Hope for Zion
By Iain Murray
"Ye see the distress that we are in, how Jerusalem lieth waste, and the gates thereof are burned with fire: come, and let us build up the wall of Jerusalem, that we be no more a reproach" (Neh. 2:17, KJV).
In the year 586 B.C., Jerusalem had been laid in ruins by Nebuchadnezzar--her people exiled, her temple destroyed, her walls broken, and her gates burned with fire. Although 142 years had passed, Jerusalem was still lying in waste. Sin had stripped Zion of her former glory, and she was exposed to the cry of all who passed by, "Is this the city that men call . . . The joy of the whole earth?" (Lam. 2:15).
Nehemiah belonged to one of the Jewish families that had remained in exile, and it was not until the visit of Hanani that he learned of the true state of his own country (Neh. 1:2-3). In answer to prayer, he was granted leave from his duties as the cupbearer of King Artaxerxes, and hurrying to Jerusalem, he surveyed the mournful sight and addressed the words of our text to his fellow countrymen.
We may see in his words, in the first place, a picture of the condition into which the Church sometimes falls: "Jerusalem lieth waste, and the gates thereof are burned with fire" (Neh. 2:17). The walls of the city were breached so that anyone could trample in and out. Her fortifications were a heap of rubble, and as a result, she was at the mercy of the foreigners around her. Her gates, the place where her rulers should have sat and exercised government, were burned to the ground. Her independence, authority, and power were gone. She was the picture of weakness, disorder, and confusion. Similarly, when God's people depart from His Word, it is certain that they will sooner or later be brought low and humiliated in the eyes of the world.
There was a great difference, however, between the manner in which Nehemiah viewed this situation and the attitude of the majority of the Jewish people. The latter recognized their circumstances as an affliction, but it discouraged and paralyzed them. They were as dispirited as they were inactive. They could see no remedy, and they had concluded (as their fathers had done a century before--Hag. 1:2) that the time was not ripe for action. The feeble-hearted language of Judah expressed the common feeling, "The strength of the bearers of burdens is decayed, and there is much rubbish, so that we are not able to build the wall" (Neh. 4:10). Their attitude was one of the primary reasons why a hundred years had passed since the first group of Israelites had returned from exile, and yet Jerusalem was still full of rubbish!
But why was it that, viewing the same scene and surrounded by the same circumstances, Nehemiah's attitude was so different? It was because his heart was not hardened. It is terribly easy for us to become so familiar with the effects of sin that we are no longer startled, no longer grieved, no longer distressed. Jerusalem had been in a low state for so long that even the believing Jews had become accustomed to it. Month after month and year after year, they had seen the shattered walls and the gates lying in ashes, and had become so used to the sight that they were no longer affected by it.
You might think that with the very bricks and rubble bearing constant witness, it would be unnecessary for Nehemiah to say, "Ye see the distress that we are in" (Neh. 2:17). Surely the fact was obvious. But the whole trouble was that they did not see it, or they would have done something about it. They were hardened, but Nehemiah was suddenly returning from a far country and was brokenhearted at the sight that met his eyes.
Does this not explain why we can be so insensitive to the real state of the church today? We have become so used to the spiritual ruin that surrounds us that our minds are no longer appalled nor our hearts rent as they ought to be. As Charles Spurgeon said, "We should hear praying of a mighty sort if believers sympathized with men in their ruin," but too often, like Nehemiah's countrymen, we are not conscious of the ruin. We have become so familiar with the prevailing conditions--the empty pews, the famine in the land, and the rubbish in the church--that we are almost deaf to God's call, "Turn ye even to Me with all your heart, and with fasting, and with weeping, and with mourning" (Joel 2:12). Oh, how unaware we can be of our own hardness of heart! May God enable us to see the distress we are in.
