Let's give our attention in God's Word to the book of Nehemiah tonight. Nehemiah 6, starting in verse 15. Nehemiah 6, starting in verse 15, we'll read through to chapter 7 and verse 4. So the wall was finished on the 25th day of the month of Elul in 52 days. And when all our enemies heard of it, all the nations around us were afraid and fell greatly in their own esteem, for they perceived that this work had been accomplished with the help of our God. Moreover, in those days, the nobles of Judah sent many letters to Tobiah, and Tobiah's letters came to them. For many in Judah were bound by oath to him, because he was the son-in-law of Shekeniah the son of Arah, and his son Jehohanan had taken the daughter of Meshulam the son of Berechiah as his wife. Also, they spoke of his good deeds in my presence, and reported my words to him. And Tobiah sent letters to make me afraid. Now, when the wall had been built and I had set up the doors and the gatekeepers, the singers and the Levites had been appointed, I gave my brother Hanani and Hananiah, the governor of the castle, charge over Jerusalem, for he was a 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 are still standing guard, let them shut and bar the doors. Appoint guards from among the inhabitants of Jerusalem, some at 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 been rebuilt." So far, the reading from God's word this evening, may He add its blessing to our hearts. Please be seated. As a young boy, I was often easily frightened. And one of the ways that that established itself in my life was when I had the opportunity to participate with my father in watching some of his favorite films. My dad loves World War II black and white movies. And as a boy, I really wanted to watch these because my dad loved these movies and I wanted to watch them. But my timid nature and the fact that I was so easily frightened meant that I really couldn't handle watching any of the battle sequences, which is problematic if you're trying to watch a movie on the Second World War. And so as soon as these battle sequences would come up in the movie, they would be too frightening for me. And I would do the only thing that I could think of, which was to find shelter behind one of the chairs in the living room. And so as soon as the frightening places of the movie would come, I would run and hide. Maybe you've seen young children do the same thing. You're playing a chase game with them. Maybe if you're a grandfather you do that more than if you're an actual parent because you like the house to be calm, but you're playing a chase game with the children, and the children become so overwhelmed that they dive on the couch and put a pillow over their head, or they run into their room and they dive into their bed and they pull the covers over their head, as if hiding behind a living room chair. or under a pillow in the living room, or under your blankets in your bedroom, provide you with any safety whatsoever. I think deep down inside, even as a boy, I knew I don't think the chair is going to do much if there's an actual battle in my parents' home. Well, the nations in some way have behaved this way so far in the book of Nehemiah. They have put their confidence and their trust in their bravado. They've trusted in their politics. They've trusted in their power plays and their manipulations. But in reality, they know that they actually should be afraid before the God of heaven. And that comes out in this passage as the wall is is finished in a record amount of time. As soon as the wall is built, it says in our text that the enemies hear of it and they are afraid and they fall greatly in their own esteem because they knew This one lesson that we should learn from this text, which is that only the Lord keeps the people safe. Only the Lord keeps the people safe. And at some level, Sanballat and Tobiah and the enemies of Israel knew this. Well, how are we going to see that develop in this text? First, We're going to show and we're going to look together at the fact that the nations actually did know that God is more powerful than they are. They knew that something outside of their control was happening, so that the nations know of God's power. Then next, we're going to take a look at how the nations nevertheless scheme to bring down the people of God. And lastly, we're going to see how the Lord So only the Lord keeps the people safe. The nations, they may plot and scheme, but they actually know that that's true, that God has preserved the people of Israel. Despite their scheming, despite the things that they're going to try to do to thwart Nehemiah and his task, his God-given task of rebuilding the wall, still the Lord preserves His people. And so let's think first about how the nations actually know that God is powerful and that God is with His people. From the moment that Nehemiah has arrived in Jerusalem, Enemies from within and without have sought to undermine the work of rebuilding the wall. Nehemiah, from the moment he arrived in chapter 2, has been met with opposition. from without by people like Sanbalat and Tobiah and Geshem, the Arab whom we've met, and then also