The Now And Not Yet Of Kingdom Vision

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"So the wall was completed on the twenty-fifth of Elul, in fifty-two days." Nehemiah 6:15

Main Readings: Matthew 10 & Nehemiah 6

Supporting Readings: Nehemiah 6 & Psalm 84

A Vision Nears Completion

If you’ve ever inter-railed, you’ll know what I mean when I say, the speed of your train can make or break your journey.

During my student days I interrailed Europe with my brother – starting out in Berlin. And being novices as we were, we had wrongly assumed that this ticket - that seemingly took you anywhere you wanted to go - was surely too good to be true if it also afforded us the luxury of using the fast network of intercity trains to do it. In our minds we mistakenly thought that the only type of train our interrail passes could possibly work on would be regional – slow - locomotives.

You’d think we would have researched this before we left, but those were the days before fast speed internet and Chat GPT, believe it or not! In reality though, we were just too lazy to bother to find out. Not that any of that matters to anybody except to me and my brother, because we, and we alone, were the ones who suffered the cost of not researching properly beforehand.

And this was the cost: we started out at Berlin around 10 in the morning, and found we had travelled the miserable distance of 270km by the time we rolled into a small town called Nordhausen - some 16 hours later, at 2 in the morning!

No more than one quarter of the whole journey had been completed in the same time period that we could have made the journey there and back, if we’d been using inter-city trains!

You can imagine the blushes, and the expressions of ‘kartopfelkopf’ (German for ‘potato head’) that we exchanged when we realised our error.

Well, I won’t share with you the scenes we experienced on that ill-advised journey but suffices to say it was not altogether comfortable!

You see we all want to take the fast route to our destination, don’t we? And you’ll be glad to know that by God’s supreme design, and Nehemiah’s faithful commitment to the vision God had laid on his heart, the completion of the wall pulls right into the station here at the end of chapter 6.

Verse 15 says that the wall was completed in just 52 days! – an amazingly quick timeframe when you consider the enormous size of the task at the beginning. In fact, it was in this very month of September that we’re in now – ‘Elul’ verse 15 says – that the work was completed, 2,470 years ago!

The Enemy’s Final Tactics

Now last week we spent the whole time thinking about the types of opposition that came against Nehemiah and the impact that had on the work.

And you might be tempted to think that since the work was completed by verse 15 of chapter 6 that finally the opposition must have fizzled out. But sadly, that’s not the case.

Rather we’re reminded as we see more – and now different – opposition, that indeed opposition to the advancement of God’s kingdom; to the endeavours of Christ’s church; and to the work of God’s people will be the norm right up to the very end.

There is simply no relenting in Satan’s designs to undermine, and if possible, derail Christ’s cause. In actual fact – and I’m not saying this to discourage you, but only to reflect the truth of the New Testament – the expectation is that as the end of the age approaches opposition will only intensify.

Jesus said, ‘because lawlessness will be increased the love of many will grow cold’. By which he means, expect opposition to gather pace and watch out that it doesn’t cause a cooling of your Christianity.

Watchfulness, then, against the schemes of the enemy is very much a theme of Nehemiah’s behaviour as we now move into chapter 6. And that’s good because the opposition takes on a much more subtle, but no less dangerous, shape now.

You can see from verse 1 of chapter 6 that work had moved on a pace. And that the substantial bulk of the work was nigh-on completed – only the doors needed to be made and installed.

But, it’s worth noting, that that in itself was no small task.

There were ten gates in total that needed replacing. Each would have been 3-5m wide and 6-9m tall. Each leaf had to be set into its own stone housing acting as a hinge. Additionally, bolts, clasps, and bars had to be fashioned in iron and fitted to them.

With the gates unfinished like this, the vulnerability of the city was still very real. Like putting a lock on the front door when the windows are still missing. You’re still wide open to attack.

And it seems like Sanballat, Tobiah, Geshem – these odious characters we’ve got to know in recent weeks – recognised that the city was indeed, about to be made secure. That Nehemiah’s vision was now coming to fruition. And that their opposition was floundering in its main aim - which was to prevent the city from being re-fortified.

With that prospect confronting them every day, they simply had to make any last-ditch efforts they could to prevent the vision being completed.

And so it is to that end, that they resorted to three final plans to bring the work to a permanent close.

Recognising Nehemiah as the driving-force behind the work, they now turn all their attention to him. Thinking, that if they can remove the general, then their work will be complete – the others will follow suit give up also - too demoralised to continue.

