Nehemiah 4:6 – So built we the wall; and all the wall was joined together unto the half thereof: for the people had a mind to work.

Hello readers, from Nehemiah today. Thanks for reading today, and I hope this blog is a blessing to you. It’s hard to quote a specific verse as this blog will assume a level of familiarity with the book, particularly the first half of the book! Nehemiah was a wall builder, God used him to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem. Walls are Biblical. Jerusalem was a mess, Nehemiah was the king’s cupbearer in a far land, but he cared about Jerusalem, and he enquired and found out about the state of Jerusalem when people came from there. And he heard that the walls were broken down and the gates were burned with fire. That’s a summation of our lives… our sin has got us there. That’s why Jerusalem was like it was… because of the sin of the people. They’d left God’s word, they’d forsaken God, and their walls were down, they were conquered and defeated. Does your life need some walls put back up? Does your life have some breaches that need to be stopped? Do things need to be put back together?

Nehemiah got a burden. Nehemiah got repentance on him on behalf of the nation. That’s where it starts. You’ve got to see a need for walls to be put back up in your life. If you can’t see and admit you’ve got a giant sin problem, and a giant problem in your life due to the rejection of truth and love of wickedness, well then no rebuilding will ever get done will it? The book of Nehemiah is a picture of rebuilding your life. That’s what God wants to do. Sin breaks our life apart, it reduces us to the rubbish pile that Jerusalem was. We need walls put up in our life.

Here’s some things about walls. Wall separate. That’s a dirty word in Christianity today. Separation. Christians don’t want to be separate from anything, they want to have a bit of heaven and have their sin too. They want the perks of forgiveness, grace and love … without truth, rebuke or repentance. Separation from the world, from sin… that’s Biblical. The Bible says be ye holy, for I am holy. God says that. It’s a work of the Holy Spirit to separate us from this world unto Christ. That’s thinking, understanding and doing differently. You won’t be useful to God without being separate from things that do not bring glory to him, that do not honor him. You can’t serve God and be joined to the world and to sin.

Another thing walls do is that walls divide. Division is another dirty word in Christianity. But God divides, you can’t get past Genesis 1 without realizing that. God divided light from darkness and day from night right back in Genesis 1. Jesus himself said he came not to give peace… but division. Whenever Jesus spoke, he divided people. His word divided between believers and unbelievers. You want to follow Jesus Christ? That’ll divide you from people who are following Jesus Christ and those that aren’t. He is the truth, and truth divides. We have the word of the truth… the Holy Bible. The Bible divides between those who love it and believe it… and those who don’t. We need some division in our life, indeed, God when he dwells in us through his Holy Spirit creates a new creature in us, completely divided from our sinful fleshly nature. What about that great gulf which divided between the rich man in hell and the beggar in Abraham’s bosom? You see, eternity itself is one great division, between those that are saved and born again … and those that aren’t. Division is inescapable with God, just what side are you on? Are you trying to be a Christian, but also a friend of the world? Are you trying to have holiness and sin? Are you trying to have God and Baal?  No man can serve two masters… who’s it going to be? Look where Israel’s sin got them… absolute destruction.

Walls provide safety. Don’t believe it? Well then don’t lock your door to your house, don’t live in a house. Walls are safety. The Bible likens walls unto salvation. When you get saved, walls are put up by the Holy Spirit in our lives. Are you inside the walls, or outside the walls? Are your walls down? Are there breaches everywhere? Do you want to rebuild? Well, you need to get saved. That’s where it starts. The rebuilding started with repentance, prayer and faith. We need to rebuild the walls in our lives. The situation looked impossible, but you can rebuild through Jesus Christ. Often we don’t rebuild because we don’t know where to start, but Nehemiah will show you where to start and how to start. And you start by doing, nothing will get done if you don’t start moving by faith in God’s word. Faith is believing and obeying God’s word.

Nehemiah got to Jerusalem and he rode out at night to assess the damage. How can you rebuild if you don’t know what the problem is? If you don’t have a good look at the damage sin and disobedience has done to your life? There’ll be no rebuilding till you can get honest with yourself. Till you can honestly look at your own life in the light of God’s word. The problem is we don’t like the truth about us. We don’t like to be exposed, rebuked, convicted. It’s so hard to admit we have a problem and we are the problem. And thus no walls ever get rebuilt, because we never have an honest enough to really take a good look at the way things are and why things are the way we are. We are quick to blame everyone and everything else… but much slower to admit… I have sinned.

There were opponents to Nehemiah rebuilding. There are enemies of the cross out there people. A lot of them. There was Sanballat, Tobiah and Geshem. They tried many different strategies to stop the rebuilding. They tried belittling, scorning, they lied and falsely accused, they intimidated and threatened… and they even offered friendship! They bought off people on the inside. They had priests on their payroll. That’s why churches are like they are, because pastors and church people are on the devil’s payroll. We need to savvy up to who is on the Lord’s side and who isn’t. Nehemiah didn’t get tricked, fooled, deceived, enticed, scared away or wore down. He was strong in faith and strong in the Lord. We need some godly courage and faith in the face of enemies of the rebuilding. And it’s going to take wisdom to see people for who and what they truly are. If you read through Nehemiah you’ll see these guys came up with all sorts of plans to stop the rebuilding process. You’re going to have to be able to recognize enemies, even when they come with a smile on their face and the offer of friendship and compromise.

