Please turn with me in this hour to the Old Testament book of Nehemiah. Nehemiah chapter 1. And follow along as I read this short chapter in its entirety. Nehemiah chapter 1 and verses 1 through 11. Hear the word of God. The words of Nehemiah, the son of Hecalia, Now, it happened in the month Kislev in the 20th year, while I was in Susa, the capital, that Hanani, one of my brothers and some men from Judah, came. And I asked them concerning the Jews who had escaped and had survived the captivity and about Jerusalem. They said to me, the remnant there in the province who survived the captivity are in great distress and reproach, and the wall of Jerusalem is broken down, and its gates are burned with fire. When I heard these words, I sat down and wept and mourned for days. And I was fasting and praying before the God of heaven. I said, I beseech you, O Lord of heaven, the great and awesome God who preserves the covenant and loving kindness for those who love Him and keep His commandments. Let your ear now be attentive and your eyes open to hear the prayer of your servant, which I am praying before you now, day and night, on behalf of the sons of Israel, your servants. confessing the sins of the sons of Israel which we have sinned against you, I and my Father's house have sinned. We have acted very corruptly against you and have not kept the commandments, nor the statutes, nor the ordinances which you commanded your servant Moses. Remember the word which you commanded your servant Moses, saying, if you are unfaithful, I will scatter you among the peoples. But if you return to me and keep my commandments and do them, Though those of you who have been scattered were in the most remote part of the heavens, I will gather them from there and will bring them to the place where I have chosen to cause my name to dwell. They are your servants and your people, whom you redeemed by your great power and by your strong hand. Oh Lord, I beseech you, may your ear be attentive to the prayer of your servant and the prayer of your servants who delight to revere your name and make your servant successful today and grant him compassion before this man. Now I was cup bearer to the king. This morning we come back to the study of an Old Testament book. One month after beginning my ministry among you here, I said the following, in calling me to labor as a minister of the word of the Lord in this church, you have chosen a man who is committed to preaching the whole counsel of God. Now of the 66 books of the Bible, fully 39 of them are Old Testament books. In my pulpit ministry here at Grace Covenant Baptist Church, I plan on dividing that ministry between the Old and the New Testament scriptures. That's what I said one month after I began my pastoral and preaching labors among you here. I then went on to preach that evening from Romans 15 and verse 4, which says, for whatever was written in earlier times was written for our instruction so that through perseverance and the encouragement of the scriptures we might have hope. Since that time, we have taken up Old Testament studies in 2 Kings, in Habakkuk, in Ruth, and in Joel. And in addition, the Lady's Bible study went through the book of Esther at my home. Nehemiah is a neglected Old Testament book. But to neglect it is to make a serious mistake. This morning I want to introduce the book, and much of what I will say comes from a book that I want to highly commend to you this morning, to recommend to you, and that's J.I. Packer's book, A Passion for Faithfulness, that is a great work, great shorter work published by IVP on the book of Nehemiah. I have a whole series of sermons from Nehemiah dating back to 1985. I have a complete set of notes from 18 sermons and I don't plan to consult those notes at all. I'm not going to be looking at them. I could easily do that because they're complete manuscripts that take us from verse 1 of Nehemiah 1 right to the end of the book. 18 whole sermons with complete manuscripts but I don't plan to look at any one of them. I just made note of the fact that I have them, but I want these studies in Nehemiah to be absolutely fresh for both myself and also for you, so I'm not going to consult them. In this hour, I want to introduce the book by focusing on just a few main points, and I want to introduce our study this morning, and then, God willing, in the next weeks, we'll start to open up this great and profitable Old Testament book. I want you to consider in the first place two testimonies about the influence of this book. Two testimonies about the influence of this book. The first comes from J.I. Packer. He wrote the following about Nehemiah and the influence that Nehemiah had on his own life and ministry. I like him. He was a construction man, the old Texan house builder told me. So here's Packer talking to a Texas house builder. And the Christian house builder said, I like Nehemiah. He was a construction man. And Packer says, I was glad to hear him say it, for frankly, I like Nehemiah too. And I hope when I get to heaven, I shall be able to meet him and tell him so. What I would like him to know is that during the half century that I've been a