these enemies who are within. And we saw some of those, the nobles and the priests who worked against him. Shemaiah, who sought to draw him into the temple and to hide because he was being paid by Tobiah to tell Nehemiah that, or Noadiah, the prophetess, who prophesied in such a way as to frighten Nehemiah. All of these working together to work against the will of God, essentially. So their heart actually overflowed into action. Their hatred of God overflows into the resistance of his people. They despise the Lord, so they despise his people. They want to work against the Lord, so they work against God's people. And that's what we've seen so far in the book of Nehemiah, this plotting and scheming and lying and deceiving, all of these things taking place. And Nehemiah being steadfast in the face of all of those things. So Nehemiah doesn't ever seem to waver. He prays to God and he continues in the work. Well, here in verse 15, it talks about how the wall is finished and it gives us a calendar day, the 25th day of the month of Elul. Elul is like August, September in our calendar. In the Hebrew calendar, it's the month of Elul. 52 days before that, something began. Now what exactly is finished in 52 days? That's not entirely clear. There's different ways that you could see what is in mind when it says that they finished in 52 days. It could be 52 days from chapter 2 and verse 18, where Nehemiah comes to Jerusalem and says to the nobles, let's arise and build. And they all get on board on his building program. So it could mean that the whole wall is rebuilt in 52 days. You could also look at chapter 4 and verse 6 and verse 15 and count the 52 days from that portion. There was an interruption once the wall was built to half its height, it says in verse 6 of chapter 4. In verse 15 it says that they are now going to pick up and return to the wall, each to his own So it could be that the whole rebuilding of the wall is in view, or it could be 52 days from this other pause. It could just be that the last half of the rebuilding of the wall happens in 52 days. And you might say that because of what is recorded. in Nehemiah 5 and verse 14. There it seems to indicate that there's a fairly lengthy period of time where Nehemiah is laboring at this wall. So it talks about how Nehemiah was governor from the 20th year to the 32nd year of Artaxerxes. So Nehemiah was governor for 12 years And it talks about how he persevered in the building of, in the work of the wall. It says that in verse 16 of chapter 5. And you might say, well, working on a wall of a city for 52 days is hardly persevering in a work. Even by modern standards, it would be a minor miracle for any construction project to be finished in 52 days. So it could be that The wonder of God's care over Israel in this place is established because the whole wall is rebuilt in 52 days. Certainly God is powerful, and we wouldn't discount it. We wouldn't say that's unbelievable that God would have done that. He could have done it. Or perhaps it is that the wall, the half of the wall, when they restart the rebuilding project of the wall, that that was finished in 52 days. In some sense, it doesn't really matter. The point of the text is that whatever section of the wall they're talking about, it was rebuilt at a pace that was recognizably supernaturally empowered. The people of the nations recognized that this was only possible because the help of the God of the people of Israel. So if you look at the overall time that it took the returning exiles to rebuild the wall, it actually was quite long. The first wave of exiles came back in 538 BC. We are now in 445 BC, we're 93 years later. So it took them 93 years to rebuild the wall. Lots of reasons why there are delays, including laws from the emperor forbidding the rebuilding of the wall. But whatever the timeline was when the rebuilding of the wall or the finishing of the wall, 52 days was inexplicable to the people around them. There was a recognizable work of the Lord in the finishing touches that came to the wall. And so the point is that God is with His people and the nations know it. They don't need a prophet to tell them God is with His people. They can look at the works of God, His hand in provision for His people, and they can say God is with the people of Israel. The fact that the nations know that God is with his people is wonderful, but it doesn't always translate into anything that resembles worship. And that is, throughout the Scriptures, simply knowing something to be true about God is not necessarily worship. And you see that in different places. For example, in Genesis 4, when God speaks to Cain before he murders his brother Abel, God speaks with Cain. He warns him about his sin. He warns him that he must turn away from his sin, and yet you read that Cain rose up against his brother Abel and killed him. Or you can go to Acts 6. Acts 6 is where Stephen, one of the first deacons of the church, he is arrested by the Jewish leaders. And he is in front of a kangaroo court. They know exactly what they're going to do to Stephen. And Stephen is testifying to the truth of what he knows of the Lord Jesus