Go ahead and turn in your Bibles to Nehemiah Chapter 7.
Nehemiah Chapter 7. I was tasked with preaching from
this chapter as our other pastors had to leave.
One of them left unexpectedly. One was on vacation already.
And so I hope you guys will join me in praying for them as they
return. Hopefully, they'll come back.
I know they will. Yeah.
We're going to look at Nehemiah Chapter 7 today.
So imagine you're building a house.
Imagine that you've got your lot of land and you've done a lot of
work. You've done all the work of
framing it up. You've dug the foundation.
Maybe you put your basement in Florida.
We don't do basements because they'll just pop right out of
the ground for all the water. But you've got it all framed up.
It's dried in. You got that.
You got windows installed, you got your doors installed, you
got your roof on. Even the siding may be up, but
it's just a shell of a house. The, the, the work has been
really exciting up at this point.
It went from that empty lot to a recognizable home.
That's sort of where we are here in Nehemiah Chapter 7.
The walls of Jerusalem have been rebuilt, right?
52 days, they've been rebuilt. But now comes the things that
aren't so visible. Things like making sure that
we've got people in there to protect the place, making sure
that the right people are in the right place at the right time,
making sure the garbage is taken out.
All of those things had to be done.
Nehemiah has to organize who's going to actually live in the
city. He's got to figure out who's
going to do that. So he's going to, he's going to
have to do it in order to set set the city up for success.
He's got to set priorities. He's got to count who's there.
And then he's got to appoint faithful, watchful men over the
city. Last week, Pastor Jake preached
a sermon from the chapter of the previous year, Chapter 6, where
Nehemiah describes that completion of the wall.
He rightly pointed out that that distractions come from all sorts
of places, right? They come from outside, from
from enemies, they come from inside, from people who complain
and grumble, and they may even come from our own hearts or from
religious systems. He rightly pointed that out.
And just when Nehemiah and the people were about to complete
the wall, all these distractions came at them.
But what we saw in Nehemiah chapter 6 was that that Nehemiah
was what? He was undeterred, right?
He he was committed to the mission in Nehemiah 6 three.
I love this verse. It says this, it says, and I
sent messengers to them saying I am doing a great work and I
cannot come down. Why should the work stop and I
leave it and come down to you. Nehemiah was determined to
complete the work that God had given him to do and he did it in
52 days. It's pretty incredible how fast
it happened. So I don't know if you guys had
a chance to read Chapter 7 or not.
Maybe you look at it now, look down at it right now in your
Bibles. It's a lot of names.
I, I was looking at it and I was, I was starting to think
about it. And you might be tempted like we
are in some of the Old Testament passages to sort of like skip
over this, oh, it's just names and numbers.
But but as we look at the Bible as Christians, we have to
remember what Paul instructed Timothy in Second Timothy 316
and 17. When he wrote this, he said all
Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for
reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness that
the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.
Nehemiah 7 is a reminder that godly living isn't just about
the big moments of victory. It's about the daily intentional
choices to protect and build what God has entrusted to us.
With that in mind, let's look at this chapter together.
It's long. I know it's 73 verses.
Most commentary authors divided into two sections.
Dr. Betts, TJ Betts, who he wrote the commentary, they were
using sort of as a guide for this.
He divides it in two sections as well.
He says the first section explains the steps and the
precautions that Nehemiah takes to ensure the right kind of
people are in the right place at the right time and the
leadership for the safety of Jerusalem.
And the second section shows us how Nehemiah is methodical as he
sets out to strengthen Jerusalem's pop population by
taking a census and reading and and all of the returnees.
So Pastor Jake did joke a couple weeks back in chapter 3 that
some of some of it was quite repetitious.
And while I was reading this, I read this, this chapter aloud or
I started to, I was reading it aloud in my office to Valerie
during one day this week. And, and she said, are you going
to read all those names and numbers?
And she stopped me. She's like, Oh, I'm zoning out.
And I was tempted to because of a second Timothy here, because
of the second Timothy passage, I was tempted to read all 73
verses, but we've got communion today and reading all 73 would
take the whole time. So we're not going to do that.
I'm going to focus on the 1st 7 verses.
OK, So we're going to look at Nehemiah one or excuse me,
Nehemiah 7, one to seven. We're going to spend most of our
time studying in verses in like the the first three to four
verses. Specifically, we're looking for
what we can see in Nehemiah's character, and then we're
looking for that character to shine through the priorities
that he sets as he selects people to serve.
So there's four priorities that we're going to look at today,
the praise of God, the principles of God or the pursuit
of godliness, the people of God and the purpose of God.