Christian, he has helped me enormously, more perhaps than any other Bible character apart from the Lord Jesus himself. What an interesting statement that Packer wrote. When I was 19, I began to wonder if God wanted me in the professional ministry. It was Nehemiah's experience that showed me how vocational guidance is given and set me on the road to being sure. When I was put in charge of a study center, committed to outflanking and diffusing liberal theology, it was Nehemiah who gave me the clues I needed about leading enterprises for God and dealing with entrenched opposition. When after that I became principal of a theological college that was in low water, it was once again Nehemiah whose example of leadership showed me how to do my job. Another writer, the author of a book entitled Excellence in Leadership, namely John White, wrote this about the influence of this Old Testament book of Nehemiah. He said, the details of my first meeting with him are hazy in my mind. God sent him to me during my early university years to help me overcome some formidable challenges. He has been a close companion ever since. Nehemiah put his very being into his journal, which is incorporated into the book we now call by his name. As I read it, I can feel his heartbeats, sense the tremblings of his fingers, and know the heaviness of his groans. What wisdom he had, and how he drummed the basic lessons of leadership into me. I have forgotten none of them, and I've gone back to him time and time again for reassurance." In the topical file that I've developed over many, many years, probably there's no one topic that I have more entry cards about than the subject of leadership. If you were to look at my topical file and look under the letter L, I'm sure you would find several inches of three by five cards under the subject of leadership from things that I have read over the decades. There probably is no more important book to learn principles of leadership than this Old Testament book of Nehemiah. I believe we're going to find this to be a profitable and also an interesting study as we work our way through the chapters of this book. So there's two testimonies about the importance of this Old Testament book. Consider in the second place that one of the reasons the book is often overlooked is because of Nehemiah's confessed flaws. One of the reasons the book is often overlooked by the people of God is because of Nehemiah's admitted flaws. Notice with me Nehemiah chapter 13 and beginning at verse 23. Nehemiah chapter 13 and verse 23. Let's read from verse 23 through 29. Nehemiah 13, 23. In those days I also saw that the Jews had married women from Ashdod, Ammon, and Moab. As for their children, half spoke in the language of Ashdod, and none of them was able to speak the language of Judah, but the language of his own people. So I contended with them, and cursed them, and struck some of them, and pulled out their hair, and made them swear by God, You shall not give your daughters to their sons, nor take of their daughters for your sons or for yourselves. Did not Solomon, king of Israel, sin regarding these things? Yet among the many nations there was no king like him, and he was loved by his God, and God made him king over all Israel. Nevertheless, the foreign women caused even him to sin. Do we then hear about you, that you've committed all this great evil by acting unfaithfully against our God, by marrying foreign women? Even one of the sons of Joah, the son of Eliashib, the high priest, was a son-in-law of Sanballat the Horonite. So I drove him away from me. Remember them, O my God, because they have defiled the priesthood and the covenant of the priesthood and the Levites." Now here is Nehemiah in this journal, which is the book by his name, recording what he did. And what he did surprises many people. Now when I say that one of the reasons the book is often overlooked is because of Nehemiah's confessed flaws. By confessed flaws, I do not mean that he confessed these actions as sin. I mean rather that he didn't hide what he said he did. He was open about it all. He's very open. He's very transparent with what he did and why he did it. Packer writes this about this incident. Nehemiah does not appear in everyone's list of favorite Bible characters, and that, I guess, is for at least two reasons. To start with, many Christians know very little about him. Their Old Testament reading is sketchy at best, and the book of Nehemiah is one that they never go near. Knowing that Nehemiah is not mentioned in the New Testament, they infer that he's not important, and so take no interest in him. But if readers were told how strong is the case for bracketing him with Moses as the refounder under God of the nation that God used Moses to create, they would be surprised. Moreover, some of those who know something about him have formed an unappealing image of him that keeps them from taking him seriously as a man of God. They see him as a rather savage person who habitually threw his weight around and would never have been pleasant company under any circumstances at all. They note the imprecations in his prayers, Nehemiah 4, 4 and 5, where, remember, means