Books by T. Austin-Sparks

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Chapter 7 - Closing Scenes

Reading: 2 Kings 13:14-25.

In these verses we read of the closing scenes in the life of Elisha. There are three things which stand out.

1. The arrow of the Lord's deliverance.
2. The smiting of the ground with the arrows.
3. The body of the dead soldier reviving by contact with Elisha's body.

These three instances are a very fitting conclusion to the life of Elisha in the light of the spiritual meaning of his life, namely, that he represents throughout the power of resurrection life; that is, testimony in life all the way through, is one of testimony against death in various and numerous forms. Here we have Elisha at the end, but how wonderfully the life is maintained.

How suited to all that has gone before are these incidents. Life triumphant over death right through to the last! Although it says that he was sick of his sickness whereof he died, that is only one aspect. That relates to the human vessel. There is another side where Elisha never did die. When the human vessel has gone, even then the testimony to life triumphant over death is maintained, so that the very dead are quickened by that testimony, which goes on when the vessel has departed. It is mighty life.

Here is Elisha on his bed, an old man, on the human side in weakness, and so soon to pass away. The king of Israel comes to him, and he lifts himself in his bed, calls to the king to bring his bow and his arrows, and to put the arrow in the bow. Then the prophet places his hands over the hands of the king, they two draw the bow to its full extent, and that arrow goes in the power of resurrection life from that bed through the open window. The life of resurrection is in that arrow. Life triumphant over death is the strength of that arrow of the Lord's deliverance.

Then there comes the command to the king to smite the ground with his arrows, and he smites thrice and stays. The man of God is wroth with him. There is still much more energy in the dying prophet than there is in the living king. He is the very embodiment of energy to the end. In effect he says: "Why did you not go on; why did you stop so soon; why did you not go right through with the whole thing?" He breathes life and energy.

Then, even when his body is dead and in the tomb, contact with it is life. It is a marvelous conclusion, full of significance and spiritual value. Nothing could more aptly fit into his whole testimony. You could have no finer conclusion and rounding off than that. It would have been a disappointing thing had Elisha just gone as if something of a tragedy had overtaken him and he had fallen a prey to some evil and been killed, or had he simply disappeared from the scene. You can never associate such a thing with that which all the way through represents triumph over death in every direction. You expect that testimony to be maintained right through and beyond, going out of time into eternity. And so it is. That life triumphant over death is something which does not end here, it goes on. It is a testimony which outlives its vessels.

Turning to the three instances we shall seek to understand in some measure what they have to say to us specifically. There are depths and fullnesses in all these incidents in Elisha's life, and in his life as a whole, which we cannot stay to touch upon. But there are some things which seem more or less apparent as lessons to be learned by us in these three closing incidents of Elisha's life.

1. The Arrow of the Lord's Deliverance

It was a question of victory over the enemy. And it is a matter of the Lord's purpose to give full and final victory over the enemy. What the king of Israel entered into may be one thing, what the Lord's thought was is another. He may only have come into it in a limited way, but that was his own fault. The Lord provided for very much more than that. We shall come back to that in a moment.

The thing from the Divine standpoint is the overcoming, fully and finally, of the Lord's enemy. The fullness of deliverance and victory was bound up in Elisha's prophecy. Although for the time being, because of the limited appropriation of the king, the representative of the Lord's people, that prophecy will be long postponed in its full realization, nevertheless the arrow of the Lord's deliverance has been released, and, in spite of postponement, ultimately the Lord's people will have a complete and full deliverance. It is secured to them in the prophecy. This arrow of deliverance is the arrow of a prophecy, the fuller expression of which may be found in the other prophets, such as Ezekiel and his vision of the valley of dry bones, the triumphant side of the activity of the resurrection of the Lord's people, and their ultimate standing upon their feet a mighty army. It is all bound up in this arrow of deliverance. But more than that, there is foreseen in the illustration, in the type, the ultimate full triumph of the people of God spiritually over the last enemy. "The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death." The guarantee, the earnest, the title deeds of the final triumph over the last enemy, death, is in the fact that resurrection life is already given to the Lord's people.

The last enemy will be overcome in the Church, the Body of Christ, by the power of His resurrection. The Church has been long entering into the value of that. The Church has known, because of its own weakness, only a little of that, but eventually it will be realized to the full. The Word of the Lord is full of that fact, that the end is going to see the last enemy destroyed in the Church. It is to be in the Church, the Body of Christ, that the last enemy is destroyed, and that death is to be finally cast out.

The earnest of that is the fact that Christ, already triumphant over death, is resident within His Body. Take such passages as Ephesians 1:17-21. There is seen universal dominion resultant from the inworking of the power of His resurrection. To put that round the other way in the terms of this Scripture, "the exceeding greatness of His power" - which is that of resurrection - by which God raised Jesus from the dead issues in universal authority. Thus universal authority over all the power of the enemy is resident within the power of His resurrection. Resurrection life contains that very power by which death shall be fully and finally vanquished, and the Church, the Body of Christ, knowing that power - "...that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ... may give unto you a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him... that ye may know... the exceeding greatness of His power..." - will come to the place where the Head already is.

Pass from that passage to the third chapter of the same letter, verse 20, and you have similar things said: "...according to the power that worketh in us." What power is that? "The exceeding greatness of His power... which He wrought in Christ, when He raised Him from the dead..." "Unto Him be the glory in the CHURCH and in Christ Jesus unto all generations for ever and ever." Here is resurrection.

Let us repeat, that the last enemy, death, is going to be finally and fully overthrown in and by the Church, on the basis of the resurrection life of the Lord Jesus operating in that Church as the Body of Christ. Herein is the necessity for you and for me NOW to learn to live on the basis of resurrection life. Herein is the explanation of why the Lord takes pains to bring us to the place where only His risen life will meet our need. Herein is the explanation of the constant application of the Cross to cut from under us every other basis of life save the life of the Lord, because of the enormous issue involved, that the Church is the chosen means by which the risen Head is to settle finally the issue of death.

Cont'd next post

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That brings us to an interesting and significant point in this story of Elisha. Do you notice how the king of Israel addresses Elisha? Look at verse 14 of chapter 13, and you will see there an extraordinary address. What did he mean? Was he expecting Elisha to go the same way as Elijah? Was it an expression of some feeling that Elisha was about to be raptured? I confess I do not know from the standpoint of Joash. But I think I can stand on the side of the Holy Spirit and see some meaning, because if the Holy Spirit inspired this, then there is a spiritual meaning. Elijah went up into heaven in a chariot of fire amidst the shouts of Elisha - "My father, my father, the chariot of Israel and the horsemen thereof!'' That was Elijah's victory over death. We do not have that form of victory with Elisha, but we have the same words. Elisha did not go into heaven by a chariot of fire, as did Elijah, nevertheless exactly the same words apply to him. He comes within exactly the same category of those who conquer death and are not conquered by death. But what is the difference? If Elijah was raptured outwardly, Elisha was raptured inwardly, but it is the same thing. Resurrection life in any case is rapture in its issue. It is victory in its outworking. It is victory over death, and victory over death is rapture. What is rapture? It is glory! And, so far as the principle and basis of rapture is concerned, which is the power of His resurrection, that holds good whatever may be the form of its outward consummation.

Was not Paul as truly at the end of his life, as he had hoped to be at the beginning? When you read his first letters, the letters to the Thessalonians, there is no doubt but that Paul thought and hoped to be raptured with the Church - "...we which are alive, and remain, shall be caught up..." After many years, toward the end, he came to see that that was not to be the manner of his going, and said so quite frankly. "...I am already being offered, and the time of my departure is come." And he knew by what method it would be. But spiritually in his inner life he was as truly raptured at the end as he had hoped to be at the beginning. It was not death, it was not defeat, it was not the mastery of death; it was victory over death, triumph over death. It was glory. He could go through in perfect confidence and perfect triumph; he could go through with a shout in his spirit. Though the executioner's axe is about to be lifted to sever his head from his body, he could go through with a shout - "the chariot of Israel and the horsemen thereof!" He is above the whole thing. Whatever may be the course, resurrection life embodies rapture in itself. So that, whether Elijah goes up literally in a chariot, or Elisha goes up spiritually in a chariot, it is the same in the working out.

But there is something more. Paul had two phases of resurrection in his heart and in his faith. Firstly, he had resurrection inwardly. The power of resurrection was at work in him all the time, so that death was being transcended in all its workings. In his spirit he was always above death. He knew the power of resurrection as an inward thing.

But then, in the second place, Paul had his heart and his faith set upon a specific form of its outworking, in what he called uniquely "the out-resurrection from among the dead." It is Paul who brings into view such a thing. His desire and ambition was not just to attain unto the resurrection from the dead. You have to do nothing to attain unto the resurrection from the dead. If you are saved you will enjoy the resurrection from the dead without any attaining whatever. The fact that you have eternal life is the guarantee that you will be raised from the dead. The Lord Jesus made that perfectly clear, that He would give unto as many as He would eternal life and raise them up at the last day. But there is a day which anticipates the last day, and that was the day that Paul was after. He did not speak of the last day resurrection, he spoke of the out-resurrection from among the dead. This for him represented rapture, in which not even all those who are the Lord's will participate. If Philippians 3:10 means anything at all, if language is to be taken seriously, it does most definitely indicate that this resurrection is not that general resurrection which comes with the gift of eternal life, but this is a prize. Resurrection from the dead in general is not a prize. It accompanies the free gift of God. A prize is always something worked for, striven after, and which may be missed, as Paul makes perfectly clear. This out-resurrection is a prize which extends him fully.

