Guard the Gates

God helped Israel complete the wall (6:15–16), but Tobiah slips through the gates (6:17–19). Therefore Nehemiah must populate the city with faithful, God-fearing men who won’t compromise (7:1–73).

Easier to Start Than to Keep

I’m going to give you some options, and I want you to think about which one is easier and which one is harder.

• Starting a family or raising children.
• Getting the job or working the job.
• Starting a business or scaling a business.
• Starting a diet or staying on a diet.
• Starting a book or finishing a book.

Obviously the point is that it’s much easier to get something started, to get it initially off the ground, than it is to keep it going. Anyone who’s ever started and not completed an exercise program knows this. This is the tipping point that Nehemiah’s project comes to in this section. The wall is completed. That means that they have everything they need to live as a distinct faithful city and honor God. But building the wall wasn’t the hard part. The hard part will be building a distinct faithful city that honors God. But Nehemiah sets himself to it by appointing governors of Jerusalem and determining who could settle in Jerusalem.

God Helped Them Finish the Wall

This one verse, Nehemiah 6:15, is incredible proof of God’s sovereignty over kings and nations and history. He told Moses, hundreds of years beforehand, that this is what would happen. In Deuteronomy 30 God knows that the curses will come upon Israel and promises them that when they call on him, he will “restore their fortunes” and gather them again from the places where God scattered them (Deut 30:3). Before they went into exile, the prophet Jeremiah predicted seventy years until the decree of Cyrus to go back and rebuild the temple and city, and that’s exactly what it was. In the midst of sabotage and hardship and pushback from their enemies, the wall is completed. They even mark the exact date that it was done.

This wall’s completion was fixed in the mind of God. But it sure didn’t feel that way in the story, did it? It looked like this project could fail any time. There were many opportunities for God’s enemies to triumph over his people. The adversaries stop the temple building under Zerubbabel, but then it gets going again and is finished. Ezra and those returning with him aren’t protected by the army, but make it safely to Jerusalem. Sanballat and Tobiah try jeering, propaganda, frontal military assault, and sabotage to try to stop the building. Internally, the people are fracturing as the rich take advantage of the poor. It doesn’t look like this had to happen. But this is exactly what God planned for. All of those trials were the means God appointed for his people to get to this point where the wall was complete.

God doesn’t always make the way he wants us to go easy and smooth. In the midst of our trials and hardship, we tend to think that closed doors and difficulties are evidence that we should turn back. Well, that’s not what this passage suggests. Notice that Zerubbabel, Ezra, and Nehemiah never take these attacks or trials as evidence that God doesn’t want Jerusalem rebuilt anymore. They don’t attribute closed doors to God saying, “no.” And they don’t assume that they need to wait for an “open door.” What that sounds like is waiting for the path of least resistance and assuming that’s the way God wants you to go. If Nehemiah took the path of least resistance, he would still be the king’s cupbearer. Instead he’s here and he’s completed the wall despite difficulty.

When we think that difficulty means that we should turn back and God doesn’t want us to go that way, we’re assuming that God wants things to be easy and nice for us all the time. And that’s not what God wants for us. He loves us too much for that. Some of you have endured really significant trials and hardships. Others less significant. But if you look back across your life you’ll see that it’s normally when the pressure is turned up and the trials are intense that God builds a new level of faith in us. Like steel that must be glowing-hot before it’s forged and shaped, God normally heats things up to form our hearts.

Our elder brother Jesus is the great dragon slayer. He did hard things. And he’s calling us to imitate him. We can’t handle the dragon yet. But he’s getting us ready. Each trial and hardship and difficulty is God kindly preparing you for what’s coming next and forming you so that you and I become more mature.

Some of you college students just finished a semester. It might have been harder than you were thinking and you’ve considered dropping out. The difficulty that you are having is not God suggesting that you should throw in the towel. Kids, some of you are taking piano lessons or dance lessons or something like that. And it’s really hard to learn something new. The difficulty isn’t a reason to be done. Some of you are facing a really serious roadblock in your career at work. The difficulty isn’t evidence that you’re in the wrong line of work.