remember for judgment. They observed that on at least one occasion he cursed and beat some of his compatriots and pulled out their hair. They conclude that he was hardly a good man, certainly not a man of great spiritual stature from whom precious lessons can be learned. But I would affirm that they're wrong in so viewing Nehemiah. In the first place that We should understand that the Scriptures present people flaws and all whenever they deal with biography, don't they? The Scriptures present an honest and accurate picture of people, flaws and all, whenever they deal with biblical biography. Several years ago, Walt Chantry wrote an essay that was published in Banner of Truth magazine entitled, The Peril of Perfectionist Biographies. And he was writing about a very real problem, that sometimes when Christian biographies are written, you get the sense that these individuals had no flaws. And he said, the Bible never presents that kind of picture. If the Bible tells us about Abraham's faith, it also tells us about Abraham's fear. If the Bible tells us about Abraham as the man of God and the friend of God, it also portrays the times that Abraham lied to get out of trouble. If the Bible presents Sarah as a very important woman in the progress of redemption, the Bible also presents Sarah as a very difficult woman to work for, and one who abused Hagar, her servant. The Bible presents people flaws and all, and The Bible presents Nehemiah in the same way. In the scriptures there are no perfectionist biographies. Apart from the Lord Jesus Christ, who was and is holy and innocent and undefiled, all Bible characters are flawed. He alone is the exception. How should we view Nehemiah's flaws that do come out in the book? Well, Packer writes the following. He says, there was indeed a rough edge to Nehemiah. There is to most leaders. That's a great statement, isn't it? First, there was indeed a rough edge to Nehemiah. There is to most leaders. In terms of the classic four temperaments, he appears to have been a choleric, a robust, restless forthright man who was happiest when plowing energy into a challenging project, and who found it easier, as we say nowadays, to do than to be. People of that sort are often found frightening, particularly when their zeal leads them, as sometimes it does, to speak and act in a way that's excessively emphatic. But second, horses fork horses. God had prepared Nehemiah for a task that a less forthright man could not have done. And third, Jesus's cleansing of the temple and denouncing of the Pharisees was rougher than anything recorded of Nehemiah. If we think that Jesus's violence was justified, we should grant the possibility that Nehemiah's was too. And when we get to that section, I think we will argue that the things he did, he did as a governor and not just as a private individual. Packer is humorous when he writes this. Whether Nehemiah had red hair, I do not know, but he certainly had a red-headed intensity about him that expressed itself in a somewhat unchrist-like ferocity of style. I found that funny because I have a redhead. A couple of them. This was the defect of his quality, the limitation that went with his strength. Every servant of God fails one way or another to be flawless, and Nehemiah was no exception to that rule. Yet his strengths were marvelous, so I hope that no one will lose interest in him simply because we have agreed that he was not perfect. That's a great statement. Now consider in the last place how we must approach this book. And I have two things I want to say about how we approach this Old Testament book of Nehemiah. First of all, we must approach it with New Testament appreciation for its value. And we must say that about any Old Testament book. And it goes with this book as well. We always must approach an Old Testament book with New Testament appreciation for its value. It is terrible that in churches around America today there are not consecutive expository series of sermons in too many churches from Old Testament books. It's terrible that in many churches around America today the only books they expound and preach from are New Testament books. That is a great weakness. in American churches today. It's also a great weakness to publish just the New Testament apart from the Old Testament. Now I have my own small copies of the New Testament scriptures, usually with the Psalms and Proverbs included as well, and I do carry them from time to time just as a pocket Bible to have because they're small. But none of us ought to be content with only half a Bible, with only the New Testament scriptures. And so we must approach the book of Nehemiah with New Testament appreciation for its value. And what does the New Testament say about these Old Testament books? Well, I would remind you that we have this text in Romans 15. It was a text that I preached from just a month after I relocated here and started my ministry among you. Here's the text, Romans 15.4, for whatever was written in earlier times was written for our instruction so that through perseverance and the encouragement of the scriptures, we might have hope. In other words, Paul was saying, don't