That is where the first phase of this chapter ends and makes necessary the second phase, because the one arrow must lead to the other arrows.

2. The Smiting on the Ground With the Arrows

Elisha does not leave things with the releasing of that one arrow, prophetic of full and final deliverance, but he instantly takes another course, by which he would seek to bring the king at once into the full possession of it, to anticipate the end, and to secure it in advance. It might have been that Elisha had said when the one arrow was released: "The arrow of the Lord's deliverance! Someday - it may be a long way ahead - there will be full deliverance. This arrow declares it." He might just have left it there, and that would have meant a measure of comfort, the comfort which you get from 1 Thessalonians 4:16-17 that ultimately all the saints will be raised, those who have gone and those that remain. The thing will come into the final victory at some time. That is a general statement. What we read in Thessalonians is but a general statement, and you need a great deal more Scripture to get inside of the general statement. Paul there is only making quite a comprehensive statement, he is not giving us anything more. We need much more to break that up. It is not fair to take the general statement, and say that is the beginning and the end of all the doctrine of the rapture, or the resurrection, or the coming of the Lord. It is not by any means!

Elisha does not leave things there. He says to Joash: "Take the arrows... Smite upon the ground." Anticipate the end, get hold of it now, make it good now. And Joash takes his arrows and smites once, twice, thrice, and stays. And Elisha asks why he has stayed, why he accepts less than he might have, why he does not go the full way now and possess the whole at once - "...now thou shalt smite Syria but thrice." That will be your measure of glory. Whereas you might have gone right on and had so much more glory, known so much more ascendancy and victory, you have fixed the measure yourself.

See how wonderfully that fits into Philippians 3. The measure of victory and glory will be the measure of faith's appropriation of the power of His resurrection. We are not dealing with the matter of salvation now, we are dealing with God's full thought as to salvation. And when Paul wrote that letter to the Philippians and came to the part of his letter which is marked by our third chapter, it was as though he smote, and he smote, and he smote, until he had the whole thing - "...but one thing I do, forgetting the things which are behind..." - it was the uttermost taking hold of Him and the power of His resurrection - "...that I may know Him... if by any means I may attain unto the out-resurrection [Greek]..." There is a man who does not stay short of the whole end of God.

The Lord's people are going to come more or less to the fullness of the glory of Christ, more or less to the place of universal dominion, according to the measure of faith's appropriation now of the power of His resurrection. Paul says in another place that in the resurrection there are differences of degree, that there is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars, and that so shall it be in the resurrection. Do you want the glory of the sun, the full-orbed glory of Christ? Well, that demands now a going the whole way in the matter of faith's appropriation of the power of His resurrection - "...that life which I now live in the flesh I live in faith, the faith which is in the Son of God," and then, with that basis laid, a pressing on to know Him, and the power of His resurrection.

The point is that there is something to be lost. That may not be our salvation, but that may be glory in measure, positions which the Lord would have us occupy and enjoy, but from which we may fall short. The Word of God points out that the generation of Hebrews which fell in the wilderness lost their inheritance. And Paul carries that principle forward when he says that you can be saved, but only as by fire. You may not lose your salvation, but you may lose everything else that God intended you to have in your salvation. There is something which God has which we can only have on conditions. And when we view that in the light of God's own need, "His inheritance in the saints," and of God's own purpose, and when we view it in the light of what it has cost God and His Son, it becomes a sin to be satisfied with less than all that God desires. The Lord Jesus did not suffer all that Calvary meant just to get us out of hell, just to get us saved. There is far more than that bound up in His Cross. This has a good deal of light to throw upon the New Testament position.

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3. The Revival of a Dead Body by Contact With Elisha's Bones

"Now the bands of the Moabites invaded the land at the coming in of the year. And... as they were burying a man... they spied a band; and they cast the man into the sepulchre of Elisha: and as soon as the man touched the bones of Elisha, he revived, and stood up on his feet."

The knowing of Christ in the power of His resurrection is by conformity to His death. It is on the ground of identification with Him in death. Here is this man falling into the sepulchre of Elisha and becoming identified with him in his death. Typically he came to the place mentioned by Paul "...that I may know Him, and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being made conformable unto His death." But that very conformity to His death was the way of knowing the power [of] His resurrection. That very identification with Him in death issued in resurrection life.

We must always remember that the death of the Lord Jesus is not a passive thing. The death of the Lord Jesus is a mighty energy, a mighty power. There is something about the death of the Lord Jesus which death cannot stand. His very death swallowed up death; His very death destroyed death - "...that through death He might destroy him that had the power of death." There is a mystery about that, how a death can kill death, but it did in His case. The death of the Lord Jesus is not the death of any other man: it is a different death, a mighty death, an energetic death.

This man touched the bones of Elisha and found that in the place of death there was victory over death, power destroying death.

That ought to be a very strong additional word to our ideas about identification with Christ in death, because so often people think that when language like that is used it means going out and losing everything; it is all death, death, death! You never do touch the Lord Jesus in His death in any new measure without knowing a new measure of resurrection life. When the Lord Jesus by His Spirit brings us in a further measure into the meaning of His death, let it be settled with us, once and for all, that that is in itself a new measure of resurrection life. The two things go together, it cannot be otherwise. It is death unto life. It is loss unto gain. The life and the gain are of a different sort from the death and the loss. The death and the loss is simply all that which, sooner or later, will go in any case, and even while it remains is of a very doubtful value, but the life and the gain are eternal, and have in them all the values of God. So Paul could, with something of joy, hail conformity to the death of Christ. He speaks about it in no mournful terms as though he were going to lose everything. There is no shadow on his face, or sob in his voice, when he speaks about being conformed to His death. It is the shout of a victor. There is something he is after.

Paul knows quite well the value of this exchange, the exchanging of his life for the life of His Lord, the exchange of which he has been speaking in this very letter - "Howbeit what things were gain to me, these have I counted loss for Christ... for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord." What is the nature of that knowledge? "That I may know Him, and the power of His resurrection." That is the excelling quality of this knowledge. It excels everything that could come to a man in this world, that would be regarded by a man of this world as gain, and he has tabulated and catalogued all those things. He has known power, popularity, reputation, position, possession, and he says the knowledge of Christ Jesus is excelling all that. What knowledge is it? It is the particular knowledge of "Him, and the power of His resurrection." Why? Because of what that leads to, all the possibilities of that resurrection life and power: because of its ultimate issue: because of the place to which it can bring him; no less a place than the very Throne of the Lord Himself.

We have left out a good many things, and have not pursued the various lines and questions that may have arisen, content just to give the broad outline of the many features. Questions may have arisen, but let us first of all face the facts and say: Are these facts? Get rid of prejudices, and ask broad questions - "Why should I not accept that? What is there to hinder?" If we are very frank and open, without prejudice in matters like this, we shall get light, and that light will mean a very great deal. But if we have preconceived ideas, preconceptions strongly held, we shall get into a fog as we touch these matters. An open heart provides the way for the Lord to give much light. A willingness to accept what is of the Lord makes it possible for the Lord to show what is of Himself.

Leaving for the moment all the details, let us look at the statements squarely in the face, confront ourselves with the mighty "ifs." "IF by ANY MEANS I may attain unto the out-resurrection [Greek]..." What hangs upon an "if'! We may take it that it is not our salvation that hangs upon an "if." Our salvation hangs upon Christ's finished work and our faith therein. But there is something which hangs upon an "if."

The Lord inspire us with His own mighty urge, and the inward working of His exceeding great power unto the full end, that we shall not fall short of His thought.

The End

Up next; The Recovering of the Lord's Testimony in Fullness

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In keeping with T. Austin-Sparks' wishes that what was freely received should be freely given, his writings are not copyrighted. Therefore you are free to use these writings as you are led, however we ask if you choose to share writings from this site with others, please offer them freely - free of changes, free of charge and free of copyright.

The Recovering of the Lord's Testimony in Fullness
by T. Austin-Sparks

Chapter 1 - The First Movement

"And I sent messengers unto them, saying, I am doing a great work, so that I cannot come down: why should the work cease, whilst I leave it, and come down to you?" (Nehemiah 6:3).

"And I arose in the night, I and some few men with me; neither told I any man what my God put into my heart to do for Jerusalem" (Nehemiah 2:12).

These two fragments - "l am doing a great work", "what my God put into my heart to do" - give us the entrance into the great matter which is historically set forth in the book of Nehemiah.

Three Things Essential to a Fullness of the Christian Life

There are three things which are essential to an adequate life with God, to a fullness of the Christian life.

Firstly, the realization that God is concerned with the accomplishment of something worthy of Himself. We shall not get very far toward a full Christian life, or a life with God, until it breaks upon us and takes hold of us that God is really concerned with the accomplishment of something worthy of Himself.

The second thing is that people shall become aware of what that great something in the heart of God is, what it is that God is so concerned with, and then that they shall be moved to co-operate with Him in it. That is an essential to a life of fullness with God, that we His people shall come to see what it is that He is really set upon, what it is that will really be worthy of Himself, and, more than that, that we shall become so deeply moved about this matter as to co-operate with Him in it.

And then, in the third place, that we recognize that this object in the heart of God and this co-operation with Him by His people involves very real conflict and cost, and that His people must face that and be ready to accept it.

These three things comprise the elements and features of a full life with God, and not one of them can be lacking. The very conflict and cost will themselves be the evidences of the value of the thing into which the people of God have been brought, and the thing which is so dear to God's heart. Where there is no conflict and no cost, there may be reason to feel that the outcome is not worth while. I think that the view of the Apostles, at any rate, was that the conflict was the complement of the calling so great and so high.