Christ. And in the middle of this testimony, the people who are examining him notice something about him. Stephen is arrested and it says in verse 15 that all who sat in the council saw his face was like the face of an angel. They knew that there was something different about Stephen. Cain knew that he was supposed to turn away from the sin that is crouching at his door. And yet in both cases, knowing things about God didn't result in the worship of God. And that is a good thing for us to know, for us to think about, because it means that right doctrine, as important as that is, is not the same thing as having a relationship with Jesus Christ. having the right doctrinal knowledge and dotting all your I's and crosses crossing all your T's, being able to recite the shorter catechism as good as an exercise as that is, is not the same thing as belonging to the Lord Jesus, the Lord Jesus Christ. The Lord helps his people so that he would be known by them and so that they would trust in him. You can't have the knowledge without the trust and be a child of God. To be a child of God, you must have the knowledge. You must know your sin. You must know your misery. You must know your savior. You must know what holiness looks like and live that out. But you must also trust in him. You can't have one without the other. The unbeliever may know many things about God. and reject him. And we see that in so many different places throughout history. But where there is a believer, not only will he know about God, but he will also worship that God. He will trust in that God. So we should let the things that we know about God guide our worship of him. Think about what you know about God tonight. Think about what you know about His work of restoration among His people. Think about what you know about how He restores His people. In this instance, in the book of Nehemiah, through the repair of the wall. And I'm not talking about restoration of a people spiritually, but it's a picture of it. God brings his people back from exile. They've sinned against him. He's cast them out of the land of promise. He brings them back. He restores their capital city, the temple in Jerusalem, the walls around Jerusalem. He gives us a picture of what restoration looks like. And the nations know it, but they don't humble themselves. When you read about things, when you study the things that God has done to restore man to himself, do you worship him? Do you humble yourself before him? See, the Bible's picture of restoration isn't ultimately the picture of the rebuilding of an earthly wall. The story, the biblical story of restoration is the rebuilding of a spiritual wall. God restores the soul, which is broken down and overrun by sin. And he does that by the blood of Jesus Christ and his atonement. The sins of the believer they leave our spiritual walls destroyed. It's the result of God's judgment against us, that he would take us out from being near to him and cast us from his presence. And yet, in Christ Jesus, he brings us back and he restores us. In Christ Jesus, The wrath of God is removed. We talk about that as Christ's work of propitiation. The wrath of God has been satisfied in Christ so that we, though we are exiles, can be brought back to this place and be restored. It is not enough for you simply to be able to recite that. It is not enough for you to converse intellectually in an interesting way about these subjects. That is not enough for you. You must know it and it must direct your life. You must cling to Christ, you must look to the restoration that he gives you, and that must be your final hope. It makes you live in a spiritual Jerusalem the rest of your days, where you find your safety in the protection that God has provided for you, where you desire to dwell close to where he is, where the where the temple has been rebuilt, where you can participate in praising him for your deliverance. And so God's people have more than just a building timeline. Sometimes God's people only think in terms of a building timeline, and they forget that they're to live faithfully before the Lord. That would be simply to know things about God. But if we know things about God and we trust in him, it is more than just building. It is about worship. The rebuilding of the wall, even in Nehemiah's day, for those who were truly God's people, had to be more than a building project. It had to be the worship of the God who's brought them back from exile. That's really what was in play here in Jerusalem. And so the nations look, they see this wall rebuilt in 52 days, and they marvel at it. They say, God is at work among these people. but it doesn't result in their worship. The nations know that God is at work, but they don't humble themselves before the Lord. And we see that work itself out also in verses 17 through 19, where you have this record of the scheming of the people of Israel and Tobiah particularly. The picture of Jerusalem in the book of Nehemiah is not a flattering one. It also wasn't a flattering one in the book of Ezra. It certainly is not a flattering one when it comes to the nobles. Jerusalem seems like a city. where the people of God are