So let's take a look. Nehemiah 7 Now when the wall had
been built, and I had set up the doors, and the gatekeepers and
the singers and the Levites had been appointed, I gave my
brother Hananiah and Hananiah the governor of the castle,
charge over Jerusalem, for he was more faithful and God
fearing man than many. And I said to them, Let not the
gates of Jerusalem be opened until the sun is hot, and while
they're still standing guard, let them be shut and borrow the
doors. Appoint guards from among the
inhabitants of Jerusalem, some of their guard post, and some in
front of their own homes. The city was wide and large, but
the people within it were few, and no houses had yet been
rebuilt. Then my God put it in my heart
to assemble the nobles and the officials and the people to be
enrolled by genealogy. And I found the book of the
genealogy of those who came up at the 1st, and I found written
in it. These were the people of the
province who came out of the captivity of those exiles from
whom Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon, had carried into exile.
They returned to Jerusalem and Judah, each to his hometown.
They came with Zerubbabel, Yeshua, Nehemiah, Azariah,
Remiah, Nahemane, Mordecai, Bilshan, Miss Perth, Bigvi,
Nahum Benai, and then the number of the men and the people of
Israel and it goes on. So the first priority that I
want us to see in these first 7 verses is that Nehemiah
prioritized the praise of God. What we were just doing, we were
praising Godwin Song. Nehemiah prioritized the praise
of God. I've heard it said, and maybe
you have two, that humans were created for worship.
I think I've actually said that here, and if you honestly
consider it, I think you would probably agree with me that we
are designed for worship. I firmly believe that almost
every sin that you can think of can trace its roots back to some
form of idolatry in our hearts. We talked about this back when
we studied First Corinthians. It's extremely easy to get
fixated on something and to make that what you find the most
satisfaction in like yesterday I got really fixated on using AI
to create an app and I was really all into it.
And I, I spent like four or five hours, maybe longer on this
fixation of creating this little app for my phone, which was fun.
But really I could see how quickly and easily if I fed into
that, that it would become an idol in my heart that I would
prioritize it over studying scripture or over spending time
with my family. And that would be sin.
Saint Augustine puts it this way in his work confessions.
He says you have made for us, or excuse me, you have made us for
yourself. And our hearts are restless
until they find their rest in you.
So he's picking up on this idea that we were created to worship
specifically God, and we are restless until we find our
worship and and our rest in you, in God.
We are seeking objects of worship, whether we know it or
not, largely because we're created to worship.
We are restless and bouncing from one thing to another to
fulfill and satisfy that desire to worship until by God's grace,
if you're a Christian, by God's grace, he drew you to himself as
the object of your worship. So Nehemiah knew that the reason
for the city Jerusalem was designed for worship.
The reason for its existence was for worship.
It's made clear in the personnel that he chooses in verse one it
says now when all when the wall had been built and I'd set up
the doors, the gatekeepers, the singers and the Levites had been
appointed The gatekeepers, the singers and the Levites were all
an important part of worship. The of the worship experience in
Jerusalem. They were also an important part
of their protection, yes, but their primary purpose was for
worship. Doctor Betts observes this.
He says that that as they were stationed all around the city,
all of these people, the singers, the Levites, they, they
serve not only to provide the people with a sense of security,
but a reminder of Jerusalem's purpose, the worship of Yahweh.
And if you look through the chapter, there's a large portion
dedicated to the listing of all the people whose role was tied
to the worship of the Lord. You can look through this later,
but down near the the bottoms half, it lists out all the
people who came for Levites, all the different people for the
worship of God. Nehemiah made the praise of God
a priority. And so I ask you guys this
question. I had to ask myself this
question this week. Is the praise of God a priority
in my life? One reformer famously said that
the human heart is an idol factory.
What are you praising in your life that's taking God's
rightful place? So the next thing on our list of
priorities is we want to prioritize the pursuit of
godliness. We see this priority most
clearly in who Nehemiah appoints as the leaders who will take
over the day-to-day operation of the city.
God expects his leaders to be people who fear him, and we see
several examples of that throughout Scripture that teach
us that principle. In Nehemiah 7 two though, he
says, I gave my brother Hananiah and Hananiah the governor of the
castle charge over Jerusalem for he was more faithful, excuse me,
he was a more faithful and God fearing man than many.
So if you'll remember back from chapter 1, we did get a mention
of, of Nehemiah's brother Han and I who delivered the news to
Nehemiah about the state of Jerusalem's city, about the
state of the people, how the how the city was set up and how it
wasn't, how it wasn't functioning.
We can understand that Nehemiah wanted to place people he could
trust in these positions of authority, right?
So he obviously he chose his brother.