So that here in this book of Nehemiah we have those three things brought before us in a very full and a very powerful way. They are: a great Cost, a great Work, and a great Conflict.

The book of Nehemiah, as you will know, and indeed Nehemiah himself, is a great historic illustration of a much greater spiritual reality. What we have here on the earth in literal history is but a reflection of what is going on in this dispensation in the spiritual realm, and what in this dispensation is so much greater than anything that ever was in days gone past on this earth.

Now we have these three features here. They are: the wall or its rebuilding - that is the object, that is the purpose, that is the thing in view. Then we have the work of rebuilding, and the workers; and then we have, going hand-in-hand with the purpose and the work, the warfare. The Wall, the Work, the Warfare; or; in other words, the Calling, the Conduct and the Conflict. These comprise what we can now call, in present-day or present-time language, the recovery and completing of the Lord's testimony, for that is really what is before us at this time. And so we may set over this whole matter, this little fragment: "a great work" - "I am doing a great work"; and it is with this great work that we shall be occupied, as the Lord leads us.

God's Reaction in a Day of Spiritual Declension

Nehemiah is the last great character of the Old Testament and his book the last historic book of the Old Testament. Those who do not study the chronological arrangement of the Old Testament books may not be altogether alive to these facts. Because the book of Nehemiah comes in our Bibles so much before the end of the Old Testament, it is taken by many to relate chronologically to a very much earlier period; but it really ought to be alongside of the prophecies of Malachi. When we come to Nehemiah we are contemporary with the prophet Malachi.

Haggai and Zechariah uttered their prophecies and passed on. Zerubbabel the governor, and Joshua the high priest, had accomplished their ministry. Ezra had fulfilled his part of the work, as the prophets mentioned had inspired the people to finish the rebuilding of the Temple. And then there set in a course of spiritual decline. Great things had taken place under Haggai, Zerubbabel, Joshua, Zechariah: but that glory faded; that promise seemed to be short-lived. We come to Malachi - and you know the content of Malachi's prophecies. Indeed, a 'radiant morn had passed away'; indeed things had become overclouded; deep shadows of spiritual declension filled the sky over Jerusalem; and all those sad, yes, terrible things mentioned by Malachi are found, after all, amongst the people of God: so that only within the remnant that had returned from the captivity was there found a remnant of the remnant - "they that feared the Lord" (Mal. 3:16) - and it was into those conditions, in the midst of such a state, that Nehemiah came to fulfil his ministry.

This man came to Jerusalem and set about the undertaking which is indicated at the beginning of the book which bears his name - the rebuilding of the wall. I think that that carries with it a wonderful, yes, inspiring significance: that in a day, such as that day in which Malachi prophesied and uttered his terrible words from the Lord, the Lord has not abandoned - the Lord acts again; and this rebuilding of the wall is God's action in a day of spiritual declension. It almost shouts to us that God, after all, and in the worst times, is still committed to the recovery and completion of His testimony. It is most impressive that the book of Nehemiah - the last historic book of the Old Testament, with Nehemiah the last great man of the Old Testament - is marked, in a day of terrible spiritual decline, by God acting again in relation to His testimony. Sometimes we are tempted to feel that the time has gone and conditions are too bad, and we can hope for nothing very much in view of the situation; but this book and this man administer a very sound rebuke to any such pessimism.

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Travail in Prayer

Now, before we take up the three main features of the Wall, the Work and the Warfare, we must begin with an essential factor which is embodied in Nehemiah himself. We have to go back a little, because the beginning of this thing was many years before, more than seventy years before, and it began in the heart of the prophet Jeremiah. Jeremiah was a man with a broken heart, a man of a sorrowful spirit - a man whose heart was broken and whose spirit was sorrowful because of the conditions amongst the Lord's people; and Jeremiah in that travail fulfilled his ministry, and gave utterance to a declaration, a prophecy, that the people would go into captivity for seventy years. That, as we know, came to pass; and then, as the seventy years were expiring, another man right in the heart of the situation in Babylon took up Jeremiah's travail. Jeremiah fulfilled his ministry of travail: Daniel took up the travail in prayer. Daniel tells us (chapter 9) that he came to know, "by the books", that the captivity was to be for seventy years; and now he sees that the seventy years are coming to an end, and so he gives himself to intense prayer. Note: a ministry of travail by Jeremiah, an enlightened intercessory travail by Daniel - or he has become aware of the time in which he lives. He has come to realize by the books that the time is fulfilled, and so he takes up the travail in this tremendous prayer in the ninth chapter of the book of Daniel.

God's Sovereign Reaction

Now we have the next move. Because the time has come and God is on the move again for the recovery of His testimony, He sovereignly stirs up the spirit of Cyrus, who makes a decree, and the remnant return to Jerusalem. The last two verses of the second book of the Chronicles, as you know, state the fact, and then the very first verses of the book of Ezra following repeat the words exactly. "The Lord stirred up the spirit of Cyrus king of Persia", and Ezra was one of the fruits of that sovereign movement of God. When Ezra fulfilled his part of the ministry, we come to Nehemiah, and we find again the taking up of that essential factor which has led to this co-operation with God.

In the first chapter of Nehemiah and into the second chapter, we find Nehemiah gripped, deeply and terribly gripped, by this travail - this travail which commenced with Jeremiah, this travail which was born in the heart of Daniel away in Babylon. Here it is in Nehemiah - travail which is an echo of the very heart of God concerning His people. We have to fit a great deal of prophetic utterance into this situation, to hear the cry of those prophets, all of them, as they express God's mind and God's heart about the state of His people. Now that cry - shall we say, that sob - in the heart of God is born into this man; it finds its culmination, so far as the Old Testament is concerned, in the heart of Nehemiah.

Note, before we go further, these two factors, these two main aspects. Firstly, God acting sovereignly. That is where the movement begins. God stirred up the spirit of Cyrus and you have all that wonderful movement of sovereignty as recorded in the book of Ezra. Those of you who are familiar with that book will recall at once the marvellous facilities which God brought about through the Persian ruler for the rebuilding of the temple: every provision made, everything seen to that the thing should be done; God acting sovereignly. That is one side.

Man Suffering in Fellowship With God

But here in Nehemiah you have the other side - man in suffering fellowship with God. Ezra is the sovereignty of God; Nehemiah is the fellowship with God by man. Ezra is God acting directly and independently; Nehemiah is man acting with God, or God acting through man. Those two things always go together - remember that. We must never think, because God is sovereign and His purposes are fixed and settled and He can do as He will, act independently, He is self-sufficient, that He will in fact act like that. He never has done so. Since the creation He has always brought men into fellowship with Himself in His sovereign purposes - into deep fellowship and travailing fellowship. So however great may be the need, whatever may be the demand, the call, the tragedy, which makes it necessary for God to act sovereignly in the first place, He is not going to do it until He can find an instrument which shares His heart feeling, carries His heart burden, enters into heart co-operation with Him.

Nehemiah was such a one. So far as the practical side was concerned, in this final movement of God in that dispensation, everything had its beginning in the heart of Nehemiah. That man's heart is revealed in the very first chapter of this book. It is therefore very necessary for purposes of today - for I am not stopping now to try to make a parallel between our time and the time of Nehemiah: that I take it is patent and obvious to anyone with spiritual perception - but if God is going to do something today with regard to the recovery and completion of His testimony, which needs recovering and needs completing, He will have to have the counterpart of Nehemiah - a vessel with a great concern, the very concern of God Himself, born in its heart.

For a few minutes, then, let us look at Nehemiah's concern.

Nehemiah's Concern

This man had a true appreciation both of how things ought to be and of how they actually were. We will never get anywhere as instrumental in the purpose of God until those two things are clear in our hearts - how things actually are, and then how things ought to be, how God would have things if He had them according to His mind, His heart, what things would be like if they did reflect and express the purpose of God. You and I will never get very far, if we get anywhere at all, in our relationship with God, until we are seeing something of the real state of things in contrast with the mind of God - until we have seen really what God wants, what God really has His heart set upon, exactly how things would be if they were according to His will.

Then, of course, we must see the contrasts, the conflicting factors, the nature of the situation as it is not according to God's mind. Nehemiah was such a man. He looked, he formed his judgment upon the data: he saw - on the one hand, what God would have; on the other hand, how different things were from what God would have. There are, of course, many people who can be very critical of Christianity, very critical of the Church, who have quite a lot of mental appraisement and judgment of the situation, who in a very superior way talk down about the bad conditions which exist among Christians and in the Church, and who can give themselves quite cheaply to deploring the state of things.

Nehemiah was not of that kind. Nehemiah was not just negative; Nehemiah was positive, he was constructive. He was not only the one who could say, 'Now, look at the situation - look how different it is from what God intended and what God willed - see this and see that and see the other thing'. Not only was he able to do that, but he was able to bring forth a positive remedy and to show how the thing could be changed to provide a way for recovery. He was a man of positive vision. There are so many people who take a negative line, and when you ask them what ought to be done, what is the thing we must do about it, they have nothing to bring forward. It is all negative - and very plentiful, at that! - but there is nothing to present or provide. Nehemiah was not that kind of man. He was fully acquainted with the situation; he knew just how deplorable it was. You notice several times he speaks of it, but he had the remedy. He was a positive man and a man of action, because he was a man of vision. He was not just 'visionary', in the negative sense: he was a man of action in relation to what he saw.