overrun with worldliness. They have one foot in the city of Jerusalem, they have one foot in the camp of God, and the other foot firmly planted in the pragmatic, in the world, the things that work, the way we get things done. And if you remember back with me to when we were working our way through Ezra 9 and 10, there was one particular issue that stood out to the priest Ezra, and he sought to reform Israel, particularly on this one point. And if you remember with me back to what that was, it was intermarriage. How the people of Israel and the leaders of the people of Israel had given themselves to the intermarriage with the nations around them. And here we see a very specific example of how that was destructive to the people of God. And the example here is used particularly of Tobiah. It talks about the nobles of Judah and their relationship with Tobiah. And it says in verse 18 that Tobiah exercised a significant amount of control over the people of Judah. And it gives two reasons. First of all, it talks about how the nobles are bound by oath to him. But then in the second place, you see that intermarriage was used as a political weapon for Tobiah to be able to leverage control over the nobles of Judah. Tobiah himself is married to Shekeniah, the son of Ereh. Now, that doesn't mean much to you and me. We don't we don't bump into Shekeniah, the son of Ereh in too many places in scripture. But from chapter seven and verse 10, we can see that Ereh was a chieftain, over 652 people, one of the leaders of the people of God. He was the head of a large family, and Tobiah was married to his daughter. Beyond that, it says in verse 18 that Tobiah's son Jehohanan had taken the daughter of Meshulam, the son of Berechiah, as his wife. Now, we've met Meshulam, the son of Berechiah, before. We didn't spend a lot of time talking about him. But when we read about the nobles and the people who were assisting in rebuilding the wall of Jerusalem, Meshulam, the son of Berechiah, actually shows up in two places. He's not just repairing the wall of Jerusalem in one place. He's doing it in two places. Nehemiah 3 and verse 4 mention his work in repairing in one location. And then in verse 30, he's repairing in another location. So this also was a leader among the people who was laboring to participate, at least on the outside, in the work of Nehemiah, in the rebuilding of the wall. Later on in Nehemiah, in Nehemiah chapter 13 and verse 28, we're going to see another instance of intermarriage where it talks about how Sanballat actually is the father-in-law Now, follow along with me here. Sanballat is the father-in-law of Jehoiada, who is the son of the high priest. So Tobiah is married to an influential Jewish leader. His son is married to an influential Jewish leader. Sanballat has his daughter married to the son of the high priest, Eliashib. And all of these instances of intermarriage establish and form the foundation of a machine. We talked today about a shadow government. There is a shadow government at work in Nehemiah's day, and it's Tobiah and Sanballat, and they're trying to influence things in Jerusalem through these levers of power that they have set in place. And that shows us that the problems of Jerusalem are not solved by a wall that keeps people out. That's the failure of monasticism, right? To build a wall to keep sin out. As soon as you step inside that wall, now you've brought sin inside the wall. The same thing is true in Jerusalem. They can't keep sin out by keeping the other nations out. They've brought sin into the walls themselves. There are plenty of enemies in the book of Nehemiah who helped build the wall. There are plenty of enemies within the book of Nehemiah who are numbered with the people of Israel. And actually, as we move on from this section and go into chapter 7 to the end of this book, that's going to be the majority of the problem. It's not going to be with Sanballat and Tobiah. It's going to be with the Hebrews. It's going to be with the Jewish people. Within the numbers of the tribes of Israel, they are going to be working against Nehemiah to undermine his work. Maybe it's because of the influence from Tobiah. Certainly we can say that his influence has wormed itself into the governor's mansion. The important people, the movers and the shakers of Jerusalem in Nehemiah's day, they're compromised. They are compromised, it says here, by oaths to Tobiah. Oftentimes people talk about those things or think about those things as perhaps trade agreements that were made between Tobiah and the people of Jerusalem. more than just having trade agreements and being compromised with intermarriage, their being compromised has made them informants to the enemies of God. They are telling Nehemiah's words that he speaks to Tobiah to give him an advantage and When Nehemiah's around, they're trying to change Nehemiah's mind about this Tobiah. They're talking about him as if he is a great guy. They're attempting to have him accept Tobiah, and Tobiah accepted would undoubtedly lead to compromise, would lead to the wall being interrupted, because Sanballat and Tobiah, we remember from the beginning, don't