LOVE FOR THE ASSEMBLY

Cyril Dadd

Nehemiah 1: 1-11; 2: 1-9; Psalm 137: 1-7

I have read this section in Nehemiah to direct our thoughts and attention to a man who loved Jerusalem. We want to catch God's thoughts about Jerusalem. I am not thinking of it as to what it means from the viewpoint of what is religious, but of what it means to the heart of God; it is the city of God, the city of Christ's God. It has a long history. The Lord went to Jerusalem, as we know; He came down from the mountain and made His way to Jerusalem where He would be slain outside the city. Yet with all these thoughts, the history going into it, God is thinking still of Jerusalem. We see that at the end of Luke's gospel where they were to remain in the city until they had been clothed with power from on high and the gospel was to be preached beginning at Jerusalem. You wonder at that, do you not? It is the place where the most terrible things in the history of time had been perpetrated, where the Lord was crucified between two criminals, and yet the gospel was to be preached beginning at Jerusalem, showing how God was moving in grace and in mercy. The Lord asked that they be forgiven; Stephen said "lay not this sin to their charge" (Acts 7: 60) but the Lord said "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do", Luke 23: 34. Think of the grace shining out in Christ under the most difficult circumstances! Men in hatred had put Him on the cross, and yet the Lord could say, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do". It shows how the Lord in grace was reaching out to a people who had rejected Him.

Nehemiah is a remarkable man because he is a Jerusalem-lover. Daniel was also. He had his windows open toward Jerusalem, praying three times a day (see Dan 6: 10). It showed his attitude of mind, his thoughts and feelings and affections were toward what God loved. We need to cultivate this so that we become Jerusalem-lovers, increasingly lovers of the assembly. It says of the Lord Jesus that He loved the assembly and delivered Himself up for it (see Eph 5: 25). These thoughts, beloved, we need to get into our hearts and, like the writer of the Psalm says, "if I prefer not Jerusalem above my chief joy".

With Nehemiah it is the time of the captivity. Ezra built the altar and the house, but then with the altar and the house rebuilt there is something needing to be protected, the idea of something being valued. This is what we need in our own time, to get over to what the Lord values in such a way that it needs to be protected, needs the wall - the principles of the fellowship. All of us are aware that we are in a time when the enemy is constantly working away trying to turn the edge and reduce the principles of the fellowship to the idea of the mind of men. The Lord has certain principles that He is moving by, and they involve the fellowship, involve the line of protection; it means that you are keeping something out and are holding something in, you are valuing something. It is today, you might say, in the twos and the threes. Not that we claim anything; we cannot in one sense other than that we love Christ and are seeking to hold something that is precious to His own heart.

So Nehemiah makes inquiry from Hanani. "As I was in Shushan the fortress, that Hanani, one of my brethren, came, he and certain men of Judah"; "one of my brethren" is a fine touch, one of his brethren had come and he can carefully inquire from this brother "concerning the Jews that had escaped, who were left of the captivity, and concerning Jerusalem". He was a man who loved the people and who loved Jerusalem. I believe, beloved, that these are the feelings that God is seeking to generate in our own hearts at this time, that we might increasingly love the people of God and love the assembly. Get it into us, love the people, they are what is indispensable. We are in a time when every one is precious, and every one is indispensable. We need to hold on to that because it is the feelings of Christ as to His own. The shepherd in Luke 15 leaves the ninety and nine and goes and seeks the one that is lost, and having found it he puts it on his shoulders. That would show to us that all the brethren are indispensable; we need each other. Let us value each other. Attachment to Christ is the test of the present day. If we are not currently attached to Christ we will not have the wherewithal to hold us according to the will of God.

So Nehemiah gets this word and prays to God, and he eats the sin-offering; he says, "confessing the sins of the children of Israel, which we have sinned against thee; both I and my father's house have sinned". We need increasingly to learn to eat the sin-offering. It means that we learn how to judge ourselves, and this is one of the things that should mark the way we assemble tomorrow morning, coming up as having eaten the sin-offering; having been in the presence of God we have had every matter worked out according to His will. We are confessing our sins and the sins of the people; I believe it gives God a basis to bring in blessing, which He does with Nehemiah. Nehemiah prays a very fine prayer. He goes back to the promises of God which came in through Moses. I think it is a good thing to remind God of His promises, and in doing so we can take God at His word. We find examples of this in Scripture, that persons take God at His word, and we are in a time when we need to fall back on the word of God. We remind God of His own thoughts, things that He has indicated, and that the Lord could say when He was here, 'the gates of hades shall not prevail'. It runs through my mind at the present moment that everything around us looks as if the enemy is having his way, but the Lord said the gates of hades shall not prevail against the assembly which He would build on the rock. So we can remind God of these great thoughts, remind Christ of the thoughts that He has brought into expression and which He intends to see through. You can hardly think anything other than that what is of God is going through because it is sustained in the power of the Spirit of God. To think in any other way would be to think unworthily of the present service of the Spirit of God.

