Rising and Building (Nehemiah 5:1-19)

The passage –

Now the men and their wives raised a great outcry against their fellow Jews. Some were saying, “We and our sons and daughters are numerous; in order for us to eat and stay alive, we must get grain.”

Others were saying, “We are mortgaging our fields, our vineyards and our homes to get grain during the famine.”

Still others were saying, “We have had to borrow money to pay the king’s tax on our fields and vineyards. Although we are of the same flesh and blood as our fellow Jews and though our children are as good as theirs, yet we have to subject our sons and daughters to slavery. Some of our daughters have already been enslaved, but we are powerless, because our fields and our vineyards belong to others.”

When I heard their outcry and these charges, I was very angry. I pondered them in my mind and then accused the nobles and officials. I told them, “You are charging your own people interest!” So I called together a large meeting to deal with them and said: “As far as possible, we have bought back our fellow Jews who were sold to the Gentiles. Now you are selling your own people, only for them to be sold back to us!” They kept quiet, because they could find nothing to say.

So I continued, “What you are doing is not right. Shouldn’t you walk in the fear of our God to avoid the reproach of our Gentile enemies? Let us stop charging interest! Give back to them immediately their fields, vineyards, olive groves and houses, and also the interest you are charging them.”

“We will give it back,” they said. “And we will not demand anything more from them. We will do as you say.”

Then I summoned the priests and made the nobles and officials take an oath to do what they had promised. I also shook out the folds of my robe and said, “In this way may God shake out of their house and possessions anyone who does not keep this promise. So may such a person be shaken out and emptied!”

At this the whole assembly said, “Amen,” and praised the Lord. And the people did as they had promised.

Moreover, from the twentieth year of King Artaxerxes, when I was appointed to be their governor in the land of Judah, until his thirty-second year—twelve years—neither I nor my brothers ate the food allotted to the governor. But the earlier governors—those preceding me—placed a heavy burden on the people and took forty shekels of silver from them in addition to food and wine. Their assistants also lorded it over the people. But out of reverence for God I did not act like that. Instead, I devoted myself to the work on this wall. All my men were assembled there for the work; we did not acquire any land.

Furthermore, a hundred and fifty Jews and officials ate at my table, as well as those who came to us from the surrounding nations. In spite of all this, I never demanded the food allotted to the governor, because the demands were heavy on these people.

Remember me with favour, my God, for all I have done for these people.

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[Open with story about Interior Economy (IE) in the barracks at Wigram.]

We’ve been working our way through Nehemiah for the last few weeks.  After the triumphs of Chapter 4, in Chapter 5 we find that there was trouble in the camp.  All was not as well as the outward signs might have seemed.  Grumblings and rumblings.  Exploitation!  And today I get to address a few random things that have occurred to me whilst reading the book.

Actually, one answer to the question, What does Nehemiah Chap 5 teach us? Might be “Not much”!  It’s a narrative, of things Nehemiah was dealing with while the wall was being built.  He wasn’t just project-managing, or responding to the opposition without.  There was also strife within, and this in itself I think underlines one of the more subtle threads in the book: that perhaps even more important than building the wall was a call to Nehemiah to re-build the foundations of Jewish community.

I would argue that, when Nehemiah wept over Jerusalem (back in 1:4), he wasn’t just weeping that the wall was broken and the gates burnt.  That, yes, but also that the people there – the ex-exiles – were a ragged, demoralised people.  So Nehemiah organised things to build the wall, but deep in his heart he was wanting to re-build God’s people.  I was interested … Ross said a couple of weeks ago that Nehemiah showed great leadership to bring together a demoralised people into a team to build the wall.  And I agreed with Ross, but I also think, you know, getting the people together on the project was the very means by which he was rebuilding that demoralised people!  See?  A busy community on a common task is a happy community.  So in Chap 5, when he discovers the leaders within the community are exploiting their own people, he addresses it with real intent – as part of that greater calling upon him.

So, yes … it was all one in the same.  Build the wall – build the people.  Build the people – build the wall.  Two birds with one stone?  No, I think one bird with two stones.

The people Nehemiah was dealing with were a composite of three migrations – under Zerubbabel, I’ve read, then under Ezra, and now under Nehemiah himself.  They hadn’t gelled.  The first two groups hadn’t, at least.  They were a distrustful, disharmonious group of individuals … with conflicting agendas … and seduced in every direction by external personalities like Sanballat and Tobiah and Gesham!  What characters.  Can you picture those guys?  Gesham the Arab, one’s called.  In my imagination, even though these guys were serious, potentially lethal opposition, I see them as quite a comical bunch: cartoon characters.  At one stage they’re mocking that their new-built wall will collapse even if a fox runs over it, and I can see them roaring uproariously!  Back-slapping each other like larrakins!

