What is that other wall?…it is the wall of Faith. Faith is something that stretches or reaches far beyond just mere belief, it’s the core of our Christian life,  a simple acknowledgment that God exists, and there is a definite realm of trust required. Without getting into a whole discussion of exactly what faith is a very simple explanation would be that it involves abandoning all of our human reliance on self efforts and placing total dependence upon God’s character, his actions and promises as revealed in his word. In just these few words, you should have grasped the concept that this wall we’re talking about is bigger than life itself. So at this point, I suppose I will share with you that we’re going to do. We are going to take one of those “holy stretches.”we’re going to draw today’s blog, material or subject from the book of Nehemiah chapters 1-2 and 3, so join me and stretch just a little.

Chapters 1–3 of Nehemiah detail how Nehemiah, a Jewish cup bearer to the Persian King, learns of Jerusalem’s ruined walls. He responds with a deep prayer, receives royal permission to travel and rebuild, and organizes the local community to successfully begin the reconstruction.

The key verse from Nehemiah is Nehemiah 1:11:

“Lord, let your ear be attentive to the prayer of this your servant and to the prayer of your servants who delight in revering your name. Give your servant success today by granting him favor in the presence of this man.”

What brought Nehemiah to his knees was a devastating report from his brother that the walls of Jerusalem are broken down and the gates destroyed by fire, leaving the returning Jewish remnant vulnerable, and in disgrace. As we go through this today, I will take a few opportunities to do a little parallel stretching. Our wall of faith today is broken down and in some places destroyed completely and we are vulnerable to the many sins and calamities of this world we live in today, and unfortunately, in some instances, it has destroyed many believers faith and I would remind you that we’re speaking of not only our personal faith, but we’re speaking of our country’s faith, One Nation Under God, I doubt very seriously if we can say that anymore with any assurance. You can find Nehemiah’s prayer in its entirety in the book of Nehemiah chapter 1:5–11 and it follows a very structured model of faith, humility, and urgency. Next week, the Pew will follow Nehemiah’s prayer and examine it in more detail looking at how it is structured and model of faith, humility, and urgency, and we’ll look at that next week.

OK, for now let’s get back to kind of an overview of chapters 1–3 the book of Nehemiah. As we’ve written, he was in service to the Persian King and he learns of Jerusalem walls. He responds with deep prayer, receives royal permission to travel and rebuild and organize the community to successfully begin reconstruction. We find the account of that in chapter 1 when we moved to chapter 2 after we have observed a more detailed account of the deep sadness of Nehemiah’s concerning the wall. The King asked what he wants and Nehemiah, after praying to God silently, he asks the king for permission to return to Judah to rebuild Jerusalem’s walls and the king grants his request and provides safe conduct letters. This occurs in chapter 2. When Nehemiah arrives in Jerusalem, he secretly inspects the ruin walls at night and afterwards he reveals his mission to the Jewish people and urges them to rebuild despite the early mockery and some opposition from local adversaries. The people resolved to start the work. And then we get to chapter 3, and we discover a community effort,  this chapter provides a detailed organized roster of who built which sections of the wall. Unity and teamwork and a diverse group of people working side-by-side. The list includes priest and goldsmiths, perfumers, merchants, rulers, and everyday citizens working on the segments closest to their own homes and professions. Stay with me now as we proceed to wrap this week’s blog up. As you remember at the very beginning, I wrote about doing some “holy stretches.” And now I’m going to make a little bit of a U-turn and we’re going to look at something called an allegory. We have so far in the summaries of the first three chapters of Jeremiah, shared the the literal story, the actual plot, characters, and setting of the story and what we’re gonna do now is we’re going to look at the symbolic level, the hidden deeper meaning, the real world concept that the literal story represents in my mind.

I guess I would ask the question… where is our Nehemiah? Our country is so divided by so many social justice groups, and people with special agendas that we can’t come together really for most anything. But the thing that bothers me the most is what I had written earlier, this is no longer One Nation Under God, that just doesn’t apply to us now. We’ve lost our wall of faith and we need to restore it. So I close out I simply re-asking that question…Where is our Nehemiah? Ponder that.

Life is. Good

jk