THE WALL AND THE TABLE
[p. 264] THE WALL AND THE TABLE
Nehemiah 5: 14 - 19; Nehemiah 6: 1 - 14
Ques Would you help us as to the meaning of verse 14 of chapter 5?
CAC Nehemiah not only suggests what is right, but he is the personal expression of it. It brings out the great principle that if we see a fault in the saints the thing is to rebuke it by our own example. This terrible state of selfishness had come in, and to rebuke it Nehemiah would not take the bread he was entitled to.
It is very important that the food supply should be kept up; everything of God will fail if there is not the food supply.
Ques Would you tell us the difference between building the wall and this food supply?
CAC I thought it was necessary that for any true building there must be feeding. For the carrying on of what is connected with the testimony of God and the truth of the fellowship we must have a good food supply. The reason why so many saints are not prepared for the path of separation is that they are not furnished with food. We ought all to be exercised to be sources of supply, not making demands on the saints. The spirit of demand is so natural to us, the spirit of supply is spiritual. Love would make us sources of supply so that we do not come to the meetings first of all for what we can get, but what we can bring. Paul had to say from the beginning, “All seek their own things, not the things of Jesus Christ”. That has been a blight from the beginning of the church.
The fellowship in the first place is a fellowship of satisfaction; that is the great thought of it, and it is only as we are in the fellowship of satisfaction that we can be vigorous in the fellowship of separation. One ox, six choice sheep, fowls of all sorts and wine in abundance suggest a very satisfying [p. 265] menu; it evidently suggests a peace-offering character of things. Our right in the fellowship and testimony all depends on our having part in the peace-offering. Every element of selfishness is a destruction of the fellowship. The first disturbing element in Acts was that the Greeks (Hellenists) complained that their widows were neglected. It was the first rift in the fellowship. The Spirit of God does not tell us whether they were right or wrong in complaining, but the fact that such a question arose was a rift in the fellowship. It is a great necessity for us to keep up the feeding that constitutes the peace-offering. It is a continuous thing — the appropriation of the interests of Christ.
The peculiar feature of the peace-offering was that it was enjoyed together in communion. God had His portion; the priests had their portion; and the people had their portion. It is a great type in the Old Testament of the fellowship on the satisfaction side. It is the support of life in view of fellowship and the testimony of God. None of us is in the fellowship except in the life of Christ. There is no such thing as being in fellowship in the flesh, but only in the life of Christ, and that life needs to be sustained. Christ is our life. We all recognise that as Christians, but that life, speaking in a practical sense, may be very feeble if not sustained by food. This links on with the thought that Nehemiah had, for he was not only concerned about building the wall but that there might be strength to build it. Who can take up the fellowship without spiritual strength? The fellowship is work for men, not babes. There must be spiritual vigour, and that only comes about by living on spiritual food, namely, the personal and private occupation with that new kind of life that has come into the world in the Person of Christ. It is open to us all to spend our private life in considering that life which has come in in Christ, and to keep before us steadily all the time, ‘That is my life’. As we feed on that in secret we have something to bring to the meetings. The tent of meeting and the altar represent what is public in the gathering together of the [p. 266] saints. We should all come to bring, not only to get. The whole of Scripture is a presentation of Christ; a spiritually rich man is one who gathers it up. Nehemiah represents a rich man, and, thank God, we come into contact with brothers and sisters with spiritual wealth; they can bring before us impressions of Christ by their character and ways. All that becomes food supply for us so that there is no hardship in being separated from man after the flesh.
We cannot have the wall without the table. Nehemiah is a model for us. He is not a type of Christ, but of a faithful man. We can all aspire to be faithful. Few have much in the way of gift, but Timothy was to commit things to “faithful men”. We can all aspire to that.
It is good for us to take in this thought of the food supply as running alongside of the building of the wall. If it is not a matter of life with us, our separation from the systems of men is nothing but pharisaism. All these exercises are not matters reached once for all; they have to be maintained right through. We only come into the fellowship in the life of Christ. It is good for us all to put that down as a fixed principle. It is in the life of obedience, dependence, separation from the world and judging every movement of the flesh in us that we build the wall.
We cause it to appear that saints are definitely marked off from the world in every aspect; that is the thought in building the wall. There is to be no breach in the wall. In this chapter the wall was completed without a breach; it was all there in completion though the doors were not set up. Many of us accept the truth of the fellowship in a general way without always being true to it personally; it is not observed strictly. If the doors are not there there is a certain liberty. You may go out now and then if there is no door. The general principles of fellowship are accepted often, but they are not always carried out strictly. For instance, if one goes for a holiday where there is no meeting, and turn into some little chapel, there is no door! A remark of F.E.R.’s helped me: ‘All the principles of fellowship are not to be applied in the [p. 267] judgment of others, but reflectively. We define the position for ourselves and then we are true to it’. If we only come into things by force of circumstances, we have not defined the position for ourselves. We need to apply these things to ourselves. People plead sometimes for liberty, but to have no doors is a principle of lawlessness. Have we defined the fellowship for ourselves, definitely committed ourselves to it so that we do not entertain the thought of wanting liberty for anything else? Every looseness in the fellowship indicates we are not moving in the life of Christ but in the flesh, and that is abhorrent to God.
Sanballat and Tobijah represent people who want to maintain things as they are — what exists in the religious world. They poured scorn and contempt on the builders first and, when the work goes on in spite of them, they propose a conference to talk things over. That is the enemy’s great device today. No young Christian will ever be satisfied to go into the religious world unless they are corrupted. Something comes in that is not of grace or divine teaching. If a young convert never moves away from divine teaching, he will never become entangled with things around him from which he needs to separate. The test is the ministry of Christ — can you find it outside the wall? You cannot. You can find people who preach Jesus as Saviour, but where will you find a ministry of Christ, the Man who is entirely for God’s pleasure? You find in christendom a very mixed condition of things, part good and part evil. What God is working for is for something to be set up that is distinctly of Himself, where there is no admixture of the will of man. Are we set for that? If not, we are not building the wall.
Nehemiah says to these people, I am doing a great work, why should I come down to you? We should all be conscious we are engaged in something very great and we cannot leave it or compromise. People may even charge us with rebellion. It is important that the young convert should have the sense that he is linked up with what is of God, so that he does not want to be linked up with what is of man.
[p. 268] From verse 10 we get a subtle working of the enemy — persons nominally in fellowship. It is what is inside now; that is a serious thing. The man in verse 10 shuts himself up. He is not going on happily with his brethren, he has got a private line of his own. Men of that sort are a source of service to the enemy. He sets up to be a prophet, has a prophetic word, but it is all to intimidate the spiritual man and make him flee. It sounded all right what he said but we have to look out for men of that sort; they are more dangerous in one sense than Sanballat and Tobijah because these are outside, and they had this man in their pay. He was inside, but he was doing the devil’s work.