

Number two, he doesn't just get honest with the situation, he calls them to action.

In verse 17b.

He says, Come, let us build the wall of Jerusalem that we may no longer suffer derision.

He says, We're a joke.

Derision is a fancy word for mockery or a joke.

We're suffering, we're we as the people of God, the people who really serve the only, the one true and living God, all these people around us are idolaters, and they're doing pretty well.

We are a mockery among the nations, which Isaiah told them they would become that.

And he says, Come, let us build the wall of Jerusalem that we may no longer suffer derision.

I wonder if we today are willing to resolve to work for change, to see the problems as they are, to get honest with them, and not just to kind of roll around in the mully grubs and think, yeah, things really aren't the way they should be.

Nobody to do something about it.

Thirdly, after being honest and after calling them to action, he inspires them, number three, by reciting how God has already been at work and how he's confident that God will see the project through.

Verse 18, A.

He says, 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.

He starts reciting to them evidences of God being at work.

That's how you inspire.

You don't just like start barking orders, right?

You inspire by shepherding hearts.

And oh, that's so difficult, isn't it?

It's so hard to shepherd the heart of your wife, right?

And your kids.

But you do that by inspiring them with confidence in God.

And that's why whenever you're a man and you're in God's word and you see like this is this is the biblical vision for how family life should look like, that's your foundation.

And then you say, hey, if God has told us to do things this way, he's gonna honor us and bless us no matter what challenges facing us as a married couple, as parents, God's gonna see the project through if we walk in his steps.

And you inspire change.

You shepherd hearts.

It's absolutely galvanizing to recite, to recite God's promises.

I wonder how many of us have been reciting God's promises.

In mission group, um, maybe it was two weeks ago.

That's what we kind of got from chapter one in his prayer of Nehemiah.

He's reciting the promises that God had made in Exodus chapter 30 through Moses, that even if you depart from the Lord and he sends nations to come and carry away captive, if you return to the Lord, I will be merciful and I'll restore you.

Exodus 30 · chapter mention

And Nehemiah quotes that in Nehemiah chapter one.

He's calling the people to remember God's promises.

There's some great promises in Scripture.

One of my favorites is Romans chapter 8 and verse 28.

Romans 8 · chapter mention

And we know that all that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to his purpose.

All things, even furnaces going out, even kids getting sick for the 19th time in the last two months.

God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God.

How about Isaiah chapter 41 and verse 10?

Isaiah 41 · chapter mention

Isaiah was someone, according to tradition, was so rejected by his countrymen as they were basically on a route to go to captivity because of their wickedness and idolatry.

He was, according to tradition, he was sawn in half.

That's how they killed him.

This is what we think about your message.

They put him in a hollow log and they cut him in half.

Here's what he said in Isaiah 41, 10.

God said to him, Fear not Isaiah, for I am with you.

Be not dismayed, for I am your God.

I will strengthen you, I will help you, I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.

This is a promise of God.

This is how you shepherd hearts.

This is how you shepherd your own heart.

When you open your Bible and you see what God is saying to your soul, and then you pass it on to those around you, galvanizing them to buy into what God would have us to do.

Oh, that we had homes in our church where husbands were speaking this way to their wives, and wives to their husbands, and parents to children.

That in casual conversations, you and I are fostering this kind of confidence in God's faithfulness, tapping into God's power, reminding each other of God's commitment to always and only work for our good.

And so we see this apathetic people inspired to rise up and build.

In verse 18b, they said to Nehemiah, let us rise up and build.

So they strengthen their hands for the good work.

Nehemiah is a stunning example of how one man can create an entire movement by casting an inspiring vision for what is possible with the help of Almighty God.

That's what I want to be as a man, as a husband, as a father, as a friend, as a pastor.

I want the ripple effect of my brief little vapor-like life and yours to be inspiring those around you and I.

What is possible with the good hand of God when it is upon us?

Now, about right now in the message, and this is sort of the typical trajectory as we look into scripture, we start seeing the glaring disconnect between what scripture says and how we live.

Start feeling the weight of guilt, right?

Well, don't ignore that.

That's the Spirit saying, you know what, it's time to get the shovel and start getting the rubble out of your home.

It's time to start being honest with where your walk is with the Lord, your prayer life, your time in the Word.

It's time to be honest and to take action.

And so to do this, I want not to burden you with more rules, to lay upon you a burden you can't possibly bear.

I want to remind you and inspire you with the gospel conviction this morning that Nehemiah himself wasn't just this great example that you and I will never live up to.

Nehemiah in his life, in his story, uniquely situated in the Old Testament, was pointing to a greater Savior, a greater Nehemiah, a greater someone who would come from a far country to redeem us.

He was pointing to Jesus Christ.