It’s a plan that has worked throughout history. If you bring down the leader, usually the troops will fall too.

The first approach they resort to then, is a planned ambush under the disguise of a peace treaty. The second approach is to generate threat by means of false rumours. And the third is to smear Nehemiah’s reputation using a false prophet.

So, you can sense easily, the deceptive nature of all three approaches. They are all based on some sort of falsehood. And this is precisely what you’d expect from opposition to the kingdom of God.

Not least because the kingdom of God is a kingdom of truth. And the kingdom of Satan is a kingdom of lies. Satan is said to have been a ‘liar from the beginning’ and, the ‘father of lies’.

So, no surprises then, that his servants come with deceptive methods to undermine the work of God’s kingdom. Paul says to Timothy, ‘evil people and imposters will go from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived’.

Deceptive opposition then, is at least one kind of opposition we should expect to come against the church and against us as individual Christians when we seek to advance the great commission – going into all the world and making disciples of all nations.

Godly Discernment in Action

But now let’s observe how Nehemiah saw right through that deception - because he did that most effectively. In the case of the ambush, it was probably only later on that Nehemiah found out that that was their plan. In verse 2 he comments ‘they were scheming to harm me’.

So, it was not so much premonition on Nehemiah’s part, as it was wisdom that gave him the upper hand. His commitment to the vision that God had given him was resolute. And anything that distracted him or took him away from it was likely, in his mind, not of the Lord. The meeting Sanballat had proposed on the plain of Ono would have taken Nehemiah substantially out of the way of Jerusalem – no doubt a key to their ambush plan – and would have taken unavailable time and energy to complete.

And we can read that. Specifically, in his repeated replies to Sanballat. He says things like: ‘I’m carrying on a great project’ and ‘why should the work stop while I leave it a go down to you?’

So, what kept Nehemiah from falling foul of their deception here, was his unwavering commitment to God’s work and his high estimation of the vision God had given him. It was incomprehensible to him that God should intend for him to be distracted with distant and dubious meetings.

Secondly, under the pretence of a rumour, Nehemiah is not cowered into worrying that the king of Persia might have heard that Nehemiah was intending a revolt against him and to set himself up as king.

Nehemiah sees right through that kind of nonsense and replies accordingly: ‘nothing like what you are saying is happening; you are just making it up out of your head’. In other words, ‘you can’t trick me that easily – not only am I not worried about rumours; the rumours don’t actually exist. You’re inventing stories to make me frightened’.

And that was true. And it’s why Nehemiah, once again – as we’ve seen so often in these chapters – prayed to God, that He might strengthen their hands (verse 9). His goal is, that they might not be frightened, but that God might give them courage now as always.

Then finally, in verse 10, the most subtle of all the deceptions appears on the scene in the form of a prophet, saying that men are coming to kill Nehemiah. And advising him to take refuge along with him in the temple at night – with the doors closed.

This is the kind of deception that has the added ingredients of plausibility and credibility. Plausibility in terms of the threat: well-could Nehemiah believe men would come to try to kill him by night.

And credibility in terms of the source of information: a prophet - someone who could see what was coming ahead of time.

The plausibility is not the give-away though; it’s the credibility that’s the give-away. Nehemiah employs this important principle - it is a principle for the whole of the Christian life: God’s written revelation is the final and decisive means – the universal indicator if you like - of the reliability of human advice. Even when that advice is claimed to have come as direct revelation from God – as it did here.

In other words, when someone says you should do such and such - even if they claim to have insight from heaven; even if they have a track record of insight from heaven - if that advice is, in any way contradictory to God’s written revelation, it must be rejected.

God is not a God of disorder, but a God of truth and consistency. And it is inconceivable that He would say one thing in his word and then, through a human mouthpiece, advise something contrary to what he has said. God is not like that – he does not change his mind. It’s this truth that induces the Apostle Paul to remind the Galatians that ‘even if an angel from heaven should preach a different gospel, let him be accursed’. And why John said, ‘do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, for many false prophets have gone out into the world’.

Nehemiah then, has his revelation-antenna up, and remembering that God’s revelation did not permit a non-Levite, like him, to enter the temple, he saw the prophet Shemiah for what he was, namely an impostor and a deceiver.