Here’s why I’m spending so long on this. We know that getting this temple and wall built were God’s plan for sure. And it was still really hard for them. Therefore, our assumption that life should be easy (or easier than it is) needs to go. Life’s not supposed to be easy. It’s not supposed to be comfortable. God didn’t make it that way. God sovereignly decreed that the temple and this wall would be rebuilt, and he didn’t do it in a way that made it just easy, smooth sailing. So let’s take God at his word when he says, “Count it all joy, my brothers, when you face trials of various kinds. For you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness…”

52 Days

You’ll see that v. 15 says that they completed the wall in 52 days. Some people think this is a summary of the whole project and that from the day Nehemiah says in ch. 2 they should rebuild to the day that the walls are done is 52 days. Archeological evidence suggests that the walls were hastily constructed, and that lends some credence to this suggestion.

But there are two things that lean me away from this.

First, 6:1 says that they had already built up the wall but the doors and gates weren’t set. Then it recounts the three attempts at sabotage. Then 6:15 says that the wall was finished in 52 days. It looks to me like the overall flow of the text makes it more likely that it’s 52 days from the letter Sanballat and Geshem sent in 6:2 rather than 52 days for the overall project. If it was just 52 days from the arrival of Nehemiah to the completion of the wall, that means all this happened in less than two months:

1. They start building (3:1).
2. Sanballat and Tobiah begin their jeering (4:1).
3. Sanballat and Tobiah hear that the building is going well (4:7).
4. They attempt to use propaganda to make the people building afraid (4:10).
5. They prepare a surprise attack (4:11).
6. Israel prepares for the attack (4:13).
7. Israel gets back to work (4:15).
8. Nehemiah deals with the issue of the oppressed poor, including calling everyone together (5).
9. Sanballat, Tobiah, and Geshem try three different ways to sabotage Nehemiah (6:1–14).

It’s possible all that happens in 52 days, but at the speed of communication they would have had, it seems unlikely to me.

Second, Nehemiah departs from Susa in the 20th year of Artaxerxes (2:1). He doesn’t return until the 32nd year (13:6). He spends twelve years away. Most of the rest of Nehemiah recounts one event where the people gather, recount God’s faithfulness, confess their sins, make a covenant, settle in Jerusalem, and dedicate the wall. If the wall only took 52 days, that means he spent most of those twelve years doing we don’t know what, with a break that’s not super obvious in the text.

I could spend a while here going back over chronological questions about this book, which relate to this question. But instead of that, we’re going to continue on with the thrust of this text. Those questions are interesting, but I can’t answer them for sure, and they aren’t nearly so edifying as the story itself.

Enemies Fall in Their Own Esteem

v. 16 says that when the enemies hear that the wall is complete they “fell greatly in their own esteem, for they perceived that this work had been accomplished with the help of our God.”

First, let’s talk about the nations falling greatly in their own esteem. Part of what’s happening here is that Nehemiah’s prayer from 4:4 is being partially fulfilled. Back there, when Sanballat and Tobiah initially jeered at the work, Nehemiah prays, “Turn back their taunt on their own heads.” As they jeered, Sanballat and Tobiah put themselves up on this great mountain top as though they are important, strong, powerful men of a great and mighty nation. Now they see, “Oh, we couldn’t stop them. We had but one goal and we couldn’t accomplish it,” and so they fall greatly in their own esteem.

I think this is a marvelous illustration of how powerful keeping your head down and building is. Nothing is more disheartening, nothing is more discouraging, nothing takes the wind out of the sails of God’s enemies more than his people’s success. In other words, building is fighting. So keep your head down.