Our gospel conviction is this: that Jesus builds for us a heavenly Jerusalem.

A heavenly Jerusalem Jesus builds for us.

Though Nehemiah is obviously the apparent hero in the story that bears his name, I'm thankful to say that he's not merely an example that discourages us, but he points to one who will save us.

Roughly 450 years after Nehemiah had finished the rebuilding of those walls, 450 years later, a little baby that his parents would call Jesus was carried through those same gates into those same walls to that same temple and dedicated to the Lord on the eighth day and circumcised according to the law of Moses.

And like Nehemiah, as Jesus grew up, he was grieved for the state of creation in the world, and so was the Father.

And the Father in love sent his son, the king, as it were, sent his son, the true and better Nehemiah, to a far country, from the very portals of glory to this fallen creation to come to rebuild what was broken down.

The creation that had been very good, declared so on the sixth day, that had been the citadel, the very presence in the visible representation of God's presence in the Shekinah glory.

It was now, as it were, the dwelling place of dead men, of every imaginable evil.

It was a cursed habitation, a city of the dead.

And so Jesus incarnates himself.

Interestingly, he rides in Jerusalem on a donkey, just like Nehemiah.

So many parallels.

Nehemiah spends three days going around the city.

When Jesus came to the city of Jerusalem, he did miracles, he taught, and he was rejected.

At one point, he was so rejected by the city of Jerusalem, the leaders were stirring up tension and hostility against him, just like Nehemiah faced.

And Jesus at one point climbs the Mount of Olives to the east of Jerusalem, and he looks over the city, he spreads his arms and he laments and says, Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and rejects those that God sends to you.

How often would I have gathered you as a hen gathers her little chicks, but you would not.

And then very soon thereafter, Jesus would enter the city of Jerusalem.

And to appease the wrath of the people and the wrath of Almighty God, he would be marched out of the city of Jerusalem, out of those very same walls, up a hill they called the place of the skull, Golgotha.

And he was bearing this crossbeam, they would there impale him to it and hang him and kill him.

But just as Nehemiah spent three days in Jerusalem before he started construction, three days would pass as Jesus in this borrowed tomb, within or without the city of Jerusalem, we don't know.

Right there in Jerusalem, Jesus for three days rested in the grave.

But on the third day, that stone that had sealed his fate was rolled away.

And that three-day hourglass of death, it ran out of sand, and Jesus Christ came back to life.

He began construction, laying the footers for a new city, a city called the New Jerusalem.

In Scripture, this theme of a new Jerusalem was actually picked up, and it beckons our minds back to those ruins of Nehemiah's time.

In Hebrews chapter 12, we read that you who believe in Jesus, you have come to Mount Zion.

Hebrews 12 · chapter mention

Zion was the name of the hill where the temple was on.

You have come to the city of the living God.

You have come to a heavenly Jerusalem.

The story of Nehemiah wasn't lost on the New Testament writers.

They were seeing the trajectory of the rebuilding of those walls, pointing to what Jesus has done and is doing for us.

This is why Jesus could say in John chapter 14 to his discouraged apostles, right before he was going to go to the cross, he said, Let not your heart be troubled.

John 14 · chapter mention

You believe in God, trust also in me.

In my father's house are many rooms.

I'm going to go and prepare a place for you.

I'm going to prepare a place for you, so that where I am, there you can be also.

And this is what we read in Revelation chapter 21, where sort of the unveiling, you know, we've all watched Chip and Joanna Games where they unveil the house at the end of the time.

Revelation 21 · chapter mention

Well, there's going to be a great unveiling at the end of time.

We read about in Revelation 21, and it says this in verse 2 And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared like a bride, decked out for her husband.

And I heard a voice from the throne, that's the king talking, saying, Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man.

Jerusalem was the dwelling place of God in the Old Testament.

It's where the temple, the tabernacle, where the Holy of Holies was.

He says, This whole city is the new dwelling place of God.

He will dwell with them.

They will be his people.

God himself will be to them as their God.

And he'll wipe away every tear from their eyes.

Death shall be no more.

Neither shall there be mourning or crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.

The Old Testament Nehemiah couldn't do that.

All he could do was repair some broken walls.

The new Jerusalem, built upon the foundation of Jesus Christ Himself, has no tears, no pain, no more death.

It is the place of God's dwelling place with man.

My dear brothers and sisters, seeing that you and I are being led by this true and better Nehemiah, and one day we'll soon be ushered into a new and forever eternal new Jerusalem.

May we be a people constantly rebuilding what is broken down in our lives through the power of that same Jesus.

What is broken in our homes, what is broken in our church, what is broken in our city.

And may we mingle our voices with the priests and nobles of Nehemiah's day and say with them, let us rise up and build.