Nehemiah 7:4 Commentary - Dr Peter Masters

Navigator

Nehemiah 7:4

Comments

The sequence of events in Jerusalem in its reconstitution was temple first – Ezra came to rebuild the temple – then 13 years after him the wall was built next under Nehemiah, and then after that the population and the houses were to be reconstructed. That is very interesting: temple, wall, houses. That is the order of God in recovering from decline. You can see the significance. The temple had to come first. That which would be built, or at least the furnishings and the internal arrangements, would be exactly in accordance with revelation. They would follow precisely. That was the ancient command, from the tabernacle under Moses all the way on to the building of the Solomon's Temple. The instructions of God had to be precisely followed, and Ezra the priest came to supervise that. So obedience and worship came first in reformation, obedience to God. Then the wall comes next, the defence of the city. So we may say that if obedience and worship come first, then the defining and the defence of the faith comes next. You have to preserve and defend the faith. Then the populating of the city comes third. That is to say, in our context, evangelism, the winning of souls, the populating and building up of the church. You can't do that until you know what the faith is, until you're ready to defend the faith. You have got a clear gospel and you stand for it, but you can't do that until you start worshipping in the first place and obeying God. So this order of temple, walls, populating, should still be followed today in true reformation. If you leave any of those things out, or if you change the order as people try to do today, then you lose everything.

Application

Today there are endless books on church growth and different methods and different ways of going about things which are not the traditional ways and the biblical ways, and the great thing is said to be church growth. But they are not worshipping as they ought to, and they are not obeying God, and they haven't properly defined and defended the faith, not only the doctrines, but the practices. So everything is a pickle, and you're trying to populate the city when there's been no attention to the details of the temple – that is, the worship – and no attention to the proper defining and defending of the faith. Even here therefore in the very order in Jerusalem, you can see the order that must always be followed: temple first, wall, and then the populating of the city.

Even among Bible believers, there is nothing like as much obedience to God as there ought to be: how the church is ordered, how we go about things, how we do things. People are making innovations and inventing their own methods all the time in these days. But to recover from spiritual decline, the first thing was the great act of obedience, the careful construction of the temple, or at least its furnishings – because it was a smaller temple than the original – in exact conformity with the details which God ordained.

Questions

Outline

Purpose

Introduction

Nehemiah 7:4 Commentary and Bible Study