You know how it is: you get that email that looks official right? It sounds official – just the right tone. But you just know deep down it’s a scam. The logos look right. But you just have that sixth sense that it’s not the real deal. And so, it turned out to be with Nehemiah. Verse 14 says Shemiah had lied because Tobiah and Sanballat had hired him to do it.

Nehemiah, then, went right ahead and told Shemiah, ‘Should someone like me go into the temple to save his life? I will not go!’

Taking advice – even from Christians – that doesn’t line up with God’s word is folly, and no good can come of it. No. We have to know the word, and by knowing it discern what God’s will is - his good pleasing and perfect will for our lives. That will keep us from shaping God’s will after our own desires. God’s will is clear in his word and we need to obey it.

In short Nehemiah had learnt to think God’s thoughts. And in so doing, he had developed a sixth sense if you like, for what was of God and what was erroneous. That’s how God wants us to be. And when we are like that, we are much less likely to fall foul of the enemy’s deceptive designs to derail our vision for God’s cause.

Victory by God’s Strength

Well, that brings us to the completion of the work on the wall. And, to the effect that it had on Nehemiah’s enemies. Which is quite dramatic.

Nehemiah says, ‘they lost their self-confidence and were afraid, because they realised that the work had been done with the help of God’.

You see, when God ties up the strong man, then his house can be ‘plundered’, as Jesus says. The cause of Christ is a plundering of the house of Satan.

The ultimate goal of the church here below is to act as a lighthouse to the nations, beaming an alert across the bow of every human vessel out there on the tossing sea – a sea that is presided over by Satan. Every vessel that is saved, has been snatched from the house of Satan ultimately.

That is not to say that the church as ‘organisation’ has that function first and foremost. But it is to say that the individuals that make up the church of Jesus Christ, and who gather to be equipped, are being so equipped in order that they might act in every single walk of life as that beacon of light to lost souls.

And that means that every single vision of the individual believer is a vision to the end that every last person on earth should come to faith in Jesus and so be saved. And it means that every single vision of the church-collective is either a vision to equip Christians to do that, or else a conduit through which Christians undertake their vision for Christ’s kingdom.

There is simply no other reason why Christ Jesus has left his blood-bought church on earth, except to advance his cause in all the world until every last elect person be added to the church, and he return to consummate his kingdom here below, with his bride, forever.

And because resisting Satan causes him to flee, that serves to advance every single one of those visions. That’s what Nehemiah did – he resisted Satan. That’s what we must do also, to see the vision Christ has given us, through to the end.

This is the very reason why this book of Nehemiah does not end at chapter 6 but goes on for another seven chapters! What looked at the beginning of chapter 6 as the inter-city pulling into Kings Cross station, is, in reality, a regional train pulling into the little town of Nordhausen, somewhere in mid-Germany, whereupon its occupants ready themselves to board another regional railway to who-knows where in Christ’s kingdom.

The Christian life is, then, one long journey, with one huge visionary goal. But the goal is accomplished by lots of small visions that serve that greater goal. If we find ourselves right now, for example, praying sincerely for a second elder here at Riverside, it is not an end in itself, but is designed to the end that this church might be spiritually stronger, spiritually healthier, and spiritually more equipped to meet the great commission of Jesus to spread the gospel around the world; including here in Horbury Bridge, in your homes, in your work places, in your schools, in your streets, and indeed anywhere God has given you the vision to go.

From Walls to People

And so, it is now, as we move into chapter 7 with doors in place, that we see, Nehemiah is not content to sit on his wall, or stand behind his gates, and simply admire his handy work. Indeed, it is as if the vision were not complete at all!

You might expect a topping out ceremony. You might expect banners and streamers. You might expect champagne and fireworks. But there’s none of that. And that’s because the wall is not the ultimate goal. It is vital. And it is important in the big picture. But it, itself, is not the big picture. The final goal is much more significant than bricks and mortar or gates of wood.

And chapter 7 then, begins crucially with people. With the appointment of gatekeepers, of musicians, and Levites. Which speaks directly to the security, the community, and the worship of the city of God. Gatekeepers maintain the security of the city. Levites establish the community of the city, because without sacrifice there can be no community of God. And musicians orchestrate the worship of the city, because worship is what God has redeemed his people for. You know, you find Christians who are all about the security of heaven but have no certainty here below. You find Christians who recognise no value in the community of believers, who think they can go it alone. Then you find Christians who think that the church programme is everything, and who are content to let worship take a back seat for now.