And that, dear friends, does present us with a challenge I have no doubt but that most of us could point the finger at things which are not according to God's mind amongst His people, in His Church; could point out how different things are from what we can see they ought to be - how bad this is and how bad that is. Oh, that is easy and that is very cheap - to criticize and to listen to criticism and to agree with it, to take it in, and to nurse the complaints, to keep them alive. But it is another thing altogether to be able to come forward and say, 'Look here, this is not good, this is not as the Lord would have it, and this is what we ought to do. This is the thing that the Lord would have done, this is the thing to which we must give ourselves, to change this situation'. I venture to say that we have no right to criticize and judge and condemn if we have not got a remedy, if we have not got something positive to put in the place of what we see. So let us be quiet if we cannot provide something better, but the Lord save us from having to be quiet just because we are negative, and make us active because we have got vision.

I ask you: How true is this in your own case? What vision have you? Do you see what the Lord has ever meant, has ever intended? - what really is in His heart, what He would have, and how He would have things? Do you see just exactly how things would be if the Lord had His way and reached His end? Do you? Are you able to see how different things are from what the Lord would have, and then are you so exercised in your heart, as were these men and as was this man, that you say, 'Something must be done about it, we must get to work, by the help of God we must change this situation' - believing that it is God's will that it should be so? Are you of that kind? Well, that is the appeal of this book.

[Shammu]

The Features of Nehemiah's Travail

Let us spend a little while in looking still more inwardly into this travail of Nehemiah's. What were the features of his travail? I have been trying to understand him, to read him, to get into his heart, to get behind his cry, behind his sorrow, his burden in his distress. As I have done so, it has seemed that these are some of the things which lay behind this travail of his.

Nehemiah saw how things ought to be, and how things really were; and then he saw his own position. There he was, away there in Shushan the palace, cupbearer to the king. He was an exile, and he was virtually a slave, one who had been taken on as a servant in the palace. From the standpoint of that palace, and from the standpoint of Babylon, it may have been an honourable position; but from his own standpoint he was like a slave in the world: he was spending his time in the world, the business of this world, and his whole soul was groaning. 'Here am I in the business of this world, having to go to work every morning and finishing late at night, and this is repeated day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year - and my soul cries out to be doing something about the purpose of God and the situation of the Lord's people'. This cry against his own position was a feature of his travail.

God is sovereign even in that. Perhaps that touches you who are reading these lines. You are going to work every morning and coming home every evening, and by far the greater amount of your time and strength is occupied with serving this world. You feel like a slave to this world, and you say, 'Oh, that I might be free to do something for God!' My dear friend, there is value in travail like that. There were many in Babylon who had settled down and accepted the situation, who were taking up business and earning wages, and were making this now their life. They saw nothing more than that, or other than that. But not so Nehemiah. His soul revolted against his position in the world. 'Oh, to be free to do something for God!' That travail meant something to God. That travail was the birth pangs of something for God.

If you are not knowing something of that - the drudgery of the home-life, perhaps you might call it 'the trivial round, the common task', the going to work by morning and coming home by evening - and there is at the same time in your soul no cry for the interests of God, you are a tragedy indeed. But it may be that all the time, in and through it, you are longing to be able to do more for the Lord. Let me say that that is the kind of travail that is going to be fruitful. It is going to be fruitful in some way or other. It will out - it will out in some way or other. Something will come of that. I am not going to say that the day will come when you will be released from your worldly occupation and set free for what you call 'full-time service'. I think it is a very real mistake to talk about the service of God in that way, for you may in your own travail be serving God in a potential way where you are. There may be tremendous potentialities in this travail in your heart as you go about your daily work, all the time more concerned for the Lord's interests than for this world.

I think it must have been like that with Nehemiah. 'Here I am, the king's cupbearer!' You can almost hear the revolt in his heart. How little he thought of this - because how much more the Lord's interests had become to him! That man, that ruler, that king, was a great man, the greatest man in the world at that time. It was no small thing to be his cupbearer, and to be in the palace of Shushan, the same place where Esther and Mordecai were. You know all about them from the book of Esther, and all that was represented there. Yet when Nehemiah came to the point of answering the king's question as to why he was sad of countenance, his prayer to the Lord was not couched in language of great respect and honour for the king. "Prosper, I pray thee, thy servant this day, and grant him mercy in the sight of this man" (Neh. 1:11). A great king - 'this man'!

Oh, this was all so mean compared with the Lord and His interest! He could not accept this, he was in travail. You see, the greatest honours that this world can give, the highest position that we may occupy here, are just nothing to men and women who have seen what the Lord is after. All honours, all degrees, all positions, are as nothing when once you have seen the on-high calling. 'I count them as very refuse', said Paul (Phil. 3:, 'these things of honour and glory in this world'. He had seen the Lord and the heavenly calling. Nehemiah's position was, I am sure, one great factor in his travail.

And then there was the long delay. 'Oh, the time is so long! Oh, that we could do something!' The Lord is demanding such patience; we kick against the delays of the Lord. We are so deeply tested by deferred opportunities. Is it not true? Nothing opening up; no way. But the point is - are we really in travail about this thing? I am sure that the Lord uses delays and deferments in order to test us as to our real concern. Some people have not to be put off very much before they give up altogether. Some people can have only a little discouragement, a little trial of patience, and they say, 'Well, it is not worth it', and they quit. Here is a man who went on all these years in deep trial of patience, tested by the long-delayed opportunity to do something; but he held on to the end, and the fact is that he was most vigorous after all in his quest for the Lord's interests.

cont'd next post

[Shammu]

How is this long delay, deferred opportunity, affecting you? Is this purpose of God so deep in you that it is stronger than all other deferred hopes, disappointed expectations? This man's soul was starved - his soul was starved. I mean by that he was always anxious and eager to do something; in doing something he would have found his real gratification and satisfaction and pleasure. His soul would have gone out at liberty to do things, but he was starved in his soul and brought more and more to the place where, if ever anything was going to be done at all, it would be God who did it - 'I will never be able to do this'. That is a great place to come to. 'God has to open this door, God has to provide this opportunity, God has to see that this thing is done. I can do nothing, I am helpless!' But that soul starvation, what it costs us! If only we could do something, how much easier it would be, or if we could do more, how much more satisfaction we would have! But that is a part of our preparation. Indeed, it is out of that that real spiritual values come.

Nehemiah had the report from his brethren who came back as to the state of things in Jerusalem. The walls were broken down, the gates were burned with fire, and the people were in a deplorable position. He had the report, he knew all about the need, but he was totally unable to do anything. Only God could do it. Do believe, dear friends, that that is a position which gives great promise. That is a position to which God works. Those who are going to be most used of the Lord and most fruitful in fellowship with the Lord will come to the place, not once nor twice, but again and again, where they know they can do nothing; only the Lord can do it. But their soul is in travail over the whole thing. It is not a matter of throwing up the hands and sitting back and saying, 'I can do nothing, therefore I do not care'. That is not Nehemiah, not at all. He turned his travail into prayer; and you know when travail becomes prayer and prayer is travail, things are very real, things are very pure - because that kind of prayer and travail deals with all the self elements.

How often there are elements of ambition in our wanting to do something, that we should come into the work, that we should come into the picture, that we should come into the satisfaction of doing something, that we should be in some position; and when the Lord deals with us like this and the whole agony turns to prayer, in that prayer all these self elements are dealt with very thoroughly and go out. The very fact that it is travailing prayer when nothing else can be done proves that there is no self in this. Our praying is travail. It is not asking for something for ourselves - it is agony for what is of God.

Presently Nehemiah will be charged with having personal interests. His enemies will say that he is wanting to set himself up as the king, and he is appointing prophets to preach him. What a subtle assault of the devil to bring an accusation upon the man to undo him! If it were true, how he would be undone by that assault of the devil! If the devil ever has real ground to say, 'After all, it is Number One that is governing this whole thing: it is your own ambition, it is yourself!' - if he has ground for saying that, we may well be floored and undone. But it had to be so with Nehemiah that such accusations had no ground. He was able to say: 'You feigned this out of your own mind' (Neh. 6:. 'This is not true. God has dealt with me in the depths. He has sifted my soul of all such interests for myself'. The ground had to be undercut from the enemy so that he had nothing personal upon which to work.

Now, Nehemiah's countenance was sad before the king, and the king noted it. But his countenance did not speak of self-pity or of personal frustration. It spoke of grief concerning spiritual conditions.

The Lord knows how things are at the present time. The Lord sees how different they are from what He intended. He knows all about this. He must bring some people to see as He sees, and feel as He feels, and commit themselves to that which He shows them, at any cost. This introductory word is the challenge. We cannot go on with the work or the warfare until we are like this, really like this - people after the kind of Nehemiah. The Lord make us that.

[Shammu]

Chapter 2 - The State of the Wall

Nehemiah's Action

Now from Nehemiah's concern we move on to his action - for, as we have said, Nehemiah was no detached, negative critic of the situation. He was not just one who was pointing out all that was wrong, without knowing what ought to be done for the glory of God, and doing something about it. So he took action, and if there is one book in the Bible, or at any rate in the Old Testament, which is characterized by action more than another, I think this book is such.

When Nehemiah took action, he first of all fully and accurately acquainted himself with the situation. We have such words as these: "Hanani, one of my brethren, came, he and certain men out of Judah; and I asked them concerning the Jews that had escaped, that were left of the captivity, and concerning Jerusalem" (Nehemiah 1:2).

And then when he came to Jerusalem, we see him moving, in these descriptive words: "And I arose in the night, I and some few men with me; neither told I any man what my God put into my heart to do for Jerusalem; neither was there any beast with me, save the beast that I rode upon. And I went out by night... and viewed the walls of Jerusalem, which were broken down, and the gates thereof were consumed with fire" (Nehemiah 2:12,13).

