Nehemiah: A Selfless Overseer

Well, I wanted to talk a little bit this morning about guidance, leadership, sense of direction. We all are. Every person here except the children, per chance, and maybe even they have more influence and leadership than they realize. But all of us are leaders, and all of us need to seriously consider what happens with our influence. Because I think a good definition of leadership is just simply compelling influence. That word, influence, I always smile when I hear it said or when I say it. I don't know if you ever thought about it.

Influence is contagious. And leaders who truly lead are contagious people. And the contagion of what they represent has far-reaching effects. I'd like for you to turn to the book of Nehemiah. This is a book that doesn't get covered very often, and I just have been so inspired studying this book. This morning will be a little bit introductory, and then we'll get into the actual well, we'll get into the text this morning, but in sort of a general way.

I too welcome the visitors. I hope that when you leave here, your passion will be increased, your understanding will be enlightened, your sense of your responsibility will be clear as you leave this place. Everywhere we look in the world, we see problems.

Problems. Many people in the world today are in misery. In fact, since yesterday morning this time, 40,000 people starved to death in our world. When I think of that, that's just a horrible thought. And there's enough food to feed every one of them.

There's enough food to feed the world. The reason they starved is because of poor leadership. Every one of them could have been fed.

Most of the problems of the world are the result of poor leadership. I have said many times, less than a dozen, probably not more than about six criminal leaders in our world cause most of the misery. This is a very important subject. Now, it's interesting. The word leader is sort of a problematic word because people run off in all directions with it, and most of the directions they run are not good directions.

And I think it's interesting, what Dale Heisey pointed out I never would have noticed this, but he pointed out that it's a word that's almost never used in the New Testament. In fact, only well, when it is used, it's sometimes used if the blind lead the blind. So if you want to take that verse, I did find two verses where it's positive, and that's where Jesus led his disciples to the Mount of Transfiguration. Now, he wasn't leading them in some kind of a demanding way. He was actually leading them to a glorious experience. And then it talks about him leading his sheep out. And then it says he goes before them, so he's certainly not driving them.

So in those two instances, we have a very positive concept of leadership. But other than that, the word is not used in a positive sense. Anywhere else that I know of now, I stand corrected. If you find it, come tell me, and I'll add that to my notes so I say it right the next time. But to my knowledge, that word is not a word that's emphasized in the New Testament. Now, don't misunderstand me. We need leaders in the true sense of the word. I just told you that bad leaders have caused problems. We do need good leaders. It's not that I'm denying that.

In every congregation, there should be established leadership. There should be established authority and what should be respected and all of that. I don't want you to run away here with a wrong concept about that. But leadership is a very difficult and risky job. It's a very difficult and risky job, and very few people have done it well.

Leadership defined, I've already put it on the board, I say it's a wholesome influence. It's a wholesome influence. It's where people are brought from where they are to a better place. That's what I think of when I think of leadership. And history will say about a good leader, he saw what many people did not see, and he led them on a good path.

That, to me, is a characteristic of a good leader. You take Henry Good in Virginia. He led that congregation to a wonderful musical heritage. He had a vision, and he saw a need in the congregation, and so he began to have music schools. And he passed out music and taught people new songs, and he got little groups together. And if you talk to those people, music was a passion that he pursued, and there was a contagion, and they all became musical, pretty much. That's the community. That's how they're known.

Now, leadership is hazardous, and it's illustrated by an interesting question that was on my questionnaire when I filled out my questionnaire to go teach at Hartville. And I looked at this word, and I thought, "Why in the world would this be on a questionnaire, and what does it mean?" Here was the word.

How many know what this word means? Raise your hands.

Well, I'll give you the definition. I got it right out of the dictionary. To enhance the power, wealth, position, and reputation. And they didn't want a teacher in their school that had that as a goal.

You notice the word grand is in here. You're trying to make yourself more grand. That's what the word means. Self-agrandishment. This is the hazard of leadership. Self-agrandishment. Because there's opportunity there to become extremely wealthy, as we see almost all the leaders in our nation. They go to government, ordinary people. They come out millionaires owning mansions and all kinds of things. They got inside. They got inside information on the economy. They knew where to invest their money, and they took advantage of it for themselves.