want anything good to happen in Jerusalem. And that's a good word of warning for us that we should not obligate ourselves to the enemies of the Lord. Now, I'm not arguing for a fearful isolation from the word. Sometimes that is the overreaction of the Christian. When we say we don't obligate ourselves to the enemies of God, we isolate ourselves then from the world. We don't want to deal with the world. But even Nehemiah doesn't do that. You remember where Nehemiah gets the raw materials for the rebuilding of the wall and for the rebuilding of the gates. In Nehemiah 2 and verse 8, we've read that Artaxerxes will supply the lumber for the repair work for the city of Jerusalem, at least in part. The difference is not receiving help from Artaxerxes. The difference is that the nobles are obligated and compromised by their relationship with Tobiah. Their level of commitment pressures them to actively work against the people of God in favor of the enemies of God. And that can never be. Those who would make you side against God's people should never be given control in your life. Now what do you do if you see someone exercising that kind of control in your life or trying to exercise that kind of control in your life? is my experience, that to side with the Lord begins at ground zero. You don't try to introduce that halfway into the relationship. You introduce that at ground zero. So the first step when someone's trying to control you, as Tobiah sought to control the Israelites, is to give a firm verbal reproof that you will never speak or work against God's people. And that will wreck a friendship if people are set on it. but it must absolutely happen. There can be nobody who obligates you, who puts you in a place where you feel obligated to stand against the people of God. And if that friend goes along and just ignores that reproof and tries to introduce himself on the same domineering, same controlling assertions in your life as before, you must completely disassociate yourself from that person or from that organization. You can have no part of those who would lead you to stand against the people of God. You cannot join in the scheming of the evil one and in any sense be considered a child of God. And so even all this scheming, all this influence, all this power that Tobiah, in this case, Tobiah is exercising over Israel. What do we notice from this account? In the end, when that wall is finished, he's afraid. He's afraid because he knows that the God of the Hebrews has done this work. No amount of human scheming can defeat the God of heaven and earth, because ultimately, only the Lord keeps a people safe. And that's really what we see in the last section that we will deal with tonight, verses 1 through 4 of chapter 7. God gives safety to his people. Again, Nehemiah, in rebuilding the wall in Jerusalem, isn't looking for a vanity project. He's not looking for a project to establish his legacy for the generations to come. Nehemiah is chosen by the Lord for this particular purpose, that the people of God would be given safety. The walls are restored. The doors are set in place. You even read about the gatekeepers and the singers and the Levites being appointed to stand guard, to stand watch, so that Jerusalem once again can be a place of safety for the people of God. And in fact, you see this sense of safety being guarded and protected in verse 3 particularly. where Nehemiah says, let not the gates of Jerusalem be opened until the sun is hot. That's an older way of expressing, we're not opening the gates until it's broad daylight, until the daylight is upon us. Why is that necessary? Because the enemies of God's people infiltrate Jerusalem under the cover of darkness. They cannot do it in the light when the people of Jerusalem are being watchful. They do it in the dark. And so the walls of Jerusalem keep the people of Israel safe because access is only given in the light. I think it's important for us to see something far greater than the safety that an earthly Jerusalem provides. In some sense, we can think of the darkness and the light and expand that far beyond Jerusalem or Israel or that period of time to see a spiritual equivalency. That we also must only operate in the safety that God provides in the light. Well, when does the light arrive for the people of God? The light comes when Jesus comes. Remember when Jesus is introduced in the Gospel of John? Talks about how the light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it. That's a picture of what's happening here in Nehemiah. The darkness, Tobias, Sanballat, Geshem, the Arab, have not overcome Jerusalem. The light is when the gates are open, the forces of darkness have not overcome. You can see more of Jesus as light, maybe even connecting it more clearly to what's talked about in verse three, where it says that the gates of Jerusalem are not to be opened up until the sun is hot. Listen to Revelation 1 in verse 16, when it describes the resurrected Christ and the apostle John seeing the resurrected Christ walking among the seven Lamp stands and it says in his right hand He held seven stars from his mouth came a sharp two-edged sword and