So Nehemiah took pains to get to know exactly what the situation was. It is true that he had information. Report came to him, or he made it his business to get to know from those who had first-hand knowledge, as to what the situation was, but as soon as it was possible for him to do so on the spot, he verified the report and accurately informed himself at first-hand exactly how matters stood. And I would suggest that, in like manner, when the Lord is speaking concerning the recovery of His testimony which is the matter before us, those who are going to co-operate with Him must be accurately and fully informed. While their information may come indirectly, they must not be content with the best second-hand report, they must know at first-hand exactly how things are. You and I will never be of much use to the Lord until we know exactly what the spiritual state of things is and what needs to be done. We must really see and know this for ourselves, not just get it from the many people there are who tell us about it.

It is a fact that we can hardly go anywhere today in any part of the world, without finding people deploring the spiritual state of things amongst the Lord's people. Their sense of things is in the main a right one - although, as we said earlier, many of them just complain and murmur and grumble and criticize without having anything to offer in the way of remedy and improvement. Nevertheless, their registration of the spiritual state of the Church is very largely true. It is very widely true, today, that everything is not right with the Church; things are not as they should be, as the Lord would have them. But we cannot go on a general - even though it be a very general - feeling that things are not right. This must come into our own being; we must know it for ourselves. I am not suggesting that we should go and try to find out all that is wrong and make a long list of all that is so defective and deplorable today; but I am saying this - that if we are to co-operate with God in getting things as He would have them, the matter must be a first-hand one in our own hearts. We must know it for ourselves. We must not just be professional grumblers, but those who have real travail of heart because of what we know to be the case, because of what we see, what is clear to our own eyes and what troubles our own hearts.

So Nehemiah did, in the first place, inform himself directly as to the situation. And it was a situation calculated to take the heart out of anyone. It really could have been so disconcerting that Nehemiah would not have gone on any further with it, but returned to Babylon and said: 'We must make the best of a bad job. Things are not as they ought to be, they are quite hopeless. It is no use trying to do anything about it.' But he did not give it up as a hopeless situation, bad as it was. I am quite sure that if you had been one of the men going round with Nehemiah that night, you might well have said: 'This is something altogether beyond our handling; we will never be able to make anything of this. This is hopeless.' Nehemiah was not like that. I think Nehemiah was one of the most courageous men of the Old Testament - a true hero: faced with a terrible situation, but facing it with confidence in God, because he knew, not only that this was a bad situation, but that God was on the move to put it right, to make something different of it. It was God's will that it should be otherwise; and if God wills a thing, then we have a ground of confidence, however impossible it may seem to us. So he did not give it up, but faced it - faced it squarely.

I have a very great deal in my mind that will not find expression in these messages, but I have been taking in the whole compass of the Bible in connection with this, and I am especially moving in the New Testament, as you will see as we go on. I am thinking of the Apostle Paul, the great Nehemiah of this dispensation. What a situation he had to face amongst Christians! What a condition of things he had to meet and deal with! We feel, as we read his first letter to the Corinthians, that we would have given it up and said: 'This is a hopeless mess - is this Christianity at all?' But see how Paul heroically and courageously faced that situation. He did not give it up.

Today, we might be greatly discouraged, we might easily feel that it is not possible to have a full, clear testimony that glorifies God, seeing how the Church is destroyed, how "the wall... is broken down", how "the gates are burned with fire" - that is, how the whole testimony is rent, and torn, and in ruins, as we might say. Yes, the situation is a disconcerting one and we have to face this question: Does God want it to be otherwise? Does God mean it to be otherwise? Is it the will of God that it shall be otherwise? Has God given it up? Is He desiring and intending - nay more, is He moving to secure a different state of things? If there is anything to prove that God is actively concerned about this matter, then we dare not abandon it. But it takes a great deal of courage, all the courage that God can give us, to face the present situation. Those who know it know that I am not exaggerating.

[Shammu]

The Vision and Inspiration of Nehemiah

And then, once more, in his action Nehemiah brought others into his vision and into his concern. First of all, it was in his own heart and it was hidden in his heart. He said nothing to anyone of what God had put on his heart. It was something between himself and the Lord, in the first place, and it was not until he had reached a certain position, and made a certain decision consequent upon his investigation, that he opened his heart to others. I think that is a splendid thing, a thing of which to take note. It is so easy to have ideas and then to begin to broadcast your ideas and unload them on to other people. It is quite another thing, between yourself and God, to have got to grips with the situation and become fully impressed with the greatness of it, and then to resolve that this thing must be done and to bring others into your vision and inspiration.

You see, Nehemiah was made to be a tremendous inspiration. You read through this book and see what you might almost call the magnetism of this man's personality, the inspiration that he was. People leapt to the impossible under the inspiration and vision of this man. There were times when they were very low in despondency, but then he pulled them out of their slough. What a force he was as a true leader to bring others into his vision! And do you not feel strongly that that is the real need today - of people who have vision, who have weighed up everything, who have faced the whole issue, and then who have such confidence in God, with the assurance that God wants and means something different, that they have come out with their positive impact upon others, so that others come into line? That truly is a great need. It is the easiest thing in the world to be a passenger, always to be carried. Ah, it is so easy to be a parasite, just living on and draining others. But it is quite another thing to be an inspiration, to be one who really does help others into the thing that God is after, to be an inspiration to them to come along to help in the work of the Lord. Nehemiah was that; and I put it to you that if we have any sense of things being other than according to God's mind, and that God would have them otherwise, we ought to be positive people in this matter, and be an inspiration to others about it.

And so Nehemiah, having taken the full measure of it, and having weighed it all up, and having impressed himself with the greatness of the task in hand, without despairing, turned to it and so inspired the other men to whom he opened his heart that they said: "Let us rise up and build". Oh, for a people like that! A people today who know all about it, and, seeing how things are, will say: 'Let us do something about it - let us rise up and build!'

Well, that is the beginning of his action, and you will agree that that is action indeed. Of course, we are not just looking at this as a human matter, because none of us can be like this for very long, at any rate not unless we are energized by the Spirit of God. Consider the Apostle Paul again, who knew all about it, all about the conditions, and knew how discouraged and despondent the people of God could be about the situation. His prayer was this: "that he would grant you, according to the riches of his glory... that ye may be strengthened with power through his Spirit in the inward man" (Eph. 3:16); "that ye may be... strengthened with all power, according to the might of his glory, unto all patience and long-suffering with joy" (Col. 1:9,11). The mighty energies of the Spirit of God inwardly are the only energies by which we shall be able to go on. We must allow a large place for the inward working of God in the life of Nehemiah, because we know full well that only so can we do anything about this situation.

The Object - The Wall

Now let us come to the main features of the whole matter of this book. We said, in our first study, that they are three: namely, the Wall, the Work and the Warfare, or the Object, the Conduct and the Conflict. We begin with the object, the Wall, and we must be very clear as to what is represented by this wall that Nehemiah was going to repair - what the wall stands for. May I say three preliminary things about the wall, as to what the wall really was and what it is now.

First of all, the wall was a definition: that is, it defined. A definition: that means, spiritually interpreted - interpreted in our own time, according to Divine thoughts - a clear defining of what is Christ and what is not Christ. That wall of Jerusalem defined a certain area, a certain territory; and it stood there originally to say: 'Now, what is within this wall, this mark, is of a certain order, of a certain character; within this, things are so and so.' Of course, the character was given by the temple. right there at the centre, so to speak; but the wall was a defining factor, and we need not stay with detail about that. It is only necessary for us to say that in the recovering and completing of the Lord's testimony there is the necessity for clear definition of what is of Christ and what is not. Things have become terribly confused. Here the wall is broken down and there is much rubbish. I am going to deal with the rubbish presently, but here is the fact - much rubbish where the wall had been. Multitudes of people today have no clear discernment, perception or apprehension as to what is Christ and what is merely 'Christianity'. In evangelical Christianity things have become terribly mixed up, and what is necessary, it is evident, is the reconstituting of that which clearly and exactly defines what Christ is; that Christ shall be clearly understood and known and all the confusing and complicating and mixing elements shall be eliminated.

The wall was a defining thing. That means, spiritually, that it stands to represent the real character of Christ. I said a few pages earlier that there is very much behind what I am saying that cannot now find expression. but I have been thinking about walls - looking at walls in general through the Bible and passing from all the historic walls to the great inclusive wall at the end of the book of the Revelation, the wall of the New Jerusalem; and I find amongst other things that a wall is to define the character or nature of what is within. That is true, is it not, of the great wall of the New Jerusalem at the end of the Bible? Its main feature, we may say, is its character: its glory, its beauty, its purity. It is the character of Christ that is the first thing about His testimony, and that has to become established and very clearly defined.

Cont'd next post

[Shammu]

And then - you may think that this is a distinction without a difference, but there is a difference - the wall represented a demarcation, that is, a distinction. Here things are not mixed at all; here at the wall there is a declaration and an establishment of the fact, that this testimony is a distinctive testimony. It is not a general thing; it is not something that brings into itself all sorts of different things. It is clear; it is distinctive. It has one thing to say, and that one thing is: 'Only what is of Christ can pass this, can be within this'.

Now that is very, very searching, and very arresting. We shall find as we go on that this brother of Nehemiah's, Hanani, was eventually made a policeman. And he, as policeman, was in charge of the gates, to deal with intruders, with merchants - and there are plenty of merchants finding their way into the testimony of Jesus, who have their own interests to serve, their own business to do, and all sorts of merchandise to bring into the confines of God, of Christ. And this wall said. 'No!' You read on to the end of the book, and see how Nehemiah and his policeman dealt with the merchants! They were having none of that - they chased them, they used strong measures with the merchants. But they did not do any more than the Lord Jesus did with the merchants of His day, with His knotted cord. No, the simple word is this: the wall spoke of a distinction between the precious and the vile; and that is covering much ground; it puts very much between what is of the Spirit of God and what is of another spirit.