You have the opportunity to dominate people. You have the opportunity to arrange your life so that nobody can touch you. All kinds of things leaders can do. And most leaders do, even in the church. I shouldn't say most in the church, but it happens in the church.

Selfish leaders.

Socialism. I tell people on the telephone when that subject comes up, I say, "I'll tell you what socialism is. It's a few elites making other people equally miserable while they pocket the cash." That's how it always turns out. Selfishness gets in there, and well, you've all heard the statement, power corrupts. And absolute power corrupts absolutely, and we see that all around us.

Now, a true leader is not looking for self-agrandishment. He's looking for self-sacrifice. This person is often misunderstood. Now, he must rally enough people to believe in his cause, or he'll never get anything accomplished. But there will be detractors. There always are. There are always detractors out there yapping away and yapping away, and some of them even in the church if it's a church leader.

And so he has to pursue a task that often isn't understood until after he's dead. And people say, "You know what? That congregation prospered, and these congregations didn't." And the reason for it is that man saw something and pursued something and inspired enough people and had enough contagion about him and enough wisdom and enough insight that he got them going in a direction that most of these people didn't see.

That sometimes happens after a person's dead. All right? A true leader sacrifices self, his reputation, his money, everything. He's willing to sacrifice to have this wholesome influence affect the people. Now, we studied the book of Mark here some time back, and we quoted this verse over and over again, and it probably is the best definition of true leadership in the whole Bible. "For even the Son of Man came not to be ministered unto." You see, many leaders, the idea is it's in it for me. He didn't come to be ministered unto, but to give his life a ransom for many. That's probably the most powerful statement on that subject in the Bible.

Now, we all know there were great leaders, Abraham, Moses, David. But when we think of great leaders, I don't think most people usually think of Nehemiah. And I hope by the time we're finished with this study, 10 years in the future, however long it takes, that you're convinced that here was a man that had some rare qualities of leadership. We will point them out this morning, but we'll be talking about them as we go along. He did a great work on a short leave of absence, 12 years. He took a leave of absence from his work in Persia to do his job. And in 12 years, he had taken the nation on a tremendous path in many, many different ways.

So we want to look at Nehemiah. There's a tendency to overlook him. His story is a classic story of excellent leadership. I often think about the influence of one person. Think about it. You have Samuel right there at the end of the Judges. Well, the Judges had taken the idea of authority and leadership to a low. I mean, it really gets bad by the end of Judges, and people really didn't have any confidence in their leadership. And then Samuel comes along, and confidence in leadership goes way up. And then Saul comes along, and it goes way down. Then David comes along, goes back up again.

Then Solomon comes along and takes it down. One person can have that kind of an influence on a society of people.

The title of this series is going to be Nehemiah, a Selfless Overseer. That's the term the New Testament loves to use for leadership. And I'll give you my simple little outline this morning. It will be

Nehemiah's times, Nehemiah's task.

And you're going to smile when I put this one on because I could not find another T-word that I liked. So it's going to be technique.

Now, you say that's a little bit that's a little bit unspiritual. But I'm going to quote to you a quote by a Methodist. I didn't know this person. I've seen his name occasionally. This is a leader in the past. His name was Samuel Chaswick. He once prayed, "Oh, Lord, make us intensely spiritual, but keep us perfectly natural and thoroughly practical."

I like that. Make us intensely spiritual, but keep us perfectly natural and perfectly practical. So that's my justification for using such a word. All right. Let's talk about Nehemiah's times. I'm going to put some dates on the board to help us just get a picture of Israel's history. We start with Abraham.

And I'm going to give you a date that you'll easily remember. 2000 BC. Whoop.

Okay.

And then we're going to jump through some history, and we'll get to David. 1000 BC.

Those are easy dates to remember. And then we have the nation finally rose to its high point under David. And then we come to Solomon. And Solomon led the nation to the brink of division. And the Bible says, "A divided house cannot stand." And that's where the nation of Israel started down.

And they went down. The nation of Israel had 19 kings. All of them were bad, every one of them. They had not a single good king. And they were carried away by the Assyrians in 722 BC.