neglect your Old Testament books. They were written for our instruction. They were written to produce within us perseverance and encouragement and hope. So we must approach this book of the Old Testament with New Testament appreciation for its value. And then, of course, 2 Timothy 3, 15 through 17. where the Apostle Paul says this of all of the Old Testament scriptures. He writes to Timothy and he says to him, 2 Timothy 3.15, from childhood you have known the sacred writings which are able to give you the wisdom that leads to salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work." And the Scripture that he's speaking of here is the Old Testament Scriptures. So we know that the Old Testament Scriptures are profitable. They're profitable for teaching. profitable to teach us, they're profitable to reprove us, they're profitable to correct us, they're profitable to instruct us in what righteousness is. So that's how we should approach this Old Testament book of Nehemiah. We must approach it with New Testament appreciation for its value. But then secondly, we must approach it with an eye towards new covenant application. And this is very, very important. We must approach it with an eye towards new covenant application. It will not do for us merely to approach it as a narrative about rebuilding the walls of Jerusalem and getting the worship of the people of God back on track. It will not do for us to approach it only in that way. We will err, I will err, if I approached this book in that way. We must approach it with an eye towards new covenant application. In the book of Nehemiah, we will read about the land of Israel, we will read about the temple, we will read about the walls of Jerusalem, we will read about the worship of the old covenant saints under all the dictates of Mosaic ordinances. And we must say this, that if we are to extract all we can and apply as we should, we should see this book through new covenant eyes and that requires that we understand the concepts of type on the one hand and anti-type on the other. Now let me explain those biblical and theological words because we're going to find them here in the book of Nehemiah. Type and anti-type. Packer gives a great definition of these two very important words when he says this. To be specific, a type in scripture, meaning originally a die stamp or matching impression, is an event, institution, place, object, office, or functioning person, that patterns a greater reality that in some sense is of the same kind and is due to appear on history stage at some subsequent point. The greater reality is called the anti-type. A type establishes a frame for interpreting the greater reality when it appears, and meantime, simply by existing, it inculcates the principle of which the greater reality will in fact be the supreme instance. When the greater reality arrives, it becomes the decisive factor in its own field. One way or another, it transcends and supersedes the type. In space-time terms, the type is thenceforth a thing of the past, no longer determinative of what must be done or of what will happen. The biblical account of it, however, is of permanent value as providing concepts and categories for understanding the anti-type. Typology thus becomes a kind of phrase book for use in theology. Now all that to say. that in the book of Nehemiah, we will read about the land of Israel, we will read about the temple, we will read about its walls, and the worship of these old covenant saints under all the dictates of Mosaic ordinances. And what then will we find? What three Old Testament types are important for the study of the book of Nehemiah? And if we get this wrong, we're not gonna profit from the book in the way that we should. What three Old Testament types are important for our study of Nehemiah? Here again, quoting, first, under the mosaic dispensation of God's covenant, the dispensation that the letter to the Hebrews calls the former and the first and declares now to be obsolete since Christ came. Covenant fellowship with Israel's holy God was maintained in the face of Israel's constant sins through a typical system of sacrifices managed by a typical priesthood in a sanctuary that typified the immediate presence of God. Jesus Christ's priestly ministry and mediation, His once-for-all sacrifice and increasing intercession, supersedes all this, as Hebrews 7-10 makes clear. In Nehemiah's day, however, the prescribed path to fellowship with God was the obedient offering of the set sacrifices, and without this, God's favor could not be expected. Second, under the Old Covenant, Israel was given a land, Palestine. with promises of prosperity and protection for faithfulness and warnings of impoverishment and expulsion for unfaithfulness, and hints that there could be restoration after chastening judgment if penitence prevailed. The land was a type. of a better country, a heavenly one, a country that is to be defined not geographically but relationally in terms of fellowship with Christ and his people and enjoyment of the good things he gives to those who trust and serve him. In Nehemiah's day, however, the land was the appointed place of