But Nehemiah, showing wonderful leadership skills, unites the people, builds the wall, and deals with the various inappropriate behaviours of the society inside the wall.

I told you I had a few random things to bring this morning.  Many things swirl in my head, but two I’m going to emphasise.

1. Interior economy
2. Entering in

EI and IE, if you want a contrived way of remembering them.

1. My opening story told about IE in the barracks? What on earth has that got to do with Nehemiah Chapter 5?!

Well, it struck me how attentive Nehemiah was to character maintenance – maintenance of his own character, and that of the people he was leading: what was going on “interiorly”, all the while he was building the wall, “exteriorly”.  And because he was so concerned about the inner life and fabric and structure of the Jewish community, he treated the people’s issues as a priority.  The book addresses this sort of thing on several occasions – not just here in Chapter 5.  Actually, we’ll see in coming weeks that even after the wall was finished, Nehemiah doesn’t let up on community maintenance.

As I suggested earlier, while the wall was important for the security and confidence of the people, in a way it was also emblematic of the engineering they needed to do in their individual hearts and in the way their society needed to work, for the good of all.  It would take more than a wall to restore their purpose and vision and pride as a people of God.

This tallies with something Alan Frauenstein mentioned on the first Sunday of this series – he could see in this book what he called a “dual identity” a Christian carries – working diligently at a day job (building something?), whilst inwardly we are servants of God, responding to him in the strategic positions he has placed us.  As dual identities, we have an outward role to play and an inner responsibility.  Our challenge is to integrate the two.  So, in the wall, Nehemiah was dealing with external security as a symbol of interior integrity (as a community).  Chapter 5 actually says little about the wall, but a lot about Nehemiah dealing with the real substance – the inner character of the young community.

We were young men, learning to fly.  We were gung ho and cavalier and left to ourselves, we would have done nothing but fly.  But the Air Force wanted more than that.  They wanted officers, who were disciplined, who were attentive to detail – who could see the big picture and the little details as well.  And they wanted a disciplined culture, with strong morale.  And you don’t get that by just flying.  That’s why we had to learn to march.  And understand the chain of command, and Air Force Law.  And do IE – interior economy.  Those things had to be maintained if we were going to be good officers as well as good pilots.  Interior Economy was part of our personal maintenance, that gave substance to our superficial role as pilots, and the parallel I make is that Nehemiah wanted to ‘do maintenance’ on the very people who were superficially engaged in building a wall.  While the wall was being built, what Nehemiah enacts here in Chapter 5 is IE on the community he was building, and I am just so impressed with his masterful understanding of the situation.

What can we take from this here this morning?

We need to be seriously working on our personal maintenance – as individuals and as a collective.  Even while we’re serving God outwardly, we need to be attending to our inner spiritual health.  Whether your task be great or small, your IE needs to be great.  Daily communicating with God … addressing any issues which undermine your work … or cripple your potential.  Interior checkups, figuring out just what is limiting you … and discerning what you can do about it.

Folding our socks and undies, and keeping our beds tidy, so to speak – keeping our house in order so that when Satan comes to accuse us, he finds us above reproach.  Nehemiah was reported to be above reproach – that’s why none of Sanballat’s ruses worked. (In 6:13 Nehemiah recognises that one of their ruses was “so that I would commit a sin by doing this, and then they would give me a bad name to discredit me.”  And here in 5:9 he admonishes the Jewish leaders who were exploiting their people: “What you are doing is not right,” he says. “Shouldn’t you walk in the fear of our God to avoid the reproach of our Gentile enemies?”)  That’s what good IE – good internal maintenance – can do for you – it can insulate you against the reproach of those who would like to see you discredited.  So keep up your IE, folks.

2. My second main point is about Entering In – EI this time – what’s that about?

Well, we’d all agree that a major theme in this book is leadership.  We thrill throughout the book as we see Nehemiah parrying one missile after another and uniting his people in common purpose, and his leadership has been well unpacked in previous weeks.  But let me bring a couple of personal thoughts to the matter … of Nehemiah’s leadership.

1. Was he really the leader we credit him to be? What was his trade?  He was a mere Cupbearer.  Someone who poured (and probably pre-drank) the King’s wine.  Wikipedia says, “A cup-bearer was a servant of high rank in royal courts whose duty it was to serve the drinks at the royal table. On account of the constant fear of plots and intrigues, a person must be regarded as thoroughly trustworthy to hold the position. His confidential relations with the king often gave him a position of influence.”