But what stands out to me in the description is, is the character
of this man Hananiah. He was a more faithful and God
fearing man than many. So he looked less like what?
Like Nehemiah was looking less at what the man could physically
do. Although he was probably like
well equipped to do the job. He looked less, or at least he
describes here less, about what he could physically do to do the
actual job and he was more concerned about the man's heart.
He was more concerned about his posture towards the Lord.
Because Nehemiah knew, remember, that Jerusalem was set up to be
a city of worship. So what qualified this man most
for service and protection of the city was his faithfulness to
the Lord and the fact that he was known to be more God fearing
than many in the city. Nehemiah understood that if the
goal of the city was worship, then its leaders needed that to
be a priority in the way they live their lives.
So thinking about this idea of a God fearing individual, I've
been looking back on my own life and questioning, is this a
priority for me? Is this a priority?
Certainly to an extent I think it has been.
But have I put other things in front of this aspect of my
character? Of course, I was moved to ask
myself these questions and I urge you guys to do the same
with me. Have I focused more of my
attention on gaining knowledge? Have I focused more on
developing skills that would further my job prospects?
Have I focused more on doing only what's required of me so
that I can get back to leisure, so that I can get back to to
whatever it is that I find satisfying and leisurely?
Is my desire to be godly stronger than my desire to veg
out or escape the pressures of life through a heavy diet of
sports, social media, television and whatever else you could put
in there? In order to be known as a God
fearing person, we must go beyond the aspiration of
becoming that and actually put feet to our faith.
You can't just want to be a godly person.
You can't just say I'm going to be a God fearing man.
You have to do the work required.
You have to dedicate your lives to the disciplines of of prayer
1st and Bible intake. You have to dedicate your life
to those things. You can't skimp out on them.
So the world tells us that literally everything else.
The world will tell you that everything else will satisfy
you. Everything else is more
important than being a God fearing man.
But that's not what we see. That's not what we see in
scripture. Here's a couple examples.
God doesn't expect you to to to fill that void with anything
else. He says in James 4/6 that James
says God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.
And then in Psalm 1:30, 8/6, it says for the for though the Lord
is high, he regards the lowly, but the haughty He knows from
afar. It doesn't mean you have to be
lowly in in worldly standards. You can, you can have a good
job, you can have a good career. What it means is that the
posture of your heart needs to not prioritize that more than
you prioritize being a God fearing person.
Being a God fearing person means you pursue godliness with your
life. And Nehemiah recognized again
that if Jerusalem would become the light, shining the glory of
God to the world, showing the people who God is, not just
Israel's people, but all of the people who God is, then its
leaders needed to be more capable in, or excuse me, needed
to be more than capable in pragmatic day-to-day issues.
They would need to be more God fearing than most.
And so he chose his brother and he chose Hananiah, who was
recognized as a more God fearing man than most people.
As Christians, we should all strive to become more God
fearing people. God fearing people are concerned
with what God concerns himself with.
And God is very concerned about people.
So that moves us to our Third Point, Prioritize the people of
God, Nehemiah, prioritize the people of God.
And you'll see that that my, my reference goes from verse 4 to
73. We're not going to read them
all. It's a lot of people.
One of the things I remember most from our time back in
Louisville, KY was something that my pastor would say quite
often from from the platform, but often whenever we had
private conversations with him. He knew that most of the people
like my age or people that were there just for seminary would be
moving on. He knew that we would be moving
on to to serve in churches or to serve as missionaries across the
world. And, and one thing he would say,
he would often say something, something similar to this.
It's not exactly word for word, but this would be the sentiment.
He says if you don't love people, you don't have any
business becoming a pastor. If you don't love people, you
don't have any business being a missionary.
If you don't love people, you have no business being a
seminary professor or a teacher. When I worked in retail, every
so often you'd hear somebody that worked with you say, I
don't know, maybe you've heard somebody say this.
This job would be pretty great if it weren't for the customers.
That's the attitude that a lot of people take.
And while that's humorous, it's also absurd.
There's no room for this type of attitude.
Not not in secular world, but certainly not in, in ministry.
And if you're not like in ministry, like like a
professional ministry, like not paid staff, who cares?
There's no space for that kind of attitude either amongst the
people of God. So we have to prioritize the
people of God. People need to matter to us
because they matter to the Lord and we see that and how the Lord
Jesus interacted with people. We see it and how the apostles
treated people. But concern for people is not
only found in the New Testament, it's found throughout the Bible.
Here in our text, we see it as well.
God's people have been Nehemiah's concern from the
beginning of the book. So look back with me.
If it's too small on the screen, I apologize.
Look back with me and Nehemiah won.