blessing. The blessing that was promised centered upon freedom from want and renewal of life among God's languishing people involved return to the land from exile and reclamation of the land from pagan control. And third, under the old covenant Jerusalem, the city of David and of Solomon's temple was recognized as the place where God had chosen to put his name as a dwelling for his name. That is Israel's appointed worship center where the sacrifices should be offered, the ceremonial worship kept up, and the presence of God sought and enjoyed under the new covenant. We find that God's own people in Christ constitute his temple, Ephesians 2, 19 through 22, and his presence to bless may be enjoyed wherever his servants call on him through Christ or call on Christ as God's vicegerent. While Jerusalem and Zion have become names for a community that is not of this world, a community that now stands revealed as the anti-type to which earthly Jerusalem was the type. Now all that to say that when we find a Nehemiah, these pictures of the land, these pictures of the temple, these pictures of Jerusalem, the pictures of Mosaic worship, if we're going to apply the book of Nehemiah in a proper way, we have to see it through the lens of New Testament fulfillment, or we will not be garnering from the Old Testament book of Nehemiah the lessons that we need to be concerned about. So, to conclude then, I would assert that Nehemiah can only be rightly interpreted if we do so through new covenant eyes. Nehemiah's concern for Jerusalem and for its worship and for its people has to be applied to our concern for what? If we're going to interpret the book of Nehemiah correctly, Nehemiah's concern for Jerusalem and its worship and its people must be applied to our concern for the church. And if we are not seeing this book through those new covenant eyes and seeing that Jerusalem is a type in the Old Testament for what in the New Testament? For the church. We will not understand how to apply this book. This book is about the church. This book is about the old covenant people of God, their restoration their protection through a leader that God raised up to accomplish those ends. Packer has this to say in his introduction, and I thought how good this is and what a great place for us to begin in a study of this book. He says this, for as proverbially as we say to each other, love me, love my dog, or in my case, love me and love my cats. So our Lord Jesus says to us all, love me, love my church. And Packer says something is wrong with professed Christians who do not identify with the church and love it and invest themselves in it and carry its needs on their hearts. I would affirm that anybody who claims to love Jesus Christ but does not love His church, it just can't be. If you love Christ, you love the things that He loved. If you love Christ, you love His church. If you don't love His church, don't try to tell me you love Jesus. You can't love Christ without loving His church. Packer writes this, the building up of individuals is the winding down of individualism. For it is precisely the building of them into the communal network called the church. What a great statement. And if you're growing in faith in Christ, you are growing away from your individualism. And if you're really growing in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ you are growing more and more into communal living in the church of Jesus Christ. So here's a man in the book of Nehemiah as a chapter one opens. What's he doing? He's hearing a terrible report about what happened to Jerusalem and he responds emotionally. He responds in prayer. The obvious New Testament application of this, the obvious way we should look at chapter 1 through new covenant eyes and say, this is description, descriptive of how the people of God should view the awful state of the church and how they ought to respond emotionally when they hear distressing news about the state of the church. And when we see Nehemiah wanting to do what he can to build up and protect the people of God, a new covenant application of this is obvious, that the people of God are called upon to do what they can to build up the New Testament equivalent of what Jerusalem was but a type of, and namely, the church. be concerned for building its walls, that's protecting the church from those that would seek to harm it through false teaching. And so this is the way we're going to approach this book. And that's why I'm not even going to bother looking at 18 complete manuscripts from 1985. I have no doubt that I could just take those and teach from them, preach from them. And I have no doubt that you would say, that was pretty good for 1985. But I'm not going to be doing that. I was 35 at the time that I preached those 18 sermons. I'm 60 now. And I'm not going to go back to studies from when I was but a kid at 35. Well, I hope that this is going to be a good introduction to subsequent weeks of working our way through this great book. I love this book. And I love Nehemiah, and he's got a lot to teach those of us who are interested in the subject of leadership. May God bless our future studies in this book. Let's pray.