One of the things these guys said was … Will they make an end in a day? I had never understood what this meant. But it’s such a big one. We never start rebuilding because we think we are too far gone. Where do we start? And when we do start, it looks so small and insignificant we get discouraged and leave off rebuilding. Some fixes aren’t overnight. We need the power of God and the endurance of Christ in us. You’ll never get started rebuilding if you buy this lie. When you’ve been in sin for ages, when the walls have been down for years, it’s hard to get the ball rolling, we are so entrenched in our habits and old ways and lost years… it’s hard to get rebuilding. I’m thirty now and it can seem there is so much time lost is it worth rebuilding, is it worth trying, victories are so small especially in the context of a whole life lived thus far. Don’t listen to the enemy. You can rebuild, it starts today, with repentance and faith. Being single minded and single eyed towards Christ. It’s not about new leaves, self improvement and do better… because that will all fall flat. We need to be IN Christ, because in Christ… just as the people got it done “in” Nehemiah… when we get saved and obey him and abide in him, trust in him… God will make it happen. Rebuilding is the Lord’s work… salvation is of the Lord.

The Bible says that the breaches began to be stopped. Nehemiah and his crew got to working, they set their mind and hands to the work, and the walls started to go up, the gates were fixed and put in place. Hey, rubbish was turning into gates and walls. That’s why the enemies started coming out the woodwork, this world is scared of anyone who is saved and following Jesus Christ. But those breaches were stopped. Is your life full of the breaches that sin has made upon you? There’s plenty of breaches, entry points, passageways that need to be stopped up. Don’t let Satan in anymore. You know, there’s plenty of sin and wickedness in our life that needs to go. If we stop making provision for our flesh and instead start trusting God (and that means actually trusting God’s word), you’ll see Jesus stop those breaches up. We need to unlearn the stuff we’ve learned and been taught that is unBiblical. We need to get stuff out our life which is causing us to stumble and fall. We need to cut bad friendships. We need to get the accursed thing out our house. We need to stop disobeying God while we expect God to bless our disobedience and unfaithfulness. We aren’t going to rebuild if we can’t stop some breaches. What’s a wall worth if there are holes everywhere in it? We have a Saviour who completely conquered death, who was completely sinless, who was completely pure and holy, who offers a complete and whole salvation… that’s why he can be the healer of the breach. The enemy makes breaches in our life, little entry points where the enemy flows in, little passageways into our mind and heart. We need to stop those breaches… and it’s done through the power of the risen Saviour.

You know, when Nehemiah was scouting the destroyed city… the Bible says there was a dragon well and a dung port. There was a well that Jesus sat on where a Samaritan woman got saved. But instead of Jesus’ well where everlasting water is freely available, we’ve instead been drinking out of the dragon well in our lives. Our lives are hooked up to and plugged into the devil’s sewer lagoon. We are feeding on what the world does, how the world thinks… we are buying lies, we are living in darkness… that’s why the walls are down… the source is corrupt and putrid. Where is your heart at today? What is really in your heart? It shocks me to see my own heart. You know… if we actually had love of Christ in our heart… the rest would be pretty easy? It’s not so hard to obey God if you love him. The problem is we, as the Bible says not to do, we regard iniquity in our heart. We love our sin, that’s why we sin and why we struggle so much, because we have a love of sin. We’re drinking out of Satan’s well, the Bible says that he is that old dragon. The problem is we’ve let Satan in our lives, we’ve let him sow seeds of doubt and disobedience and rebellion in our hearts, we’ve let him fill our minds and hearts with all his garbage, and all it’s producing is dung in our lives… and our lives are dead, unprofitable, conquered, in darkness… and worthless. Dung is pretty worthless aye. It was in night that Nehemiah went out, and if you are lost and in sin, your life is all night… you need the day star, Jesus Christ, to arise in your heart.

Nehemiah is a wonderful book in the Bible. You can be a Nehemiah, and you can build walls. See, the enemy wants to tear your life apart. And he may have done a good job of it so far. Our lives can be so much like the state of Jerusalem. Things didn’t have to be that way. They had God’s word, the prophets, they’d been blessed… but instead Jerusalem was a pile of rubbish. You don’t need to be the way you are. You can rebuild. Sin reduces our life to a rubbish pile. We often never rebuild because we’re defeated before the start. We feel like it’s not possible to rebuild. The damage is too great. It can’t be done. Where do we start? And when we do, it seems like nothing is happening. All those things were what Nehemiah’s… and really God’s… enemies were saying. The news today is you can rebuild.

We need rebuilding personally and corporately. Jesus Christ is our Nehemiah, he’s come to seek our welfare, just as Nehemiah came to seek the welfare of the people of Israel. Jesus came to seek lost sheep… I’m that lost sheep and so are you. We need rescuing. We needed someone to seek us out and pull us out of the fire. If you read the whole book, well Nehemiah got the job done. The walls got put up, they got rebuilt. Jesus Christ overcame the world, sin, the devil… the lot. He’s got all power. If you have Christ in you, he’s going to rebuild those walls, despite all odds, despite the impossibility of it. When Jesus starts a work in us, he’s going to get it done. He’s going to take us the whole way to glory. Rebuilding isn’t turning over a new leaf, it’s not just a fad or a new year’s resolution, it’s a work started at salvation, a work of God in us. We need to realize our spiritual state, we need to be honest with God and ourselves in the light of God’s word, we need to see those torn down walls, we need to see the rubbish pile of our own making… that’s our sin and where it’s got us. All it produces is death… but Christ gives life. The enemy has breaches all over our life where he stops us from obeying and serving God, where he prevents any work being done. Those breaches have gotta be stopped, the enemy can’t have breaches in our life anymore. It’s time to rebuild, it’s time to get those walls up through faith in Christ Jesus.

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