Secondly, notice that they give God credit for the wall. Nehemiah records that they accomplish their work with God’s help. They don’t take credit for their success, even though their work was the means that God used to get that result. Nehemiah doesn’t try to steal the glory thinking, “Well, who was it in the trenches while we were building the wall all those years? Who was it keeping the rich rulers from abusing the poor? Who was it organizing who would build what section? Look at this wall that I have built by my talent and ingenuity.” Instead Nehemiah recognizes the help God gave them. Not only had Nehemiah defeated Sanballat, God had defeated Sanballat’s gods. That’s why God’s help made them fall in their own esteem. They saw that the God of Jacob was stronger than the god of Sanballat.

Brothers and sisters, we must learn to give God credit for our own efforts. Think of 1 Corinthians 15:10, where Paul says, “I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I but the grace of God that is in me.” Or Colossians 1:29, “I toil, struggling with all his energy that he powerfully works in me.” There is no contradiction between working hard and trusting God because your energy and effort are not your own. Your works are God’s grace. Your effort is God’s gift. David Mathis, in his book “Habits of Grace” memorably says that you receive the grace of effort by doing. But the fact that you did the doing doesn’t mean that it was any less a gift from God.

This is incredible. It means that there is really nothing that you can claim as your own. Nothing to boast in. Everything that you might have boasted in you did with the effort that God provided for you. Even your trying hard is God’s gift. This frees us from trying to earn salvation. There is no earning salvation. It’s not as though you ran up a big debt of sin and can pay it back by doing good works. No. You ran up a big debt of sin, and Jesus paid for it on the cross. Now every time you do more good works, it’s more of God’s grace coming your way. You aren’t getting even with God when you do good stuff, you’re going gloriously further into his debt.

So, we can put entirely out of our mind working for salvation. Our good works are God’s works in us. This means that God is accomplishing our sanctification just as much as he accomplished our justification. When we were justified God gave us the gift of faith. We didn’t stir up faith in ourselves, God sovereignly gave it to us and we acted it out by repenting and believing. In the same way, when we obey God and are sanctified by strenuous effort—that’s God sovereignly sanctifying us and we get to act it out by giving our full effort. If you want to experience more of the grace of God in sanctification, trust God and then work even harder. That effort is given to you by God.

So go work harder than the rest of ‘em, endure and push through the difficulties God provides for your steadfastness and stamina. And all the while remember that you struggle with the energy God gives you. “Not I, but through Christ in me.”

The Goal Is a Distinct Nation

As I studied this passage, something that struck me is how little space the completion of the wall gets. One verse, and then he’s on the effect of the wall and then onto something else entirely. Nehemiah set out to rebuild the wall, so when it’s done why does it get so little attention? Well, one reason is that the wall wasn’t all that he was after. He’s really trying to build a distinct Israelite nation. He’s looking to establish his people as their own people, a nation who is in the world and not of the world. He’s looking for them to worship God according to his commandments and for that worship to spill out from Mt. Zion across the whole land.

7:4 says that their capital “was wide and large, but the people within it were few, and no houses had been rebuilt.” And that’s what he’s going to spend the rest of the book trying to fix. He needs to convince more people to come live in Jerusalem and continue rebuilding so that they have a real city, and not just a military fort with a temple in it. If it remains as it is, it’ll be easy to ransack. It’s been safe while they’re rebuilding because there are many men there who wouldn’t normally be there. But when they go home, it’s a city for the taking. The walls are only part of the goal. To have a functioning capital for a nation to grow out of again, it needs a population.

What we’ll see in the rest of ch. 6 is the major obstacle toward having a healthy capital, Tobiah. Then in ch. 7 and following we’ll see what Nehemiah’s strategy to complete his project is. He entrusts what is complete to faithful and God-fearing men so that he can focus on convincing the people that a faithful and God-fearing population for the city is necessary.

So let’s start by looking at Tobiah.

