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