And in the third place, this wall represented a defence. It was something which was placed as it were in a position of responsibility. It was responsible to protect the Lord's interests and the Lord's people from that which would invade, which would attack, which would corrupt, which would change the character. The Lord needs a testimony which challenges everything, a testimony which will not let anything pass that is not wholly of the Lord. That is where things have gone wrong with the Church, with the people of God, with the Lord's interests. So much has been allowed to creep in, to have a place, that is not of the Lord, and there has not been a sufficiently strong testimony to what is of the Lord to meet it.

Again, in your New Testament you find that at the beginning, when the spiritual wall was first built, it was such a strong, clear thing in the power of the Holy Spirit, that first of all there were many that durst not join themselves - they durst not, they were afraid. The situation was such that fear was created in the heart where things were not right with God. On the other hand, people coming in fell down on their faces and said 'God is in the midst of you'. The Lord needs a testimony like that, does He not? - something so clear, so strong, that those who do not mean business with God are afraid, and in our common expression, just 'clear off'. "They went out... that they might be made manifest that they all are not of us" (I John 2:19), and that is a very healthy sign. Things are in a good condition when that happens. Ah, yes, but when things are in a bad condition you are afraid to lose anybody - you hold on to anybody. The Lord said: 'No; don't try to hold on to everybody, don't try to bring in everybody'. This testimony, this wall, is a defence, a protection against anybody, anything. How necessary it was to Jerusalem in Nehemiah's day! The whole book shows that. You look at these other people, and see what this wall meant to Tobiah and to the rest of the company. They knew the implications of this wall; they knew that they were not getting into this.

Well, that is the meaning of the wall in the first place. But let us go just a little further in the matter. The wall represents Christ on two sides. On the one side, it represents Christ outwardly to the people of the world and the nations. On the other side, it represents what Christ is to the Lord's own people themselves. In a phrase, the wall is a testimony in fullness to the Son of God: what the Son of God means, as seen in this world, to the world and to the people of God.

The Need For Repairing the Wall

It is necessary that I should put in a word here, lest there should be a misapprehension of our meaning. Nehemiah was not building the entire wall all over again from the foundations. If you look closely, you will see that it is the repairing of the wall that is going on, the repairing and making complete of what had been broken down. Why do I say that? Well, it is not given to us, we are not called upon, to build this thing from the foundations. Thank God. the foundation was laid, and thank God, the wall was built, in the beginning. The book of the Acts shows the wall, the testimony, in fullness and completeness, and in glory and strength and grandeur: a mighty defence, a mighty revelation of Christ to the nations and a mighty meaning of Christ to His own people. It was there at the beginning. Nehemiah did not come to commence, to initiate this thing. He came to a scene where what had once been full, clear, perfect, was broken down, ruined, and his work was to repair it and make it complete again; and that is where we are. If we are called into anything, we are called into that. We are not called upon to do what the Apostles did. They did their work, and it stands; but since their time there has been a good deal that speaks of the conditions of Nehemiah's day - a good deal of collapse, of breakdown, of disintegration and of spoliation; and the Lord calls in to recover, to recover what was. That, surely, is the work to which we are called.

So we look first of all at the wall in brokenness. Here it is: "Then said I unto them, Ye see the evil case that we are in, how Jerusalem lieth waste, and the gates thereof are burned with fire: come, and let us build up the wall of Jerusalem, that we be no more a reproach" (Neh. 2:17). The last word touches the spot, does it not? See the great enemy of God, of Christ, of the testimony of our Lord, having it as his one abiding object to bring reproach upon the Name of the Lord - anyhow, by any means, whether by direct assault or by subtle underworking; somehow to bring the Lord's Name and testimony into reproach. "That we be no more a reproach". What a motive to govern the people of God, to save the Lord and His people from the reproach of this broken-down condition!

[Shammu]

Idolatry the Cause of the Broken-Down Condition

We must, before we can move to the recovery, examine and trace the fundamental and ultimate reason for this state of things. We are taking our cue from the illustration in this book and in the other books leading up to it. There is one word that goes to the root of the whole matter, and that word is idolatry. If you look at the wall in its ruins, its wreckage; if you meditate and contemplate and ask questions - 'Why? Why this? How is it that this is come about? What are the reasons for this state of things?' - the inclusive and fundamental answer is - idolatry.

Is it not very impressive to recognize that, because of the idolatry in Israel, the nation was sent to the very heart of idolatry to be cured of it? Babylon was the world centre of idolatry - you know that from the great image set up. Now Israel had allowed idolatry in her midst, and the Lord sent her to the world centre of idolatry to be cured of idolatry. I say that it is impressive, and it just means this: that sometimes the Lord's way of curing is to give an overdose of the thing with which we flirt. They hankered and they flirted. The prophets cried, pleaded, wept, appealed, agonized, that the people would break with this thing, cease their flirtations with the gods of the heathen nations round about them: but they would not, they were wedded. 'All right', said the Lord; 'have what you are after - have it to the full' and indeed they had it to the full, and it cured Israel of idolatry in that form for the rest of their history. I am not saying that it cured them of the spirit of idolatry; we shall see that later. But that form of open complicity with the power of evil was destroyed by their being given that upon which their hearts were set.

Here is the extreme instance of the working of a certain law. The Psalmist said about Israel in the wilderness: "And he gave them their request, but sent leanness into their soul" (Ps. 106:15). They refused to let go. They would have; they said 'yes' in the face of God's 'no'. 'We will have.' 'All right', said the Lord - and they were the losers in their getting.

Now that principle does work, you know, and I am not so sure that it is not working today. In the Church, in Christianity, the world has found its place. The Church of God went out to the world and brought the world in. There has been complicity with the spirit of this world, it has found a large place in Christianity; and while it is not my desire to speak in this way, we must be very faithful. Perhaps all unperceived, all unrecognized - God grant that it is so - even in evangelical Christianity, there is a good deal of worldly principle, the bringing in of unspiritual things - names, titles, resources and what not, to do the work of God. There is a hidden complicity to get favour, to get advantage; there is behind all that another spirit - the spirit of idolatry - which is getting a grip upon the Lord's people. Very well: what has happened? The Lord has let the Church have what it wants, and today it is feeling that it has lost its power, lost its position, because the world has too much of a place. In its gaining it has lost: that is very patent, is it not?

That principle works - and mark you, it works personally too, if your heart is so set upon something that you will not take 'no' from the Lord; you insist, you will have it; and your threat to the Lord, even if it is not put in the form of a threat, is that unless the Lord gives you that, or does that for you, you are not going on. If there is anything like that, the Lord will give it to you, He will let you have it. It will be a curse to you. Abraham did that over Ishmael - and what a curse You see, there is the principle. Now the point is this, that these people allowed idolatry to come into their lives, in spirit and in principle; and the Lord, through His prophet, "rising up early", appealed; but they refused to listen to the voice of the prophet, so the Lord said: 'All right, have what you want - away to Babylon!' They lost everything.

What is idolatry? If it is not bowing down to idols of wood and stone, it takes many, many subtle forms, and very often indirect ways. It is just heart communion with anything that takes God's place, that gets in God's way. What a lot of ground that covers! The ultimate effect is that the Lord is frustrated, the Lord is hindered, the Lord cannot have what He is after. That is idolatry in principle. It displaces the Lord, it makes difficulties for the Lord.

I said earlier that, although Israel was cured of that outer form of idolatry, the principle or spirit of idolatry was not eradicated: for in the days of our Lord they were worshipping tradition - and tradition can be an idol. Yes, tradition can be an idol: you can be so committed and devoted to tradition that the Lord does not have a chance. It obstructs the Lord's way, like the rubbish that Nehemiah could not pass - the beast that he rode could not pass the rubbish. Very often the rubbish in the Lord's way is the rubbish of a dead tradition, of a dead history, something that belongs to the past and is not alive now. That is the principle of idolatry. That was the fundamental and ultimate cause of the brokenness of the wall, the wreckage, the rubbish, the debris: idolatry, heart union and communion with that which is not of the Lord.

Remember that this book of Nehemiah is full of bad conditions, of evils and errors, and these things correspond to the state of the wall. I want you to get this, although I shall come back to it again. You look at that wall and examine it, and you can look through it, so to speak; and in looking through you see that the conditions of the Lord's people tally exactly with the condition of the wall. There are all sorts of wrongs and evils and errors, and that is the rubbish, that is the broken-down state of things. You see, the people's state corresponded to the state of the wall; the wall was just an illustration of spiritual conditions: so that when you come to 'look through' this wall, you find that what you are dealing with really is not a wall but spiritual conditions; and as Nehemiah went forward to deal with the wall, he found that he had at the same time to deal with spiritual conditions in the people. They were one and the same thing. It would in effect be foolish to put up a beautiful wall when the conditions behind the wall were a contradiction. You see the point? The two things must be consistent - the spiritual state and your testimony. The testimony must have a spiritual condition behind it. A spiritual condition must support the testimony. You cannot work upon building up something that is not in the energy of truth.

We shall see further what the wall means, and what the wall is made of; but for the time being, the Lord bring us into His own vision, into His own intention, and energize us with the same energy as that which possessed His servant Nehemiah and His servant Paul, and many others whom He has used to recover something more of the testimony of His Son.