The nation of Judah lasted longer. It finally fell in 586 BC. And now we're back. That's a very quick history of Israel. And now we're back to Nehemiah. Nehemiah, well, I should say this. Before Nehemiah, you had Zerubbabel, leading the first 50,000 Jews back from Persia in 536 BC.

And you know that the prophet Jeremiah said there would be 70 years of captivity. Well, you only see 50 there. And that's why when they built the temple and they started to work on Jerusalem, and they got attacked by the Samaritans who were around them, they said, "Well, the time isn't yet. We need another 20 years." And that's why Heggai and Zechariah come in and say, "Wait a minute. You build the temple.

The temple was finished in the next 20 years." Well, I'm sorry. It only took them four years to build it. But yeah, you only have 50 years here. And then you have, of course, Ezra coming a couple of years later. And I don't think I have that date.

I might have it here. Just a second. I don't have Ezra. But finally, we have Nehemiah.

And he's appearing on the scene in 444 BC. So that's sort of the timeline of Israel's history up to Nehemiah. Now, I want you to turn to 2 Chronicles, chapter 36. We're going to do some skipping this morning, which I don't usually like to do, but there's no other way to do this. 2 Chronicles, 36:18 and 19.

And all the vessels, we're talking now about Nebuchadnezzar when he sacked Jerusalem. And all the vessels of the house of God, great and small, and the treasures of the house of the Lord, and the treasures of the king and of his princes, all these brought he to Babylon. And they burnt the house of the Lord and broke down the wall of Jerusalem and burnt all the palaces thereof with fire and destroyed all the goodly vessels thereof.

It was a complete destruction. I don't know how many of you have ever seen a picture of Dresden after World War II. I actually visited that city. Dresden, after World War II, to my knowledge, I think had one standing building. I mean, you just saw rubble. That's all it was. Berlin wasn't a whole lot better.

Well, that's what this looked like when it finally was sacked. Notice, the house of God was burnt. The wall was completely broken down. It was leveled. And finally, and they went to Babylon, of course. And they were carried off as captives, chained together, probably. 800 miles to walk to Babylon after this horrible destruction.

That's what happened to this nation.

Then we have, of course, the Babylonians were conquered by the Medes and the Persians. The Medes were a weaker nation, and they finally became absorbed into Persia, so we usually just say Persia.

And Persia overthrew Babylon. And then I want you to stay in this chapter. Look at verse 22. Now, in the first year of Cyrus, king of Persia, that the word of the Lord spoken by the mouth of Jeremiah might be accomplished, the Lord stirred up the spirit of Cyrus, king of Persia, that he made a proclamation throughout all his kingdom and put it also in writing, saying, "Thus says Cyrus, the king of Persia, all the kingdoms of the earth hath the Lord God given to me, and he hath charged me." Now, this is his heathen king speaking. "He hath charged me to build him a house in Jerusalem, which is in Judah."

And he says, "Who wants to go back and do this? We're going to give you provisions. We're going to give you help to do this because God told me to do it." Now, how did God tell Cyrus to do it?

Well, the story is, if you go back to Isaiah, 200 years before, God prophesied that this man would do this. And it said, here again, as it's legend, it said that the Jews went to Cyrus and got out their scroll and showed him this prophecy.

And apparently, God put it in his heart to believe what was on that ancient scroll. And so he says, "God put it in my heart to do this, and we're going to build this temple in Jerusalem." Okay?

Now, the first company that returned under Zerubbabel was 50,000 people. Okay, that was in 536. 80 years later, I do have the date. I don't have the date on there, but 80 years later, Ezra comes back with 2,000 more. It's a very small remnant. People had prospered in Babylon, and most of them had no interest in going back to a ruined city and rebuilding it. And it was a real challenge to rebuild this city, as we'll see.

Now, what had happened in the time we're talking about the times of Nehemiah. So what had happened in the intervening years? Well, what had happened was that a new temple had been built. It wasn't extremely encouraging. As you recall, it was a smaller temple. It wasn't nearly as grand as the temple they had had, Solomon's temple. And the older men actually wept when they saw it.