But then you find Christians who feel so secure here below that you wouldn’t even think there was a devil at all! You find Christians who are so community minded that it’s almost as if the world can go to hell in a handbasket. And you find Christians who are so worship oriented that sometimes you’re left wondering if it’s God they’re worshipping or ‘worship’ they’re worshipping. But Christians need to be ‘now and not-yet’ kinds of people. They need to recognise the reality of security in Christ now and the reality of a powerful adversary right now too, but who look forward to eternal security where there are no adversaries.

Christians need to recognise the community of the here and now, but know that it’s not going to be perfect community until heaven - when every single last one of God’s people is gathered in together. And they need to acknowledge that the worship of God finds it’s expression in programme and song; in music and Word, to name but a few, until we reach heaven where forever our worship will be perfect and perfectly sweet.

A Healthy Church for God’s Mission

What I’m saying then, is that church is a haven for Christians on earth. People who are in the kingdom, but where the kingdom is not consummated yet. And, that Church as a haven for God’s people is a good place to rest, but it is not designed by God to replace the great commission – that place is called heaven! Rather, the church serves to equip and refresh the saints for the great commission.

And so, what Nehemiah is doing now is vitally important. The church needs to be a place of security, and community, and worship in the most profound senses of those words. Security in Christ’s finished work. Community in the sacrifice of Jesus for every single member. Worship in the Spirit of Jesus and in the truth of Christ. To that end the church needs to be spiritually healthy.

There’s absolutely no point sending weary soldiers to ramshackle barracks to get medical attention, or essential kit, or much needed rest. No, they need well-functioning, carefully run, robust garrisons to hunker down in, otherwise the front line is going to suffer badly. And God knows it.

That’s why he’s given us everything we need for healthy churches. The challenge is following the blueprint! And Nehemiah is all about paying attention to the blueprint when it comes to making sure that Jerusalem has everything that is necessary for it to flourish.

It's why he appoints a governor and a commander in verse 2. It’s why the commander he chooses is a man of integrity who ‘fears God more than most’. You see, the spiritual fibre of the city’s leaders is integral to ensuring the long-term godliness of the city.

It’s the same with the church. The leaders must be spiritual – they must fear God more than most – so that they will be an example of godliness. And they must be able to teach spiritual things to the church.

Likewise with the gates. They were to be opened late and shut early to protect the city from attack as much as possible.

You see, recognising that the Lord’s people are open to attack requires designs on the part of church leaders to protect God’s people. That’s where spiritual accountability, and mechanisms for spiritual care within the body, are essential to the spiritual health of individual believers and the church as a whole.

So, we see the essential nature of church leadership, and church fellowship. And lastly, now, that of church membership too.

Nehemiah says, ‘God put it into my heart to assemble the nobles, the officials and the common people for registration by families’. The register we have recorded for us here in chapter 7 is the log of all the families who returned to Judah from exile some 90 years earlier. And the reason for that, is to establish the reliability of the claim of each family for inclusion in the community. Only those whose name could be established in the record were included.

And so it is with the church. Not that ethnicity has anything to do with belonging to God’s people in the new covenant, but that spiritual new birth into the family of God, absolutely does.

So that, even though sentiment might persuade us to want to be inclusive – as I’m sure there were those in Nehemiah’s day who would have preferred to admit everyone regardless of the family record – yet God’s people are only made up of those who have come to faith in Christ and been born again by the Holy Spirit of God.

Therefore, membership in God’s church is exclusive not inclusive. And I know that’s not a popular idea in our new world of progressive ideals – nevertheless that’s how it is in God’s scheme of things.

There are sheep and there are goats, and God is going separate them and deal with them in profoundly different and serious ways.

Conclusion

So, what we have come to now, is not just an empty city with nice new walls and sparkly gates, but rather to an inhabited city, bustling with life, and ready to fellowship together, worship together, and fight together.

And that is precisely where the church of Jesus Christ needs to be also. It can pursue any number of beautiful and necessary visions, so long as this basic bedrock of community love, collective care, and gathered worship is found to be in place.

With Godly leaders at the helm.

And with people who don’t hoard their possessions but who give to prosper the work going forward. Which is what we see the heads of the families doing at the end of chapter 7.

And so, it is improtant for us to see, this morning, that God has called his people to a mission in the world where it is so necessary that the church be established, be spiritual, and be visionary in support of that mission. And wherever that happens, God will strengthen our hands to complete the work he has for us to do - even unto the very end of our time here on earth. And what a fantastic comfort that is to our souls!