[Shammu]

Chapter 3 - The Fundamental Matter of Worship

We are occupied with what is represented by a clause in a statement made by Nehemiah when, being invited by his enemies, in their subtlety, to come and meet them in some place apart, in order to ensnare him, he said: "I am doing a great work, so that I cannot come down". We are shortening that statement to "a great work": for this book of Nehemiah sets forth, in figure, in historic illustration, the great work of God. Nehemiah, as we have seen right at the beginning of the book, says that he disclosed to no one what God had put in his heart to do. Later he did disclose it, but this great work to which he refers was something that God had laid upon his heart.

Before we proceed with this matter of the rebuilding of the wall of testimony, I want to put in here a very important and inclusive parenthesis - not based upon any particular clause or text, but upon that which pervades and underlies the whole: that is, worship.

For when we come to think about it, Jerusalem, defined by its wall, just speaks inclusively and comprehensively of the matter of worship. Indeed, Jerusalem's very existence was for that purpose. Babylon, as we saw earlier, was the seat and centre of false worship, idolatry, something that was not of God. Jerusalem always stands over against Babylon in the Bible as the opposite of that. It stands for the worship of God; it is the place of God's worship. So this wall of Jerusalem is a figure of that which encompasses the worship of God, and is in itself a figure of worship. Worship is the first thing in the whole history of relationship with God, and worship is the last thing. We find reference made in the Bible to worship going on before the world was, before the creation was undertaken - the "sons of God" occupied with worshipping Him before the foundation of the world. Who those sons of God were we do not know, but there is the statement. They sang together for joy, they worshipped the Lord. It was there, it was happening.

Then worship comes in as the governing factor in the Creation. As we know, it was a breakdown in worship which was the basic sin of Adam: then, when that matter has been upset here in this earth, God institutes the whole course of worship during the ages and maintains a testimony to Himself. One of the last things we have in the Bible is this universal worship of Him. And Jerusalem was, I repeat, so far as type and figure and historic illustration are concerned, the Lord's earthly seat of worship - of the maintenance of worship unto Himself. We are carried in the New Testament and in this dispensation from the earthly to the heavenly, we are come to "the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable hosts of angels to... the church of the firstborn" (Heb. 12:22-23): and it is worship. It is worship re-established in heaven.

Worship is Redemption Unto God

So we look at this matter of worship for a few minutes. We are seeing that Nehemiah's work was the rebuilding of the wall of Jerusalem, and really it was a redemptive work - the work of redeeming the situation, redeeming the testimony. It was a work of redemption. Now, we know quite well that redemption is unto God. "Hast redeemed us to God" (Rev. 9, A.V.) - that is the phrase. And worship just simply means that - everything redeemed unto God, brought back to God, recovered for God; and that mighty work of redemption is still operating - in this sense, that it is against a certain natural trend and course of things which has come into the creation through what happened between Satan and Adam. Redemption is recovering from a certain trend. The trend of the creation now is always downward. In every part of the creation, the natural course is downward. You are contending with that in some way or another every day. Anybody who has a garden knows that it is a constant day-by-day work of redemption from a downward tendency. Any doctor or nurse is day by day contending with the downward course of physical life. Unless the body is looked after, unless there is a 'counter operation' brought in, the course is naturally downward, there is deterioration; and so the medical profession are in their realm occupied with redemption. And so we might go on into every realm, because everywhere and in everything that is the natural way - decline.

And if that is true in the natural creation, the physical creation, how true it is in the spiritual. The Bible is one comprehensive revelation of the fact that, unless there is a counter power brought in from heaven, everything goes down. Again and again and yet again, in the Bible, we find these movements downward taking place - decline, degeneration, and God reacting to redeem from that course, to redeem unto Himself. Worship, then, means the redemption of everything unto God, giving the significance of God to things.

[Shammu]

Worship a Matter of Motive

Let us think for a moment of the rudimentary element in worship, leaving religion aside for the moment. Worship goes on altogether apart from any religious system or form. It is there in the very constitution. What is worship in its elementary principle? Well, it is just the element of motive in life - that is, worthwhileness to live, it being worth while to live. The very lowest, the very saddest and most tragic state to which anyone can come is to have lost all interest in life, to be saying, 'There is nothing now for which to live, I have nothing to live for'. You could not get lower than that. Life has been given up; life holds nothing worthwhile. That worthwhileness is the principle of worship. It is a motive for living, something for which to live, and that is present in all the world, except in those tragic realms where people have already given up life because they have no more interest and no more motive. I say that is the saddest and the most terrible thing that can ever come to anyone. Except where that obtains, worship is just this, that there is something to live for, that there is something worth while in being alive. That is the principle of worship.

Now you carry that into a much larger and higher realm. What is there to live for? What is the greatest thing for which to live? And there you bring worship into its right realm, and worship becomes this - 'Why, the greatest thing to justify life and to give meaning and value and worthwhileness to life is the Lord!' Not this world, as something to be worshipped, nor its kingdoms, not its princes or its god; but the Lord being worthy, the most worthwhile object in life, having all the worthwhileness of our very being and existence: so that He holds the full place, the central place; the Lord is the object always in view.

Worship is not going to some ecclesiastical building week by week, perhaps once or twice, to attend what is called Divine worship. That is not worship. That may be just empty form; that may be patronising God. It may be anything short of the reality. Worship is a life thing, not a weekly thing; certainly not once a quarter at the 'quarterly communion', or on the great feast days of the Church - Easter, Christmas and so on. Worship is this, that life is for the Lord. Every moment, every hour, every day, every week and every year - it is all for the Lord. That is worship. Our first thought in the morning is the Lord, and our last thought at night is the Lord; and although there are many occupations of mind and hand during the hours of the day, there is something behind the one who has been redeemed unto God that is always reaching out to Him.

The lives of such are the prayer of worship. They are not always putting it into language and phrases, and they are not always on their knees, and they are not always in meetings; but from behind them, so to speak, there is that which is reaching out to the Lord - they long for the Lord. It is true of them, as it was true of those in Israel in the days of Jerusalem's glory, though they were far from Jerusalem, that they long for Jerusalem. 'Oh, to be there, the place of the altar, the place of God, the place of worship!' Their longings were there, and away they could never be satisfied. They expressed this true principle. When in Babylon they were taunted, this remnant whose heart was in Jerusalem - taunted by the Babylonians: "Sing us one of the songs of Zion" (Ps. 137:3). 'Sing us one of your folk-songs of Jerusalem'. "Upon the willows... we hanged up our harps... How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?" Their longing was to be there. They were drawn. We should understand that in a spiritual way. Our Jerusalem is no focal point on this earth, but there ought to be that about us which is always out to the Lord; which asks: 'How much more of the Lord can there be in our lives?'

If you read this book of Nehemiah in the light of that, it will be entirely revolutionized for you, marvellously illuminated. Nehemiah begins with this tremendous yearning for the Lord, away there in Babylon. He comes to Jerusalem and takes in the situation and deplores that this is not to the honour of the Lord, and he weeps and he prays and he sets to work and he draws others in, and he is not at rest until this thing is finished at all costs - a testimony to the Lord raised up in fullness, in completeness. It is all a spirit of worship; and the people who came in, of whose work we have yet to speak, they had a mind to work, they were of a willing spirit; but, you see, it was the spirit of worship. They, in their own way, were fulfilling what Paul says in his letter to the Romans: "I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship" (Rom. 12:1, A.R.V.). They were giving their bodies to this work, and it was spiritual worship in motive. Worship, then, springs out of a motive.

The Lord Draws Near on the Basis of Worship

Now that is just the divide point in the Bible. When God made man and brought him into fellowship with Himself, everything was for the Lord. Man had no other object in view for which to live and work than the Lord. It was a beautiful state of things. It was man and the Lord, and the Lord, it would seem, coming in the cool of the evening, walking in the garden to receive those whom He had made and there was joy in their life and in their work. The Lord had pleasure in that. It is always shown in the Bible that the Lord has pleasure in, and draws near to, those who are in a state of worship. That is to say, the Lord's drawing near is on the ground that their heart is out to Himself. You never find the Lord drawing near when it is otherwise, unless it be in judgment. But when the Lord comes in blessing, in benediction, it is because there are hearts out to Himself, and if the Lord came there into the garden, as He is shown to have done, it was because there were hearts toward Him, because He found there that which satisfied Him. When the Lord Jesus was here it was like that. He loved to be where He found a heart open to Him, ready to receive Him, ready to answer to His desires. That is why He went to Bethany so often. There was a heart there for Him, for the Lord. There was a spirit of worship.

[Shammu]

The Devil's Deception of Mankind

But then there came the terrible break, and the enemy came into the garden to divert from God, to divert to himself. But how? - and this is a terrible thing to recognize. He brought man's own personal interests into view, man's own personal interests first, and showed him that he could have something - he could get something. Up to that point it was all that the Lord could get, and now the situation is that man can have something. The enemy was working in a deep and subtle way to draw away from God to himself; and so, getting man into alliance with himself; he deceived man into thinking that he was going to have the benefit, when all the time it was the devil who was going to have the benefit. That is the deception of mankind. He was turned from God to get something, a good time, this world, and all that, and in the end he finds he has been duped, and the devil has got it all - and him into the bargain. That is the tragedy and the deception. But you see the point: it was in order to draw away from God by this self-interest, this self-ishness - and that broke the worship. From that time it has been like that. The world is a selfish world, a world that draws to itself, that does not give God His place, does not let Him have everything, first and last. That is how things are.