They had done that. But Ezra found that the princes, the rulers, the priests, the Levites, and the people had intermarried with the surrounding idolatrous people. That's what Ezra found when he finally got there. That's what had happened. They built a temple, but they had started to compromise with the people around them.

And Ezra had to deal with that. Now, the people around them were a real problem. We find that in Nehemiah. They did not want this city built. They were Samaritans. This was their land. And they did everything they possibly could, I think even in the time of Ezra, to make sure these people didn't do anything.

They hadn't done anything about the wall, and they certainly would have cared to rebuild that wall. But apparently, the pressure was so intense. And I want you to get this because Nehemiah knows this when he goes to Jerusalem, that he's going to face all of this. He's going to face a very discouraged people. He's going to face a wall that's broken down. He's going to find people who aren't even have much spirit to rebuild it. The surrounding people don't want them to build it. They had sent a message back to the king and said to him, "Look, these people are building this temple.

You check the records. If they get this temple built, if this city is rebuilt, it's a rebellious city, and you're going to suffer damage." And so they quit building the temple. And Nehemiah knew there was going to be that kind of pressure, and it was when he got there, as we will see as we go through these lessons.

So they had rebuilt the temple, and Ezra had established true worship. All right. So that had happened before Nehemiah got there. Now, Nehemiah returns in December of 444 BC. He had a tough task. I already went through some of it. Discouraged people. If you look at now, let's turn to Nehemiah. Let's get into Nehemiah, and we can look at some of this, what he faced.

217.

He tells him, "Come, let's rebuild this wall. You see the distress we are in." That's what he faced when he came back. "A distressed people. How Jerusalem lieth waste, and the gates thereof are burned with fire. Come, let us build up the wall of Jerusalem. We be no more a reproach." So they had a bad name. They were reproached, those people.

He said, "Let's build this wall, and let's get rid of this reproach." He found insurmountable rubble. Look at 214. "And then I went on to the gate of the fountain." He's doing a survey of the city. "And to the king's pool, but there was no place for the beast that was under me to pass." That gives you an idea. The rubble was a place you couldn't even pass with an animal.

Look at 410. Another reference to this. Sorry to have you paging through, but let's just look at some of these. Verse 10. "They were building this wall, and Judah said, 'The strength of the bearers of the burdens is decayed, and there is much rubbish, so that we are not able to build the wall.'" So they had all this rubbish to carry off, and they were weary.

He had that to face. We can look at 219. You don't have to turn through. "Ridicule and insinuation." They said, "We know why you're building this wall, Nehemiah. You want to be the king, and you want to rebel."

He had his enemies conspiring to fight against him. You had fifth columnists within Jerusalem. You had people in the city, Jewish people who were sympathetic and collaborating with the enemies. In fact, if you turn back to the last chapter, verse 13 of the last chapter, chapter 13.

Verse 28. "And one of the sons of Joida, the son of Elisha, the high priest, was a son-in-law to Sanballat."

I'm trying to help you see that this man was really up against it. Most people would have said, "I don't want the job." And if they did take the job, they'd know where to start. You have physical rubble. You have attitude. You have enemies. You have traitors inside the city. The work had not gone on for years because of it. And you're supposed to go now and get this going.

You had spiritual apostasy. We're going to find that at the end of the book. Ezra had dealt with it, but by the time Nehemiah got there a few years later, it was the same thing all over again. He had to deal with that.

You had slackers, believe it or not. Would you turn to chapter 3? They were building this wall. And next to them, the Terakoites repaired, but their nobles put not their necks to the work of the Lord. So you had that.

Here's the outline of the book, the whole book. Number one, we have the reconstruction of the wall. That's chapters 1 through 6. And second is chapters 7 through 13, the reinstruction of the people. So he had a double job to do. He had a physical wall to build, and he had to somehow get these people on the right track. He had quite a job. So what was his technique? What do we learn from Nehemiah?

Well, I'm first of all going to suggest that he was an ordinary man, just like any of us. Elijah said he was, or James said Elijah was. He said he was a man like passions, but he prayed.