If you need to turn back in your turn back a couple pages in your
Bible, it is pretty small on the screen.
I'll read verses 5 to 10 and I said, Oh Lord God of heaven, the
great and awesome God who keeps His covenant in steadfast love
with those who love him and keep His commandments.
Let your ear be attentive and your eyes open to hear the
prayer of your servant that I now pray before you day and
night for the people of Israel, your servants confessing the
sins of the people of Israel, which we have sinned against
you. Even I in my Father's house have
sinned. We've acted very corruptly
against you. We have not kept the
commandments, the statutes, the rules that you commanded your
servant Moses. Remember the word that you
commanded your servant Moses, saying, If you're faithful, I
will scatter you or excuse me, if you're unfaithful, I will
scatter you among the peoples. But if you return to me and keep
my commandments and do them though you are outcast or in the
uttermost parts of heaven, from there I will gather them and
bring them to the place that I have chosen and make my name
dwell there. They are your servants and your
people whom you have redeemed by your great power and your strong
hand. In Nehemiah's prayer, you see
that he prays for the sake of people, specifically God's
people. He doesn't immediately open
himself up to the concern of of the walls.
He doesn't it's like immediately concern concern himself with the
state of the city. He's reminded of the promises of
God to those who are faithful, and so he prays for them.
He prays for their forgiveness of sins.
And the list of people here in Chapter 7, it's almost
identical. If you look at Ezra chapter 2,
it's almost identical to that list.
The list are a result of painstaking attention to detail
and are organized in a way that shed some light on the people's
roles and standing in the community.
Concerning this long list of names and numbers, Warren
Weirsby writes this. He says the important thing is
not to count the people, but to realize that these people
counted. In leaving Babylon they did much
more than put their names on a list.
They laid their lives on the altar and risked everything to
obey the Lord and restore the Jewish nation.
They were pioneers of faith who trusted God to enable them to do
the impossible. I don't know about you, but I
when I read something like this I am tempted to overlook it.
So in my temptation to overlook this list of names and numbers
found here in the MI 7 and in Ezra 2, there are the exact same
list. There's like very few
differences in the name spelling or the number next to a name.
But my my temptation to overlook this could be exposing the sad
reality that not only do I overlook passages in scripture
like this list of names, I often overlook flesh and blood people
in my life like I am tempted to overlook people in my life.
Often I'm guilty of being the type of person described my by
my by pastor back in Louisville, not one fit to serve the Lord in
ministry. Often I find I do the opposite
of what Nehemiah did. Usually when I'm informed of an
issue someone's facing, I immediately look to pragmatic
things. How do we fix this?
How do we how do we come up with a solution to sort this out?
What tangible thing can I do? Nehemiah's first concern was for
the people. He prayed for these people.
Friends, we must be concerned with the people of God.
We must concern ourselves with what God concerns himself with.
And so Nehemiah did that. He prioritized the praise of
God, the people, the principles of God or the God, the pursuit
of godliness and the people of God.
And now we come to our 4th priority that we've seen.
He prioritized the purpose of God.
If you've been attending here for more than a year, you've
heard one of our US pastors say at one time or another that the
that the Bible as we see it, is telling one big story, 1 grand
narrative of how God is accomplishing his will.
It's one big, beautiful story of redemption and reconciliation.
Our Sunday school curriculum is built around it.
Our Wednesday night curriculum is built around it with teaching
a class on on biblical theology to show you how it's working.
In Genesis 12, one to three, we get the promise that God made to
Abram that the families of earth shall be blessed through him.
And here in Nehemiah, we're seeing that God is making good
on his promise. He's using the ministry of
Nehemiah as part of his fulfillment of this plan to
bless the nations through Abraham.
And in this list we see a name that pops up later in Scripture.
I went through verse 7 on purpose, even though I said I
wasn't going to read names. I read some of those names in
the in the MI 77, we see the name Zerubbabel.
So we see it. They came with Zerubbabel and
then the other guys that are hard to pronounce and the number
of them and it tells us the list.
We see this name come up again in another genealogy in Matthew
chapter 112 to 13. It pops up in the genealogy of
our Lord Jesus. It says this.
It says and after the deportation to Babylon, the
Konaya, the father of she'll tell and she'll tell the father
of Zerubbabel and Zerubbabel the father of Abid and Abid the
father of Achim and Achim the father of Azer.
This is this is pointing out excuse me and pointing this out.
Doctor Betts says this He compares the painstaking work of
Nehemiah with the work of the Lord and carrying out his
purpose in the grand plan of redemption.