Tobiah Slips Through the Gates

As the wall is finished, a snake sneaks in through the gates. Tobiah gains influence with Israel because he marries into the right families and his son marries into the right families. In other words, he plays politics well and finds himself in a position to vie for power with Nehemiah. The result is that the nobles of Judah make their peace with Tobiah. They send him letters. And apparently they understand there is tension between Nehemiah and Tobiah because they come to speak of all Tobiah’s good deeds in front of Nehemiah.

At this point, Tobiah is as close to sabotaging the whole project as he’s ever been. He’s gotten “in” with the Jewish nobles. Now he has their ear to try to convince them to not be so “isolationist” or distinct as Nehemiah is leading them to be. He’s got the attention of many powerful men—enough that Nehemiah doesn’t just throw him or those men out.

In our day, there are hundreds of Tobiahs who are “in” with the people of God. They’ve done so well that it sounds intolerant and unkind now to suggest that we should be a separate and distinct people instead of blending in with everyone else. They’ve made cultural sensitivity more important than having a culture. They’ve demanded Christians give up their culture and assimilate for the sake of the gospel instead of creating and raising our children in a distinct culture to invite unbelievers into.

Now, it would be easy to say that Tobiah is the problem. He’s the one tempting everyone to compromise. But that would be wrong. Tobiah isn’t the problem. He’s certainly the bad guy. But he’s not the main problem. The problem is that the Jewish nobles listen to him. Imagine an army captain whose soldiers defect to the enemy’s side. The main problem isn’t so much the propaganda the enemy dropped; it’s the disloyalty of the troops. That’s what’s happening here. Tobiah is only a problem because the Jewish nobles are willing to open up correspondence with him and give him a place in their hearts instead of eschew him as the traitor that he is.

What I want us to learn is that our biggest problems are not outside the gates. That would be more comfortable to believe, but it’s just not true. We serve a God who’s too powerful for us to really believe that. Honestly, the battle of Jericho should have disabused us of the notion that our problem is our enemy. In that battle the people didn’t have a city, an army, or a battle strategy. God fought for them and Jericho didn’t stand a chance. There is no enemy that can stand against God. So our biggest problem isn’t ever the enemies outside the gates. Our problem is that we let them sneak through the gates and we write them letters and sit down to dinner with them. In other words, our problem is our own sinfully compromising hearts.

When we believe our biggest problem is really “out there,” what we’re doing is abdicating responsibility. Christians are terribly infected by thinking (accidentally following Rousseau) that the problem is “the system.” Instead of looking at heterosexual white Christian males (like liberals) we look at rainbow flag waving secularists. But we’re doing the same thing as a homeless man on the streets blaming “the system” for not having a job or the BLM activist blaming “the hegemony” for the problems they see. When we point outside ourselves first, we’re saying, “The problem is out there. It’s certainly not mostly about me.”

Of course, it’s unmanly and plain lame to abdicate responsibility like this. But it’s also an astonishing affront to God. This is what Adam did in the Garden. “It’s the woman you gave me.” We say, “It’s the world you put me in, God. It’s the system you put around me.” When we point the finger at Tobiah, we’re blaming God instead of repenting of our own compromising hearts.

Let me give you some examples where you might be trying to abdicate responsibility and blame “the system” instead of repenting of your own sin:

• A young man who says that the problem with his lust is the prevalence of pornography instead of his perverse desire.
• Parents who say their children’s misbehavior is the result of a label some psychiatrist gave them instead of their bad discipline.
• A family in financial trouble blames “the economy” instead of their unwise spending or lack of planning.
• A college student blaming bad grades on the addictiveness of social media instead of their lack of self-control.
• A father blaming his outburst on his hard day at work instead of his own anger.
• A woman blaming her nagging on her husband or children instead of her own discontentedness.