I think of Longfellow's poem where it says, "Lives of great men all remind us. We can make our lives sublime and leave behind us footprints on the sands of time." I missed a couple of words there. We can. All of us can be extremely now, people don't do it for this reason. If they do it for this reason, then this self-aggrandishment that I had on the board comes into play. You don't do it for this reason. But they had the characteristics that we're going to talk about here. And every person sitting in this audience, whether you're a father, whether you're a mother, whether you're a church leader, whatever influential role you carry, you can all have these characteristics, and you can all leave footprints on the sands of time.

And you can all be a person that people can look back and say, "I'll tell you why that family turned out as well as they did. They had a mother." How many of you have ever heard that comment?

Uh-huh.

It's all in our hands whether we want to be that kind of person. And like I said, probably you won't even be thinking in those terms, but you will have these characteristics that you will have some consciousness about that will be cultivated in your life.

Somebody has said another person has said, "A leader is a person who is highly motivated to do a job for God despite the daunting, difficult circumstances." A leader is a highly motivated I like that. Is a highly motivated person motivated to do a job for God despite the daunting, difficult circumstances? That's what a leader is.

Now, the first thing we notice about Nehemiah is prayer was his first resort. I want you to just look. In fact, as you go through this book, and I hope you do read it after we leave here, you're going to notice that this man, every time he had a situation, you find him in prayer. Every time something happens, it says, "The Lord's good hand was upon me." This man had a tremendous consciousness that this was God's work. This was not his work. And he was praying to God and getting direction from God and giving God credit for what happened.

Prayer was his first resort, verse 4 of chapter 1. "It came to pass when I heard these words that I sat down and wept and mourned certain days and fasted and prayed before the God of heaven." And we know how long he did that because he returned in the month of Chizlu, which is December, and he went to the king. You'll notice in chapter 2, he went to the king in the month of Nisan.

That's March. So this man did this. This man prayed and fasted and sought God's face for several months before he did anything.

That gives you a concept of one of the things that makes up a great leader.

There's not going to be any self-aggrandishment here. He's going to realize what Jesus said, "Without me, you can do nothing." And so he's going to be praying. He's going to be giving God the credit for everything that happens.

But he's also going to be a very practical person, as you can see. The two have to be a person can be so spiritually minded to know earthly good, but I think most people are so earthly minded to know spiritual good. But you have to bring the both. It's one of those false dichotomies that you have to have one or the other. If you get really practical, then I guess you're not very spiritual. And if you get real spiritual, I guess you're not very practical. No, you have to be both.

So this man, his first resort was prayer. So we looked at chapter 1. Let's look at chapter 2.

"So I prayed to the God of heaven." That was when the king spoke to him. Now, he'd been praying for four months. And then when the king says to Nehemiah, "Nehemiah, I have a question," his immediate resort is, "I better pray before I give an answer to this king."

Chapter 4, verses 4 and 9.

Now, they're putting a guard against the adversaries. And he says, "Hear, O our God, for we are despised, and turn their reproach upon their own head, and give them for a pray to the hand of captivity." So that's what he prays there, verse 9. "They conspired to fight against him." We'll be going over all this as we go through these lessons. "Nevertheless, we made our prayer unto God and set a watch."

See the practical there? They didn't just say, "Well, God, take care of us." No, no, no. "God, would you take care of us?" And they set a watch. And they realized that that watch was only as good as God's help with that practical task.

Let's look at chapter 6, verse 9. "Here, they're plotting against him. For they all made us afraid, saying, 'Their hands shall be weakened from the work that had been not done.' Now, therefore, O God, strengthen our hands."

Verse 14. "My God, think thou upon Tobiah and Sanballat according to these their works and on the prophetess Noediah and the rest of the prophets that would have put me in fear." You take care of them, okay?

The second point is closely related. So the first one is this is a man who never loses his concept that he must bring everything to God. He must bring everything to God. Just even when he's standing in the presence of the king between the king's question and his answer, he's praying. And I do that on the phone line. I mean, when I get a call, of course, I never know what it's going to be. I never know what the question's going to be. I know very well it may be a question I won't know how to answer. And I usually breathe a prayer between that question and the first thing I say, "O God, put words in my mouth."

I'm totally dependent on God to do that. The second point that I notice about this man, his constant focus on God. And I read some of the verses. Well, in fact, let's read a few more. Turn back to chapter 2, verse 8.

