Rebuild Your Life - Rebuild Your Defences
- Paul Downie
- Jun 15
- 14 min read
Nehemiah 2:17-18 NIV
[17] Then I said to them, “You see the trouble we are in: Jerusalem lies in ruins, and its gates have been burned with fire. Come, let us rebuild the wall of Jerusalem, and we will no longer be in disgrace.” [18] I also told them about the gracious hand of my God on me and what the king had said to me. They replied, “Let us start rebuilding.” So they began this good work.
My brother-in-law is an architect. He takes an idea that someone has, creates designs and technical drawings to show them what it could look like. He then gets the materials and the manpower and starts the building project.
I have to admit that some of his projects have really been quite something: really pretty.
Architecture is a very honourable occupation. You make people’s dreams come true.
But you start from nothing: just a germ of an idea. A dream. You then turn that dream into reality.
Nehemiah has done the painful work. He has surveyed the severity of the damage done by conquest and by a hundred and thirty years of neglect. Now he has to turn it around.
These few words are highly significant. This is where the dream begins to come true.
There are three simple phases to what happens here. We will major on the third because there is a full chapter than expounds the detail of what happened
However, to begin with, we will look at The Situation.
The Situation
Nehemiah 2:17 NIV
[17] Then I said to them, “You see the trouble we are in: Jerusalem lies in ruins, and its gates have been burned with fire.
When I was growing up, I lived in a culture of reason. Truth could be argued or debated. There were disagreements, but provided your evidence was strong and your logic sound, there was little anyone could say. The science of apologetics – providing a reasonable and philosophical ground for believing in the Gospel – sprung out of that culture of reason.
Of course, as the same time, there was a massive culture of intolerance and bigotry. Not everyone was as sophisticated or as intelligent as to reason things out for themselves. The less educated were left out. Their ‘reason’ was built on ignorance and anger.
Nowadays, things have changed dramatically. Truth is no longer absolute. It cannot be reasoned, argued or philosophised. While we have a much more gentle, compassionate culture for some – particularly minorities – we do not have it for everyone.
Truth nowadays is relative. Mostly, truth is what suits me. A man can believe he is a wooden spoon and a woman a lamppost and people will say, ‘Well, if it suits then and they’re happy, why question it? They’re doing no harm to anyone!’
They might even indulge their decisions by standing the woman on a street corner in the dead of night and pretending that her nose has lit up, or turning the man upside down and using him to stir a pot of soup.
You might think I am indulging in a bit of reductio ad absurdum, and you would be right.
But are any of the contradictory, self-serving, convenient ‘truths’ held by other people not at least equally as absurd, and much more dangerous?
The problem is that those who point this out are often labelled as intolerant bigots because they dare to speak the truth.
Nehemiah would have none of that.
You see, in modern thinking, you don’t have to face a problem. You don’t have to put it right. You just believe that it doesn’t exist and, hey presto! It’s gone!
Utter nonsense!
Nehemiah does not think like that. Not one bit.
Right away, without hesitation, he calls out the problems they are facing.
Now, to us that problem is absolutely obvious. You have a city without walls that is encircled by a hundred and thirty year old pile of rubble. It’s clear what’s happened. It doesn’t require a great deal of explanation.
However, I have spent time in the presence of people who have suffered from glaringly obvious problems with very straightforward solutions, but they just haven’t seen it. Like the young people on street corners three quarters of their way from sobriety to a drunken stupor, who tell you ‘I don’t have a drink problem. I’m not an alcoholic. I could stop any time I want to. I just don’t want to.’
Or those with highly problematic, self-centred dating practices who bed hop like pond skaters on a lake and swear it’s completely fine.
Or drug addicts whose brain is on who knows what planet, but who swear they are in control.
Nehemiah isn’t like that. Yes, their problem is difficult. Yes, it is shameful. Yes, it is humiliating.
But Nehemiah faces it and deals with it.