Influential, yes, but it was not really a position of leadership.

Also, I might add, he had soft hands.  At least, he wasn’t an outdoor, hard-working tradie type.  He wasn’t a builder; wasn’t an engineer; wasn’t a project-manager.  He was to some extent a King’s social ornament.  He had soft hands!  I reckon part of his three days in waiting, and his night-time reconnaissances (in Chapter 2) he was wrestling with, “what the heck am I going to do?  Now I’m here?  How do you build a wall?  How the heck can I persuade anyone else to help me?”

My point is, he wasn’t a seasoned leader – he had to become one.  He had to learn, and quickly, how to lead and how to achieve a goal.

1. Which leads me to my subsequent thought about leadership, and what Nehemiah’s example shows us: we can read this book and think, yeah, some great lessons here on how to lead, but … I’m not a leader.  Most of this doesn’t apply to me.  I don’t run a big company, or coach the Chiefs, or captain the Black Ferns, or try to run the country while I have a new baby.  I could never be a pastor.  I’m just not called to be a leader.

But I would say we’re all leaders.  Every man, every woman, a leader.  At least, we all have to step into leadership mode at times, and we shouldn’t shirk or faint when we need to.  Like …

When we visit someone in hospital.

When we realise our neighbour has a need.

When our boss gives us a task to do that’s outside our usual remit.

When we have to help our son or daughter through a particularly difficult time.

When we see our parent becoming elderly and frail.

When the pastor is away, or wants something done.

There are many times when we are required to function in some sort of leadership role – big or small.  So, yes, the leadership principles gleaned from Nehemiah apply to us all.

And here’s where “entering in” is a helpful concept.

A few years ago I was teaching a sixth form class a few things about leadership, and I came across this great tip.  [I can even credit the source – I stumbled on it in the writings of Henri Nouwen in a book called The Wounded Healer.  Nouwen points out that Jesus’ way of leading was to ENTER IN to the person’s circumstances.  Recall how he entered into Zacchaeus’s circumstance.  How he entered in to the circumstance of the woman at the well.  How he entered in to the fears and frailties of his disciples.  Notably when he washed their feet (John 13).  He entered in to Jairus’s situation – literally, actually – when he went to his home and healed the man’s daughter.

You’ll need to reflect more on this concept, and how you can apply it.  But, just quickly, “entering in” means to get alongside a person and so empathise or embrace their circumstance that you become one with them in it.  Close any gap between thee and he.  It doesn’t necessarily mean you try to solve their problems.  The best form of entering in may be to just listen.  To sit silently with them in their trouble.  Or it may require you to speak an observation or a truth, sensitively.  Above all, in ‘entering in’ we try to find a way to extend hope, especially if things are dark or overwhelming.  Nouwen wrote, “Hope makes it possible to look beyond the present circumstances … and makes a dramatic affirmation that there is light on the other side of darkness.”

Did Nehemiah enter in to people’s circumstances?  I think he did.  In a way, that’s what he was doing when he recce’d the city that night in Chapter 2.  And here, in Chapter 5, he was hearing the grievances of his people, entering in and leading them out, as the Holy Spirit led him.

Learn to lead others in their vulnerability, perhaps silently, perhaps not, but simply by our confident, empathetic, godly presence.  Try it.  Practise it.

Reflect on this idea of “entering in”, as you adopt a servant-type of leadership.  Next time you find yourself encouraging or visiting someone, assume this kind of ‘entering in’ posture, and lead as seems appropriate in the Lord.

So – in summary:

1. If we’re going to build walls, we must attend to our inner maintenance – our interior economy.
2. We’re all leaders, in some way. We need to accept the fact, and to learn and grow into it as Nehemiah did.
3. A really good approach to Christian leadership is the idea of ‘entering in’ with people, where they’re at.

Three very practical things that I’d love you to put into practice.  My challenge today.

This is a great book:  We can really relate to this guy Nehemiah.  He’s easily accessible and relatable, because he is a practical and fairly ordinary man.  He didn’t experience any miracles.  Any out-there obvious ones.  But he acted on his holy impulses.  He sought God about them, the best way to approach them; and then just got on with the job.  He is one of us ordinary folk!  Let’s determine, when we feel a godly impulse, to rise and build just like he did!

And I love the sign-off at the end of this chapter: “Remember me [remember us] with favour, my God!”