"And a letter unto Asaph, the keeper of the king's forests." What did I do here? I missed something, I think.

Well, yes, it is in verse 8. "And the king granted me down at the end of the verse, 'According to the good hand of my God upon me.'" God gets the credit. Verse 12 in this same chapter.

"And I rose in the night, and some few men with me neither told I any man what my God had put in my heart." So the very idea to go out and survey the cities that God put that in my heart. God was responsible for me having the wisdom to make that survey.

Chapter 6, verse 9.

"This is when they were plotting against him. For they all made us afraid, saying, 'Their hands shall be weakened from the work that had been not done.'" Now, I already read this verse. "O God, strengthen my hands." Verse 14.

I already read that one too, okay? So here we have a man that is reflexive in prayer. That's his first reflex when he faces anything. The second thing is whenever something happens, he says it was God. He never lost sight of the fact that it was God. Here's a man that unites the spiritual and the practical in a very beautiful way. And it does it constantly. Does it reflexively. Does it as a habit. Doesn't forget to do it. This is how he lives. This is how he views things. This is how he handles things. This is what he does through all his and you'll find that through the whole book. It's just impressive when you read the book how his heart just immediately just goes right back to God for prayer and for giving God the glory and credit.

Number C, the third point here. He is slow and steady. He's slow and steady. I already told you this. He prayed a long time. He didn't just go rushing back to the city and say, "Oh, let's get busy on this wall." He went out and surveyed the wall. And you're going to find that he planned carefully everything he did. I mean, he one time saw the city of Jerusalem was not populated. There wasn't enough population in the city to defend it. And most of the people were living out around the city. And he got them to move into the city so the city would be well populated. You'll see that when they build the wall, he has it all planned out how they're going to do it, who's going to build what.

And they're all going to build their own section of the wall. That was a good thought. He had it all planned out exactly how this was going to be done. He was a man who was very slow and very steady. And once he had a plan, he didn't quit, okay?

He planned carefully before acting. He had his request to the king all thought out. He was ready for that king to ask him. He had it all thought out what he was going to ask. I want to read that part. Would you turn to chapter 2, verse 4?

This impresses me. He says, "Then the king said unto me, 'For what dost thou make thy request?' So I prayed to the God of heaven. And I said unto the king, 'If it pleased the king and if thy servant had found favor in thy sight that thou wouldest send me unto Judah, unto the city of my father's sepulchre, that I may build it.' And the king said to me," the queen also sitting by him, "'For how long shall thy journey be? And when will thou return?' So it pleased the king to send me, and I set him a time."

He anticipated that question. And apparently, he said 12 years. I need 12 years to do this job. See, if he'd have gone into the king and the king said, "How much time do you need?" "Well, I don't know. I don't know how much time it'll take to build the wall." "Well, what do you need?" "Well, I don't know. I guess I need a few people to help me and a few supplies." No, no, no. That wasn't Nehemiah. Uh-uh.

And verse 7, "Moreover, I said unto the king, 'If it pleased the king, let letters be given to me, to the governors on the river, that they may convey me over till I come to Judah.'" He had anticipated when he got to the border, they were going to say, "Where's your passport? Where are your papers?" "I need papers." Okay, let's keep going. "And a letter unto Asaph, the keeper of the king's forest, that he may give me timber to make beans for the gates of the palace, which appartient is to the house, and for the wall of the city, and for the house that I shall enter into."

So he asked specifically for supplies. "And the king granted me according to the good hand of my God upon me."

Well-organized project. And you can turn to chapter 3, and we'll get to it eventually. I mean, the plans to rebuild the wall was very specifically and minutely thought through exactly how we're going to do this. And they got it done in record time. I'm not going to tell you how much time it took them, but they got it done in record time. It was amazing. I mean, a wall of a city is a major project. And they got it done in an amazing short time because this man was an effective administrator, a very careful organizer, a man of inclusive perspective. Nothing had missed his purview. He saw the whole project from beginning to end and had it all thought out in his mind, what he was going to ask the king, the supplies he would need, the letters he would need.

He had it all thought out, okay?

The fifth thing I see, this man refused to negotiate with the enemies.

