Recently I led a small group in our church through the book of Nehemiah. Nehemiah is a fascinating book for study in that it has many facets that are applicable to the reader.
Are you looking for a book on leadership in difficult situations?
Read Nehemiah
Are you looking for a book on doing a building project at your church?
Read Nehemiah.
Are you rebuilding your life that has been a long list of disasters?
Read Nehemiah.
In the book, Nehemiah constantly has to deal with 2 non-jews who seem to have much influence on the people living in and around the ruins of Jerusalem. These two people are : Tobiah (an Amonite) and Sanballat (a Horonite). Throughout the re-building of Jerusalem's gates and walls these two people make life difficult for Nehemiah and his people. They constantly send messages of discouragement to them, mock them and try to make them afraid to prevent them from completing the work on the wall.
In one instance Sanballat tries to make them question their right to rebuild the walls (a written direction the King of Persia has given Nehemiah authority to do). Sanballat says to them 2:19, "What are you doing? Are you rebelling against the king?". Here he tries to sow the seeds of doubt into the people of Jerusalem.
In another instance, Sanballat tells the people of Samaria (vs 4:2-3) , "What are those feeble Jews doing? Will they restore their wall? Will they offer sacrifices? Will they finish in a day? Can they bring the stones back to life from heaps of rubble - burned as they are?". To which Tobiah adds, "What are they building... even a fox climbing on it would break down their wall of stones!" They do this to hopefully create hostility with the Jews and the people of Samaria to create a war with them.
Nehemiah ignores their insults and asks God for help and strength to finish their work.
Later, Tobiah threatens them with being attacked while they work on the wall. They hope that either the Jews will stop building and be ready for attack or the Jews will keep building but not ready themselves for an attack and they would ambush them on a regular basis. Nehemiah chooses to have the people arm themselves as they work on the wall and have half the men stand guard over the workers. While this does slow down the work, it doesn't prevent them from finishing.
After all this they finally complete the walls and the gates and celebrate. Nehemiah doesn't stop with just working on the walls of the city. He connects the people back with their Jewish faith and he has them make oaths to keep God's laws and support the Temple with their offerings.
Nehemiah then returns to Babylon to fulfill his promise to the king. Sometime later, Nehemiah returns to check up on them and what he finds is a total disgrace.
To his amazement, he finds that a room in the temple that should be filled with grain from the tithes of the people (used for grain offerings on the altar) instead re-purposed as a room for Tobiah. The man who ridiculed and mocked them relentlessly now has a sleeping quarter in the temple. He has shacked up in God's temple.
You might be asking "How can they let this happen?"
The answer is provided that many people owed money to Tobiah and this may have been their way to pay off their debt to him.
But we are often no different than the people in the book of Nehemiah. Satan, like Tobiah, makes us slaves again of our sins and shacks up in our hearts. We set aside areas for sins we have come accustomed to over time. They are so invasive we don't even recognize them as the enemy of God anymore. They take up space that should be for God's purpose only and crowd out his Spirit in our lives. How the Amonite people must have laughed the people of Jerusalem as their leader had a personal room in their temple to their God. So also, the people of the world may laugh at us as we too try to appease them live as people of the world rather than as God's people.
What rooms in your heart have you "re-purposed" and what are they now used for?
Has the room marked "Love" been changed to "Hate"?
Has the room marked "Faith" been changed to "Doubt"?
Has the room marked "Grace" been changed to "Revenge"?
Has the room marked "Tithes" been changed to "Personal use"?
Maybe there is someone whom you have not forgiven that is "living in your head rent free" and you find you waste much of your attention and thoughts on this person.
Nehemiah comes and has the rooms cleared out and purified and puts people in charge he can trust to keep them from falling back into ungodly uses.
God also comes back in our lives and clears out our hearts, but it's not enough to "clean house", they must be filled with God's spirit. As Jesus points out that as when an unclean spirit is removed from a person it searches for another place to find shelter. If it cannot find another host it will return back to the person. If it finds the room clean, in order but not inhabited by God it will bring 10 other spirits worse than itself and it will be worse for the person in the end.
Spend some time walking through the rooms of your hearts Temple and see what areas you have re-purposed or taped-off from God's use. Ask God for forgiveness and begin the needed work of putting back what is God's only.