But now God wants His spiritual Jerusalem: He wants that recovered where everything, voluntarily and gladly - delightingly - is for the Lord; a people who delight in the Lord. Our Lord Jesus was the embodiment of this principle. "I delight to do thy will, O my God" (Ps. 11:. His delight was in the Lord. He is the true embodiment of the spirit of the heavenly Jerusalem, where everything, not under constraint but wholeheartedly, is unto the Lord.

A Divided Heart

Now you look at this wall in its ruin, in its brokenness, as we are doing at this time, and you say again, 'Why this state of things? Why this picture of tragedy? What is come to pass that everyone seeing it wags the head or heaves a sigh? What has happened that that which was once so glorious has come to this? Why is it?' And the answer is: 'Their worship went away from the Lord; the very thing for which Jerusalem existed, that is, to be wholly for the Lord, was broken into; they allowed other objects of worship to seize upon their hearts and lives'. Yes, the Lord was displeased, and therefore Jerusalem had no justification in continuing in the sight of God. God sees no reason why it should go on at all, and so He hands it over to destruction. It was not what it was meant to be.

And may that not be the explanation of a good deal of weakness - yes, in our lives, and in the Church as a whole, in that which bears the name of the Lord; defeat, brokenness, the absence of those signs that the Lord is present those marks of the Lord's pleasure? May it not be that there is a dividedness of heart, a reservation in our lives? that there is, after all, somewhere deep down, some self-principle at work? May it not be that? I am not judging but I do know the deception of these hearts of ours. They are indeed "deceitful above all things" (Jer. 17:9). Very often, when we think that what we are doing is for the Lord, we are having a good deal of pleasure in it ourselves, and if in the service of the Lord the element of personal pleasure is withheld or covered, we have a very bad time - after all, it was somehow or other for ourselves. Yes, it is like that. We do not want to be too introspective, but you see what I mean. The Lord looks on the heart, and when He really sees that the heart is wholly toward Him, that there is no mixture, no other god, no other interest, then the Lord commits Himself to that life, to that Jerusalem. The Lord commits Himself where it is wholly for Him. That is worship.

Now you see, the ground of Satan's detracting and diverting from God is this wretched self-life in one or other of its numerous forms. Over against that, God's ground, where He encamps, where He commits Himself, is the ground of Himself alone. God commits Himself to Himself, and to no one else. If the Lord is here, if the Lord has His place fully and wholly, utterly, if it is all for the Lord, the Lord will commit Himself to that ground; not to our ground and certainly not to Satan's ground; but to Himself. If it is for Himself, then He will be for Himself, and we all agree that that is perfectly safe and anything else would not be safe at all. The Lord is the only safe ground upon which He Himself can work and be present.

A Disposition for the Lord

Now, with just one little further word about this motive, I will close. The Apostle, in that great word on worship in Romans 12:1-2, follows on - and we must not stop short half-way through the statement, we must watch the conjunction as he goes on - "... which is your spiritual worship. And be not fashioned according to this age: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind" - the 'making anew' of your mind. A 'mindedness' is the principle and motive of worship. What are we disposed to? Is our whole disposition for the Lord, all our 'disposedness' unto the Lord? "Be... transformed by the renewing of your mind" - your mindedness, your inclination, your disposition - unto a new disposition, altogether different from that which came in with Adam in what we call the Fall.

Thank God for this; it is true. It is more true, perhaps, than we often realize or recognize. I think that very often we are troubled and bothered about something that is not true as to ourselves. We are thinking untruths about ourselves. Of course, we know our proneness to sin, we know the evil that is in our flesh, we know how wicked we are and how unworthy, and all that; but then we allow that to go too far. I ask you this: with all our unworthiness, all our sinfulness, all that is evil in our flesh, have we not a heart for the Lord after all? We feel we blunder, we err - yes, but we have a heart for the Lord. Where did that come from? There was a time when we had no heart for the Lord, when we had no disposition, no tendency, that way; we were not inclined after the Lord. But something has happened in us deeper and stronger than all our weaknesses and our waywardness and our faults and our follies and our sins. There is a reaction that rises up every time we make a mistake, and sends us back to the Lord in grief, in sorrow, in disappointment, in longing, and we are not happy again until we have found the Lord.

Where does that disposition come from? It is something done by Him. That is the basis of worship; that is the ground upon which the Lord will get everything. So do not let us be discouraged by ourselves too much. You will never think that I am saying that we are to condone our sinfulness and our foolishness and to give place to them; but it is a glorious fact that, while all this is true, and Satan can tell us so much about ourselves that is bad, nevertheless we can reply in the words of the hymn:

I know it all, and thousands more:
Jehovah findeth none.

We can come back against all accusation and say, 'Nevertheless God has done something in me that has set my heart toward Him. With all my failures, my heart is toward Him. With all my breakdowns, I am for the Lord'. And so we go on. This spirit, this law of worship, consumes and consumes, and we find at last in His presence that there is nothing else left but Himself, just Himself.

That is a simple word, but that after all underlies all that is here about Jerusalem. All that we shall have to say, or could say, as to the details of this matter of the rebuilding of the wall has its roots in the soil of worship. This Jerusalem is to be a praise in the earth; it is to speak of the glory of God. It is all to point toward the Lord. It is all to testify to His glory and honour. That is what Jerusalem exists for, and that is what we who are of the spiritual and heavenly Jerusalem exist for - to bring everything back to the Lord, to bring delight to His heart, and to constitute a testimony that He is satisfied.

[Shammu]

Chapter 4 - The Principle of Resurrection

"... and salt without prescribing how much" (Ezra 7:22).

"Ye are the salt of the earth: but if the salt have lost its savour, wherewith shall it be salted? it is thenceforth good for nothing, but to be cast out and trodden under foot of men" (Matthew 5:13).

"Salt is good: but if the salt have lost its saltness, wherewith will ye season it? Have salt in yourselves" (Mark 9:50).

We come back to the book of Nehemiah, and in connection with the rebuilding of the wall of Jerusalem under the inspired leadership of Nehemiah, we want to look at one more inclusive factor which this work represents. We are speaking about the recovery of the Lord's testimony - what Nehemiah spoke of as the "great work" which God hath put into his heart to do - and when we come to consider this recovery on the positive side, there is one great principle of recovery which includes all the other work. It is the principle of resurrection. It does not require very much profound thought to recognize that the rebuilding of the destroyed wall of Jerusalem comes into line with a testimony of resurrection, and to see how 'all of a piece' this is with Israel's history, because we are seeing - I trust we can say that - that this wall is an emblem of the spiritual history of the people. What is true of the wall at this time is true of the people. The wall only expresses the condition of the people - spiritually broken down, with many gaps, nothing complete or perfect, nothing to full satisfaction, and therefore nothing to the glory of God.

We pointed out, earlier, that Nehemiah was contemporary with Malachi, and Malachi's prophecies give us a very clear, though very terrible, account of the spiritual condition of the people of God at that time. So this wall, representing the state of the people, reveals very clearly the need for a resurrection. Israel's history repeatedly called for that, but in this very connection you will remember that, in looking on beyond the captivity, the greater prophets had spoken of their return as resurrection. For instance, Ezekiel, with the captivity fully in view, had cried to the people, as commanded by the Lord: "Behold, I will open your graves, and cause you to come up out of your graves" (Ezek. 37:12); and in that great picture-parable of this - the valley of dry bones - we have undoubtedly the matter of resurrection in relation to Israel after the captivity, after the exile. So that their coming back a remnant from Babylon to Jerusalem, and building or rebuilding the wall, answers to the prophecies concerning resurrection, although in the temporal and earthly aspect the fulfilment is very imperfect. A much greater fulfilment is still in view.

But here is the point - it is a matter of resurrection. The going into captivity was first of all judgment, judgment for sin, and it is therefore represented as followed by death: for death follows in the wake of judgment, and Israel is represented as having gone into death, into a grave; their exile being in the nature of a spiritual grave. If we ask what death is, it is being put away from God, it is separation from God. And so it was with them. They were out of the place where God had appointed to meet them; they were away from the Lord. And if to be put away from the Lord in judgment is anything, it certainly is death.

The Resurrections of the Earthly Jerusalem

Now whenever God has moved again to recover His testimony in any part or in greater fullness, such movement has always been marked by that which is inherent in resurrection, namely, newness of life - or, to put it in another form, victory over death. It has always been like that, and it always is like that. A movement of God in relation to His testimony in greater fullness always has the character of a resurrection, the nature of a new life.

The historical records of Jerusalem show that the city has been again and again the scene of sieges, overrunnings and destructions. The very survival of Jerusalem just as an earthly city is nothing short of a miracle. There are other great cities which, so far as this world is concerned, have been far greater and more glorious than Jerusalem. Babylon, for instance, Ur of the Chaldees, and we might even say Rome, with others. They were great and mighty cities, from the standpoint of men greater and mightier than Jerusalem. But, so far as their former glory is concerned, they have gone down once and for all. Babylon - where is Babylon? Ur - where is Ur? A year or two ago I flew over Ur of the Chaldees - and what could be seen? Nothing but excavations of centuries gone by. And Rome - what is Rome now compared with the great and glorious imperial city of past centuries? a shadow filled with monuments and ruins, things which speak of the past glory. These cities have gone down, to rise again no more as they were.

But Jerusalem - she has come up, again and again she has come up after siege and destruction, showing quite clearly that God - the God of resurrection - is interested in Jerusalem. He is maintaining, even in the world, in a temporal Jerusalem - a poor thing from man's standpoint; I do not think any one would really choose to live in Jerusalem apart from sentiment - He is maintaining, in a Jerusalem that has been raised as from the dead again and again, a parable of the greater truth.