NEHEMIAH 4 (FROM CAC'S NOTES)

NEHEMIAH 4 (FROM CAC’S NOTES)

Nehemiah 4: 1 - 23; Nehemiah 6: 1 - 19

Sanballat and company represent those who would keep up the existing state of things. They are grieved that a man should come to seek the welfare of the children of Israel. They first mock and seek to despise what was being done (chapter 4). Then they fight against those that built the wall. Then when the wall was built they propose a conference (chapter 6). The doors were not yet set up. The principles of fellowship may be accepted in a general way but not adhered to very strictly. There is a readiness to want liberty to do this or that which really means going outside the wall. Links are kept up by means of relatives or friends with what lowers the ^[p. 263] whole tone of separation. Often books are read which bring the very spirit and atmosphere of what exists in the great profession into the mind and heart. Then there is an opening for this proposal to come together on some principle which is not that of the christian fellowship, all kinds of conferences, conventions, alliances, united prayer meetings. But all this means leaving the work. The object is to do mischief and take us away from what is really of God.

Then there is an attempt to make out that there is a rebellion afoot, and that it will be reported to the king. This corresponds with charges of evil doctrine. People are writing books and pamphlets all the time, circulating charges of rebellion, and of setting up what is lawless. What is according to God will always seem lawless to those who want to maintain things as they are. But all this is to make afraid and to slacken the hands of those who are doing the work. Nehemiah prays, “Now therefore strengthen my hands!” (chapter 6: 9).

But from Nehemiah 6: 10 it is a more subtle working within. Here is a man who had shut himself up; that is, he is not going on happily with the brethren; he has a private line of his own in ministry, but it is now a question of prophecy (verse 12). It is now a spiritual snare; he pretends to have a word from God, and to call Nehemiah to meet in the house of God, within the temple, and to shut the doors. It did not sound like the enemy’s voice, but it was. This man, not really with the brethren, would have put Nehemiah in fear. If the leader could be intimidated, and made to show publicly that he was afraid, in that he hid himself in the house of God to save his own life, it would be sin on his part and they could spread an evil report and reproach him. Satan does not care whether it is the plain of Ono (verse 2) or the house of God (verse 10) if he can get us away from the work. The Pharisees said, “Get out, and go hence, for Herod is desirous to kill thee” (Luke 13: 31). Timothy is told that God has not given us the spirit of cowardice.