Nehemiah says he is the king's cupbearer and then that he was unhappy in the presence of the king: "And the king said to me, Why is thy face sad, seeing thou art not sick?". Then he says to the king, "Why should not my countenance be sad, when the city, the place of my fathers’ sepulchres lies waste, and its gates are consumed with fire? And the king said to me, For what dost thou make request? So I prayed to the God of the heavens". I think that is fine, an expression of dependence. Here he is in the presence of the king and the king said, What do you want, your face is sad and there is reason for this; he tells him the reason, and then the king says, Tell me what you want. What a challenging matter! Nehemiah says, "I prayed to the God of the heavens", momentarily he lifts his heart to the God of the heavens to get the guidance he needed. It is a great thing in the testimony that we are able to fall back on our own link with God. We can lift our hearts at any time to the Father. So Nehemiah gets his direction from God, and the prosperity and the blessing of what he is undertaking lies in the fact that he is getting his direction from God.

It says later on, "And I came to Jerusalem, and was there three days. And I arose in the night, I and some few men with me but I told no man what my God had put in my heart to do for Jerusalem" (vv 11,12). What is God putting in our hearts to do for the assembly? It is a challenge to us. Are we truly assembly-minded persons? That is what comes out in Matthew's gospel - assembly-minded personnel. I believe we need help that we might become increasingly assembly-minded persons. So he says, "but I told no man what my God had put in my heart to do for Jerusalem". I think it comes back to our secret links with the Lord. It is a fine thing to have your own secret links with Christ. You have uninterrupted means of communication with Christ Himself. He told no man, but this is what he was carrying in his affections, what God had put in his heart to do for Jerusalem. What is God putting in our hearts to do for the assembly? This is a great challenge to us at the present time. The Lord would help us as to it. I think the assembly time tomorrow is a time when the Lord says to us afresh that He loves the assembly, as Paul could say, "Christ also loved the assembly, and has delivered himself up for it, in order that he might ... present the assembly to himself glorious", Eph 5: 25-27. Beloved, what is God putting in our hearts to do for the assembly now? Let us challenge ourselves. Nehemiah had not told anybody about this, but what God put in his heart to do for Jerusalem is going forward.

Now just a touch as to what the psalmist comes to. He refers obviously to the time of the captivity in Babylon: "By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down; yea, we wept when we remembered Zion". Think of what Zion meant to God! Zion was part of Jerusalem but it was something very special. "We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof". They had been carried away captive; it says, "For there they that carried us away captive required of us a song". Then he goes on: "If I forget thee, Jerusalem, let my right hand forget its skill". It sounds like things that marked David, does it not? It does not say who wrote the psalm; of the next one it says specifically that it was David. The psalmist speaks of his right hand and its skill (David certainly had the skill, what a skilled warrior he was!); he says, "If I forget thee, Jerusalem, let my right hand forget its skill". This is the psalmist expressing the feelings of God. We are in a day when the assembly is being forgotten, when what is precious to the heart of Christ is being overlooked, put on one side, but the psalmist says, "If I do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to my palate; if I prefer not Jerusalem above my chief joy". I think that is a man who is reflecting the feelings of Christ, what Christ has set His affections upon, loving the assembly, delivering Himself up for it; it is the apple of His eye. We get some of these feelings coming out in the Song of Songs. We know that the Song relates to a repentant and recovered Israel, but then too it can be applied to Christ and the assembly, and there we have the thought of what is very precious coming into expression. Here, I think, the psalmist brings that out.

Well, we will have this opportunity tomorrow to catch the feelings of Christ for the assembly, that vessel of peculiar choice. There is nothing like it, nothing as near to Deity as the assembly. It is a divine conception. Therefore the Lord is in a peculiar way preparing the assembly to present it to Himself, perfect, without spot or wrinkle or any of such things. That is the way the assembly will be presented to Himself, and we will touch this tomorrow; we get into an area of things which sin has never invaded, outside the domain of breakdown and failure with which we are so familiar, and we come into an area where everything is of God, everything is of Christ, and the assembly is there in all its perfection, because only what is perfect can come out of Christ, that is the point of origin of the assembly, the side of Christ.

Well, beloved, let us carry this in our affections and come up tomorrow freighted, not with our own matters and our own thoughts about our own businesses and such like, but with thoughts of Christ and the assembly. Let us be assemblyminded persons; let us be Jerusalem-lovers such as Nehemiah was, for His Name's sake.

 

ORMOND BEACH

20 June 1992