Page 17 - TORCH #18 - May 2021

The following extract is from Episode 1 of ‘Lessons from Nehemiah, Rebuilding Broken Walls’.
The Burden for Jerusalem
And they said to me, “The survivors who are left from the captivity
in the province are there in great distress and reproach. The wall of Jerusalem is also broken down, and its gates are burned with fire.”
So it was, when I heard these words, that I sat down and wept, and mourned for many days; I was fasting and praying before the God of heaven. Nehemiah 1:3-4
This is a true story of how God used a humble servant of the Lord for
His greater purpose. It is
set at a time when a small percentage of Jews had already started to return to Jerusalem following the end of the Babylonian captivity. The return to Jerusalem
was prompted by the royal decree by King Cyrus of Persia. Judah was now a province of Persia and King Artaxerses I was reigning at the time of Nehemiah. The Bible says that Nehemiah was King Artaxerses’s cup bearer in the Persian royal palace in Susa, or Shushan, which today is known as the city of Shush in Iran.
Now any great move of God begins with God doing a great work in somebody.
He was Ben Hachaliah, or son
The name Nehemiah means ‘Yehovah comforts’;
people were left completely open and vulnerable to
its enemies. They had no defence and no protection at all. They lived not as residents but ‘survivors’, as Nehemiah says, because their lives were one of constant survival, full of fear, stress and tension.
of Hachaliah, which
means ‘whom Yehovah enlightens’. It is fair to say that Nehemiah very much fulfilled the role of being enlightened by God to bring comfort to His people. What a description to live up to! May we too be enlightened to the truth to bring comfort to His people.
God is still moving in
our times. For Nehemiah it began with hearing the news first-hand that survivors of the captivity in Jerusalem were in great distress and reproach. And the wall of Jerusalem was broken down and its gates were burned with fire. Nehemiah 1:2 says Nehemiah asked concerning Jerusalem. The burden
for Jerusalem begins with having a heart for the things God loves and inquire with interest the things that concern Him.
The Bible says in Psalm 87, “The Lord loves the gates of Zion. More than all the dwellings of Jacob.” As we will discover in future episodes of this series, the gates are very symbolic because Jerusalem’s peace and security depended on strong walls and fortified gates. Not only did the broken walls expose the Temple of God, but His
The Lord did not will this for His people who had returned to their ancestral homeland. Nehemiah’s burden for Jerusalem was consistent with what the Bible clearly teaches us
to have. It says in Psalm 137:5-6,
“By the rivers of Babylon, There we sat down, yea, we wept
When we remembered Zion.
We hung our harps
Upon the willows in the midst of it.
For there those who carried us away captive asked of us a song,
And those who plundered us requested mirth, Saying, “Sing us one of the songs of Zion!”
How shall we sing the Lord’s song
In a foreign land?
If I forget you, O Jerusalem,
Let my right hand forget its skill!
If I do not remember you, Let my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth—
If I do not exalt Jerusalem Above my chief joy.
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