Somebody was telling me recently about a church that lost most of its members. And what happened was there were fence-riders in the congregation, those people out there that are always pulling in the wrong direction. And the minister tried so long to please them that he lost most of his congregation.

This man did not negotiate when there were enemies, when there were things that needed to be dealt with. He didn't sit down and say, "Well, now let's talk about this," when he knew that they were the enemies of the project. He didn't do that.

He refused to negotiate with people he knew were opposed to what he was doing. He was not distracted. He was a focused man. He kept right to the job. They tried everything they could think of to distract him. They tried to negotiate. They tried to threaten. They tried to collaborate. You'll see in the book, they tried everything they could. I told you, the job was big enough to begin with, but then he has all this to deal with, okay?

The sixth thing, he could not be intimidated. I want you to look at chapter 6.

He could not be intimidated, 5 through 9. "Then send Sanballat, his servant unto me, in like manner with the fifth time." I mean, this man was trying to intimidate. This is the fifth time he's come with what we're going to read. "In his hand, wherein was written, 'He came time after time after time after time.'" How many times did I do that? Five. "It is reported among the heathen, and Gashmu saith it, 'Oh, my dear, it isn't just the Samaritans. He's collaborating with the Arabians, all these other people out there.

I really have a lot more enemies than I realized.

That thou and the Jews think to rebel.'" That's what we all believe, including the Arabs. We all believe that this city's planning to rebel. "Thou buildest the wall that thou mayest be their king. There's pride in your heart. You're a proudful leader the way you act.

And thou hast also appointed prophets to preach of thee at Jerusalem. You're promoting your reputation. You want to be a great king.

There is a king in Judah, and now shall it be reported to the king according to your words." We're going to tell on you. We're going to tell on you. "Come now. Therefore, let us take counsel together." Look, I like the way he responded. "Then I sent unto him saying, 'There are no such things done as thou sayest, but thou faintest them out of thine own heart.'" It isn't true. You said that, but it isn't true. So pass me another brick, folks.

We'll just keep building.

The next one is, he did not take advantage of his position. This is a big one. I want you to turn to chapter 5 on this one.

I mean, the things I'm telling you are all things where leaders fail. He didn't take advantage of his position, verse 14. "Moreover, from the time that I was appointed to be their governor in the land of Judah, from the 20th year even until the 230th year of our tax surpluses," that's how we know he was there for 12 years. "That is, 12 years, I and my brethren have not eaten the bread of the governor."

I didn't take anything from the governor. "But the former governors that had been before me were chargeable unto the people. They had impoverished the people, and we're going to find they were poor. There were a bunch of poor people in this city, and these people had taken it from them." Ah. "Were chargeable unto the people and had taken of them bread and wine besides 40 shekels of silver." Apparently, that was a tax that they all had to pay to these self-aggrandizing leaders that came before Nehemiah. No wonder the city wasn't getting anywhere because this is the kind of leadership they had before he showed up. "Yea, even their servants bear rule over the people, but so did not I. Because of the fear of God, yea, also I continued in the work of this wall, neither bought we any land, and all my servants were gathered thither unto the work."

And look at all the people he feeds out of his own pocket.

"Moreover, there were at my table 150 of the Jews and rulers." So three times a day, if they ate three meals a day, they fed 150 people. I hope they had Mary M. Schoeholder's cookbooks so they knew what to prepare for such a large group. "Besides those that came to us from among the heathen, they're round about us, so they had visitors.

Now, that which was prepared for me daily was one ox and six choice sheep. Also, fowls were prepared for me once in 10 days, store of all sorts of wine. Yet for all this, required not I the bread of the governor because the bondage was heavy upon this people."

Isn't that beautiful? He says, "These people are having enough trouble. They're poor enough. I'm not going to ask them for anything. I'm going to do it out of my own pocket." Well, that's rare. That's rare. I mean, just pick up the paper tomorrow morning.

There's almost no leader that doesn't take advantage. I mean, all those so-called socialist communist leaders who talked about equality and sharing and all of that, every one of them was a multimillionaire when it was all said and done. And people had starved, and people had died, and people had suffered because of them.