He writes this he says to today's reader, these lists may
appear tedious and even meaningless if we fail to read
them in light of the promises of God and their ultimate
fulfillment in the Lord Jesus Christ.
The painstaking work of Nehemiah pales in the face of God's
meticulously and wondrously weave tapestry of his work of
redemption through his Son. Nehemiah was moved by God to do
a great work. He was moved to tears when he
heard about the state of Jerusalem.
He was moved to action and was bold when given the opportunity
to do something about it. His life was marked out by
obedience and steadfast faithfulness when faced with
opposition. And today we've seen how he
demonstrated his character through what he prioritized.
We're probably safe to assume that Nehemiah didn't know
exactly how God will full fulfill his ultimate promise of
blessing to the world. What concerned Nehemiah was the
reality that the place and the people of God we're not
fulfilling the purpose of glorifying God.
God gave him the ability to desire and the desire to begin
the restoration project that would point forward to what God
would ultimately do through Jesus.
And so where does that leave us? What does prioritizing the
purpose of God mean for us today?
I think we need to remember the central message from last week's
sermon. We have to be laser focused on
the mission that we've been given.
We have to be able to say, as Nehemiah said when he was
challenged and confronted by Sambalot, I'm doing a great work
and I cannot come down. Why should I?
Why should the work stop and leave it while I come down to
you? What is the great work we're
supposed to be doing? Nehemiah and Ezra worked hard to
rebuild the city of Jerusalem. The group had 400 years of of
silence ahead of them. They were preparing a city for
worship because there was God. God put it in their hearts to do
this because God knew even though they didn't that they
were going to be 400 years of silence where he wasn't going to
speak through his prophets. He wasn't going to do anything
He wasn't. This is they needed to get it
set up so they could worship our perspective.
They were looking forward. Our perspective is one that
looks back. We can see what God has done
throughout history. We know that eventually this
tapestry that he's weaving, he's weaving through the people like
the Zerubbabel and all these connections that we see, it
eventually leads to the birth of Jesus, God in the flesh, who
came to deal with the sin problem once and for all.
He came in the flesh. And our perspective too though
is one is 1. Looking forward, just like
Nehemiah and Ezra. So when Jesus will return and
make all things new. And until that day comes back,
or until that day comes, we have to remain focused on the
Commission handed to us from the Lord Jesus when he commanded his
disciples to go and make disciples of all nations,
baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and of the
Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all I've commanded you.
And behold, I'm with you always to the end of the age.
This is the mission we have in front of us.
This is God's purpose to get the gospel to as many people as we
possibly can. Our mission must be centered on
the good news, right? The good news that Jesus came to
save sinners, that he died on the cross for, for the
forgiveness of sins, and was raised on the third day.
So hopefully today I've demonstrated that you can glean
quite a bit from a passage or a chapter such as this one.
It just takes work. It takes some study.
It takes thinking about like, all right, what is he saying?
Maybe it takes looking up a name and figuring out where else it
where else we see it in Scripture to find out what what
this might mean. Remember that all Scripture is
breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for
proof and for for correction. So today I'll put the priorities
up again. Nehemiah praise prioritize the
praise of God, and so should we. He prioritized the pursuit of
godliness and so should we. He prioritized people,
specifically the people of God, and so should we.
And he prioritized the purpose of God making.
Make praising God and glorifying him a priority in your life.
Ask the Lord to reveal idols in your heart.
You are an idol factory. You will make one.
If you don't put like put Jesus in your life and make him first.
You will make an idol that's going to be first in your life.
As you do this, as you as you put Jesus first, it'll lead you
to becoming a more God fearing person, someone who prioritizes
his walk with the Lord over the any other skills you may develop
and make loving people a priority in your life.
If you have a broken relationship in your family, ask
the Lord to help you with healing.
Take the initiative in the healing process and rely on God
to do the work. Pray for the people that God has
connected to connected you to pray for them.
Pray with them. Remember that one of the best
ways that we prove to the world that the good news of the gospel
is real is how we treat each other.
So make loving people a priority in your life.
And finally make the purpose of God your purpose.
Luke tells us that the the Son of man came to seek and to save
the lost Luke. That's that's the central theme
of the book of Luke. And it's, it's, it is our
purpose. Our purpose is God's purpose,
Jesus purpose he came to seek and to save the lost.
Our purpose is to point people to him because he's the only one
that can save them. So it's good news, right?
Let's pray. Father, thank you for for this
passage in Nehemiah. Thank you for Chapter 7.
Thank you for these names. Thank you for this good news.
It's pointing toward what we'll be doing when we observe the
Lord's Supper. Hopeless this morning to to
focus our hearts and our minds affections on you.
I pray these things in Jesus name.