his face was like the sun shining in full strength I think that's an obvious connection between our text and the ultimate work of redemption that we're looking for. It's a connection between a material safety and the spiritual safety that Christ accomplished. It is a description that takes forces of darkness, enemies creeping into a city, kept out of the city until the light comes, and we see it in Christ. We live in the darkness, but Christ is the light, and Christ protects us and is our light for us. See, the restored Jerusalem is important in the Old Testament because it is the city that represents the presence of God with Israel. We talked about that this morning. the place of the temple, the place of the Holy of Holies. Also in this case, the place of the palace of the Kings of David. It is the presence of God established in the Old Testament. But the presence of God is established far more gloriously in the New Testament. It is in the coming of Christ, who is light in the darkness, that light which eventually will fill for eternity the new Jerusalem. In heaven. Perhaps we might think of Jesus as the sun shining in full strength, how he removes the need for a wall because there's no darkness to cloak the enemies. We can think of Jesus as the shepherd who guards the entrance to the sheep pen, who doesn't let enemies jump over the wall, who will not let thieves break in and steal. For sure, we can think of, we must know of Christ as the safety for the Christian. that He places the Christian beyond the reach of the enemy. He is that wall of safety that surrounds us. And yet, we read something kind of disturbing also in our last verses here. It talks about, in verse 4, how the wall is built around a city, which is wide and large, but that the people within it are few, and that no houses have been rebuilt yet. So there is the structure for safety, but the number of people within the safety of the walls are actually quite few. And I think this verse is meant to evoke within us a sense that the work is not yet done. It's meant to evoke within us a longing that there would be a holy people living within the holy city. And that we would have that same longing as a church. That the church would be filled to overflowing. It should be part of our prayers, should be part of what we work for as God's people. It should be part of our mission here in this world. It shows us that we shouldn't work to isolate the church, but that we should work to bring people to the church to find their safety in the Lord Jesus Christ. The walls of Jerusalem At that time, it's a military technology. Walls are a military technology, a defensive military technology, meant to keep the enemies out. That's what walls are supposed to do, to provide safety, to keep enemies out. Sometimes, the church, though, has built walls to keep out those who are under attack. They've used walls in the wrong way. The sun is at full strength. The light is bright. Jesus is being proclaimed, and yet the church has set up walls that keep the bruised reed out. and keep the brewserie away from the Savior. There's different ways that we see that work itself out in God's Word, even. The disciples used age to keep children from coming to the Lord Jesus Christ. The Pharisees used sin to keep prostitutes and tax collectors from coming to the Lord Jesus Christ. In the book of Galatians, the early Christian Jews used ethnicity to keep Gentiles from Jesus. I wonder what the walls are that we have set up to keep people from the Lord and from the safety that he can provide. There are walls, but these do not exist to keep the bruised reed out. They are erected to keep the enemies out. And so that means that even in saying that we should be a welcoming place for the bruised reed, We don't accept everything within the church. Sometimes that's the overcorrection, that now we think we carelessly accept everything. People are not careful anymore about what's going on in the walls of the church. We are to guard the church, just as there were guards in the city of Jerusalem. There's a wall for protection. And only when the sun was bright was the gate to be opened. So we are to adequately protect the people of God from those who would prey upon the church, also from those who would prey upon the church from the inside of the church. And so we shouldn't make love for the lost an excuse or to be the cause of our affirmation or acceptance of all things. There are walls. Enemies cannot and must not be allowed to dwell in the city. The walls of the church are there to provide a protection that is needed, and that protection comes to us through the Lord Jesus Christ. Only the Lord keeps a people safe. In all the scheming of Sanballat and Tobiah, there's not any success. They have deceived. They have planned to kill. They have tried to lure Nehemiah away. They have used marriage to obligate the important people of Jerusalem to themselves, putting them under oath to them, and yet they cannot touch the people of God. Why? Because God alone protects His people. And because He does, no attack from their enemies, stands any chance of succeeding against them. Let's pray together.