And Nehemiah, I love this. He says, "I didn't take anything from these people. I paid it out of my own pocket." There are people that do, the governors before me. In fact, that's, I think, one of the reasons why there were so many poor people. They'd had leaders that had taken advantage of them. They were self-aggrandizing leaders.

And finally, he was courageous in his administration. He found these people spiritually in trouble, and he didn't give them any slack. I want you to look at chapter 13. Now, this gets a little rough, and we're in the New Testament, so I don't know how to apply this.

But verses 15 to 22, "In those days, saw I in Judah some treading wine presses on the Sabbath, and bringing in sheaves and laying asses as also wine grapes and figs and all manner of burdens which they brought into Jerusalem on the Sabbath day." And he says in verse 17, "What evil thing is this that you do and profane the Sabbath day? Did not your fathers thus, and did not our God bring all this evil upon us and upon this city? Yet you bringeth more wrath upon Israel by profaning the Sabbath. He did not mince any words. You people are bringing down the wrath of God upon us." And he took measures. We won't read them.

We'll get to them later. He took measures, just put it to a stop. I mean, he didn't just say, "Now, you shouldn't do that," and then walked away and let them sort of decide whether they were going to keep doing it. Nope. He shut the gates. He put guards there. He said, "This is not going to continue."

Verse 23, "In those days, also, saw I Jews that had married wives of Ashdod and Ammon and Moab. And their children spake half in the speech of Ashdod and could not speak in the Jews' language." And that was very important because if you didn't know the Jews' language, you could not read or understand the word of God. "And I contended with them and cursed them and smote certain of them and plucked off their hair and made them swear by God saying, 'You shall not give yourself'."

Brother Harvey, this is not advice to you.

But anyway, I'm only pointing out the fact that he was courageous in his administration. I mean, and I think in the New Testament, leaders don't have to do this kind of thing, but I think they should be courageous to do what it takes to bring it to an end, to make sure it's exposed, to make sure people understand what it means, to make sure that it does continue to happen. And if they're good leaders, they can rally the whole congregation to support that.

I told you I wouldn't tell you how long it took to build the wall, but I am concluding with that. It took them 52 days, less than two months. They built a wall around a city because they had a good leader.

They had a good leader. He knew how to make good decisions. He made good plans. He had God on his side. He gave God the credit. He didn't take advantage of anybody. He was a good leader, and they got the wall built.

But I want to leave this part of the discussion. This is the conclusion. "He left his people encouraged and rejoicing." That's what a leader does. A good leader leaves his people encouraged and rejoicing. And I just want to read some of this. Chapter 12, "After the wall was finished, they dedicated it." And here's what it says, verse 27, "And at the dedication of the wall of Jerusalem, they sought the Levites out of all their places to bring them to Jerusalem to keep the dedication with gladness with both the thanksgivings and with singing, with cymbals and psalteries and with harps. And the sons of the singers gathered themselves together both out of the plain country and round about Jerusalem."

Jump down to verse 40.

It says, "So stood two companies of them that gave thanks in the house of God." I mean, they made a real ceremony out of this. They didn't just sing a little song. He put one company over here. He put another company over here. They had an antephinal rendition of their songs. And you go down to verse 42. It says a bunch of people there, "And the singers sang loud with Jazrechiah, their overseer." So they had a good choir director. "Also that day, they offered great sacrifices and rejoiced, for God had made them rejoice with great joy. The wives also and the children rejoiced so that the joy of Jerusalem was heard even far off."

That's the result of good leadership. That's the result of good leadership. They get the job done. They take care of the problems. And people rejoice. And they have a great celebration. We'll pick up at chapter 1, and we'll go through the details in the next story. But his times, he had arrived here after all this series of events.

The task, it was a very daunting task. He had enemies without. He had enemies within. He had rubble. He had poor people. He had all kinds of problems. His technique, I'll just run through those again just quickly. Prayer was his first recourse. He was reflexive in praying.

Number two, his constant focus was on God. He never forgot to give God the credit. He never took credit to himself. Never. He was not self-aggrandizing. He was slow. He didn't rush into anything, but once he got started, you could not stop him. He planned it carefully. He sought the Lord. He knew what God wanted him to do. And it took him some time, but then you couldn't stop him.