What we’re really saying when we give into this thinking is, “But for this circumstance, I would not have sinned. Therefore, the problem is mostly the circumstance or the person who caused the circumstance.” And this has things biblically backward. I like Pastor Dustin’s analogy of a tea-bag. When life isn’t so tough, it’s like the tea-bag is in cold water. Most of what’s in the tea-bag doesn’t come out. When the heat turns up, lots of what’s in the tea-bag comes out. Blaming “the system” or circumstances for our sins is like blaming hot water for what’s in the tea-bag.

The world will always provide ample opportunity for temptation. The main problem is that we are lured and enticed by sin. That’s our problem. We have a mindset ready to make peace with sin and with worldly ways instead of making war and being watchful against them.

The simple solution for the nobles was just to fear God more than Tobiah. It was to fear God more than the important families he married into. If they had, Tobiah wouldn’t have been a problem. But since they don’t fear God, they’re willing to compromise.

Populate the City with the Faithful

Nehemiah sees this problem developing, and knows that he needs to pick the right guys to lead for him so that he can turn his attention to populating the city. So he hands Jerusalem over to Hanani and Hananiah.

Notice that Nehemiah has a character qualification for the men that he’s looking for. He’s not simply looking for a talented city administrator. He’s looking for faithful and God-fearing men because he knows how badly those qualities will be needed in the midst of the sabotage launched by Tobiah. There are many Jewish nobles who are not so faithful or God-fearing (and who are sharing a large correspondence with Tobiah).

I want to be the kind of man that Nehemiah would trust with the walls. So what’s a man like Nehemiah on the lookout for? Faithfulness and fearing God. What are those?

• Faithfulness is about being like a rock. Being constant. Responsible. Dependable. Trustworthy. The kind of person that when you mention something to them, and they say they will do something, you don’t feel like you need to follow up ever again. You consider it done.
• God-fearing. They are looking to do things God’s way. They consider themselves God’s servant. They are not looking to build their own kingdom, and therefore are not willing to compromise or negotiate even if it would give them more power. Instead, they cannot be bribed or blackmailed because they fear God more than anything man can do to them.

If these men weren’t faithful, it’s likely they’d ruin the city by dropping the ball. If they weren’t God-fearing it’s likely they’d ruin the city by giving into Tobiah. So both of these character qualities are crucial.

Aspire to imitate these men. Be the kind of faithful that means that people trust you with anything, big or small. After it’s in your charge, make it flourish. Start with yourself, and your heart and body, and then move to your household, and career, and keep going. Responsibility flows to faithful men. And be the kind of God-fearing that doesn’t care who someone’s father-in-law is. Don’t be swayed by the supposed significance of compromisers. Entrust yourself to God and just keep doing good.

Appointing the right leaders is crucial here because they could have all the right structures, in this case safe walls, but still fail to be faithful. A city is only as good as its people and leaders. After you build something, the work has only just begun. Like I said at the beginning, building something initially isn’t normally the hard part. Being faithful for a year or two is easy compared to the decades of normal, vigilant, disciplined life that produces the fruit we’re after. This is true in every area of life.

• It’s much easier to get up early and work hard for a few months than it is to do that for decades.
• It’s much easier to start a family than it is to raise faithful and fruitful offspring.
• It’s much easier to start a business than it is to scale it.
• It’s much easier to found a nation than it is to keep it. (Hence Ben Franklin’s famous quote, “A republic, if you can keep it.”)

The same goes for our church. The last year and a half of starting will be easy compared to decades of faithful living. And this passage is showing us that two character qualities in particular can be our guide:

• Faithfulness: being dependable, trustworthy, constant, responsible people.
• God-fearing: considering ourselves owned by God and fearing his disapproval more than any man’s.

Nehemiah found two good men to lead the city. But two men does not a population make. So he’s going to turn his attention to assemble a genealogy of everyone who came back in the first place. “Why will that be helpful?” you might ask. It’s going to give Nehemiah the list of those who could live in Jerusalem. Having gathered the list, we see in ch. 8 that he gathers the people, Ezra reads them the law, they celebrate the feast of booths, they confess their sins, they consecrate themselves to God and make a covenant with him, and then, when all that’s done, they assign who will live in Jerusalem and who will live in the villages outside Jerusalem. That’s what’s happening overall.

