Nehemiah 2:7 Commentary - Dr Peter Masters

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Nehemiah 2:7

Comments

Clearly he had planned all that he was going to say to the king. ‘Moreover, I said unto the king, If it please the king, let letters be given me to the governors beyond the river’ – that is the river Euphrates – ‘that they may convey me over till I come into Judah;⁸ And a letter unto Asaph the keeper of the king's forest.’ Was that the forest of Lebanon? It is generally assume so, though some people believe there was a great royal park that belonged to the king of Persia, down in the region there, and which grew very special timber, and he wanted to take from there. But this is the request: that he may have permission to be given ‘timber to make beams for the gates of the palace which appertained to the house.’ That was a fortress which was there in Jerusalem next to the house of God, but it needed to be rebuilt. It's the very fortress which, after the developments of Herod, became the fortress Antonia, and the apostle Paul, you remember, was imprisoned there. But this is its predecessor fortress or citadel which was adjacent to the temple. That was going to be built. ‘And for the wall of the city.’ What would they have used huge timber beams for? Either for the gates or as part of the wall itself. ‘And for the house that I shall enter into’, and lest we should imagine that Nehemiah is going to construct for himself a tremendous house for which he needed a special amount of timber, this would be the centre of administration. This would be the government building of Jerusalem; there apparently wasn't one. So ‘the house that I shall enter into’ would not just have the rooms where Nehemiah would live, but it would be the centre of administration for the whole of Judah. ‘And the king granted me, according to the good hand of my God upon me.’ The sovereignty of God, and always, both Ezra before and now Nehemiah are careful to mention this. The king granted it, but the implication is that the king would not have done so, but for the sovereign action of God, ‘according to the good hand of my God upon me.’

Application

This is a good motto for us. Every project, every action, every witness begins in prayer, and is carried out in dependence upon God, and we don't forget to thank him and to praise him and to give him the glory. The three vital duties. There are videos available on the internet which are supposed to be examples of Reformed worship. One recently featured a well-known church, one of the big-time celebrity preachers of the Internet, who is supposed to be entirely Reformed and is very well-known and successful. But it was rather alarming. It began with the preacher not calling to prayer, no invocation, no call to worship, nothing like that; in fact no reference to God at all. The preacher came onto the platform to thunderous applause, if you please. The praise of man! Then he began to speak, and for a good five minutes it was just boast after boast. The first boast was what we, he said, as a church have accomplished. It was apparently the anniversary of something the church was doing, and this had now extended regionally across a great area, but it was about ‘what we have accomplished’, to be met with applause again. Then there was another boast – for the congregation, applauding themselves. This happened four or five times. Then after that – still no prayer, still no call to worship, still no reference to God – the preacher announced the conductor of the orchestra and the worship leader, and he was announced just as though it was a big time concert, with hand gestures, waving to him, and on he came to be met with – of course – thunderous applause. Certainly by this time in the service there was far more applause for the hero, for the congregation, for the worship-leader; we hadn’t even started with any mention of God yet. This was a service of worship. It was quite staggering. Then the congregation rose to sing about four hymns at a very galloping pace, with this large orchestra with a very loud percussion section, banging out the timing. But you go back to Nehemiah, and you start with prayer, you depend upon the Lord. You glorify him in everything you do. How we need to keep our eyes open. Some people may call themselves conservative Christian and Reformed, and they may even preach many true things, but their practices have completely abandoned the biblical standards of truth and worship.

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Nehemiah 2:7 Commentary and Bible Study