Look with me at 7:5. First, what does “God put in my heart” mean? Nehemiah used a similar phrase in 2:12 where he says that God put it in his heart to build the walls. The Bible uses similar constructions, where something is put into the heart of someone, in a few other places.

• Exodus 35:34, of Bezalel building the tabernacle
• Ecclesiastes 3:11, that God put eternity in man’s heart
• Ezra 7:27, that God put it in the heart of the king to help
• 2 Chronicles 9:23, that God put wisdom in the mind of Solomon

Notice that none of them are momentary impressions. It’s the common experience of many to get momentary strong feelings that they need to go talk to someone right away about the gospel or they’re disobeying God. Many attribute these feelings to the Holy Spirit prompting them. This isn’t what “God put it in my heart” is talking about. All of the things that were put in the heart in these passages are long standing. They aren’t momentary. They don’t go away after a month. They’re sticky. That’s what Nehemiah is saying God did with his desire to establish Israel in the land. God gave it to him and he kept after it I think for more than twelve years.

So don’t take this little phrase, “God put it into my heart” to support attributing your momentary feelings to God. If God puts it in your heart, it’s not going to fall back out again. In fact, in Jeremiah 31 God uses this same kind of language to talk about regeneration when he puts his law in our hearts.

Compared with Ezra 2

Now let’s take just a minute to talk about this list from Nehemiah 7. To us, these lists don’t matter much. We find them a bit boring (except for listening to how the service leader will pronounce all the names). But that’s not how the original audience thought about them. These were crucial. In fact, we find out in 7:64 that people were barred from their job as a priest because the genealogies didn’t prove that they ought to have the role. And Ezra-Nehemiah has lots of these name lists.

This particular name list from Nehemiah 7 is a list of those who came back at the very beginning. Which means it should match Ezra 2 (which has the list of those who came at the beginning). However, it doesn’t quite match. They are really similar, but have some differences in names and numbers. Some people are added in Nehemiah’s list that weren’t there from Ezra’s. Some are omitted. Some numbers for the people and the gifts are also different. So, how do we deal with those differences?

The standard scholarly response attributes all the differences to human errors and similar names. I really don’t like this solution. It’s a way of saying that although the text used to be inerrant, it’s really not so inerrant anymore that you can trust it with details like names. That might be a small thing to us, but the names were so important to those who copied them. After all, they excluded people from their ancestral work based on these lists. Also, these lists with apparent discrepancies were copied without change for a long time. That’s weird if there were errors (and should tell us how careful the scribes were, not encourage us to think that they were changed).

I think it’s more likely that these two genealogies were taken at different times. So, when Ezra came up they made a list. But they also updated that list. And that’s why Nehemiah includes this list as well so that we have both Ezra 2 and Nehemiah 7. We get the updated list.

The Real Work Remains

• They complete the wall in spite of great hardship. Do not let hardship look like a warning from God. God didn’t promise you a life without hardship.
• Completing the wall doesn’t complete the project because the real project is to establish a distinct, faithful city. Tobiah is working against that. He’s tempting the Jewish nobles to compromise—and they do because they do not fear God more than Tobiah. Remember not to fall prey to imagining that your greatest problem lies anywhere but under the left collar bone. Don’t blame “the system” and thereby blame God. Turn away from the sin that is still in your heart and pray for God to purify you.
• Nehemiah appoints rulers who are faithful and God-fearing, and then he sets in motion a plan to try to populate Jerusalem with others who are like them. We’ll see that his plan culminates in the covenant that they make in ch. 10. Be like those men he appoints. Be faithful: totally trustworthy men and women of your word. And be God-fearing: serve him with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength.

Amen.