Note the three phases in what happens. Firstly, he hears of it:
Nehemiah 1:1-3 NIV
[1] The words of Nehemiah son of Hakaliah: In the month of Kislev in the twentieth year, while I was in the citadel of Susa, [2] Hanani, one of my brothers, came from Judah with some other men, and I questioned them about the Jewish remnant that had survived the exile, and also about Jerusalem. [3] They said to me, “Those who survived the exile and are back in the province are in great trouble and disgrace. The wall of Jerusalem is broken down, and its gates have been burned with fire.”
It is this that throws him to his knees in anguished prayer.
Secondly, as we saw in my last post, he sees it for himself:
Nehemiah 2:13 NIV
[13] By night I went out through the Valley Gate toward the Jackal Well and the Dung Gate, examining the walls of Jerusalem, which had been broken down, and its gates, which had been destroyed by fire.
Now we see what follows, in that he does something about it.
He doesn’t deny it exists. He doesn’t complain about it. He doesn’t sit down in a crumpled heap and cry about it.
He does something. Something constructive.
When our lives are a mess, it does us no good at all to deny it. It does us even less good to complain about it, or to do nothing more than cry about it.
The reality is that we are in the situation we are in. We must accept the situation, no matter how painful and humiliating it is.
And then we seek to change it.
That’s why we move on from the situation to The Summons.
The Summons
Nehemiah 2:17 NIV
[17] “Come, let us rebuild the wall of Jerusalem, and we will no longer be in disgrace.”
It’s always interesting to see how people react in a crisis.
A number of years ago, two villages in Romania were hit by a mudslide. After days of trying, reporters eventually reached one of them, where the mud was pretty high. Locals were wandering around in tears yelling, ‘When is help going to arrive? Where is the government? Where is the EU? Where are the aid organisations? We need help here!’
They then reached the other one, but were stunned to notice that the village was almost cleaned up. The locals had noticed that they were cut off, that help wasn’t going to arrive for some time, and so they dug themselves out of the mess.
No-one could underestimate the mess these Jews were in. It was undignified. It made them vulnerable and weak.
The rather uncompromising Hebrew word that is used in Nehemiah 1:3 and 2:17 to refer to this situation is ‘disgrace’, which can also be translated as ‘stigma’ or ‘reproach’. The Jewish people had faced the intense shame of the exile and everything that had led to it (Ezekiel 36:13-22) and it was still hanging off them a hundred and thirty years later.
Key to removing that shame, that reproach, that disgrace, was rebuilding the wall around the city.
Rebuilding this wall was no mean feat. The length of the ancient walls in Jerusalem is thought to have been 2.5 miles (4km). It averaged 12 metres in height and was around 2.5 metres thick.
And it was nothing more than a pile of rubble.
That was what Nehemiah was calling them to rebuild.
It was brave. It was ambitious. It would mean a lot of hard, painstaking, back-breaking work.
It would mean needing to work while under guard and carrying weapons because of their enemies (Nehemiah 4:9, 13-14, 16-18).
Yet they agreed. They signed up for it. They took the risk.
Why?
Because the wall was their way out of shame and disgrace.
When we find ourselves in a place of brokenness and pain and ruin because of sin, the way back for us is to rebuild that wall: the boundary between what is right and what is wrong.
That is where we will find fresh dignity, fresh respect for ourselves and others, fresh self-esteem.
It won’t be easy to repair it. Those repairs will take time and effort. They may well cause us to struggle. We may even find ourselves under attack from those who don’t pretend and don’t even want to understand.
But our way back is to answer the summons, to answer the call.
So will you rebuild the wall in your life?
Apart from the situation and the summons, we also see The Support.
The Support
Nehemiah 2:18 NIV
[18] I also told them about the gracious hand of my God on me and what the king had said to me. They replied, “Let us start rebuilding.” So they began this good work.
The task these Jews faced was daunting. There is little doubt about that. It was enough to intimidate anyone. They had even had a previous building project – the Temple, of all things – that had experienced years of delays because their enemies had successfully stymied it (Ezra 4).
Now they were about to start on a project that was more significant than the Temple from a tactical and military perspective. They were rebuilding the battlements and watchtowers from which Jerusalem could be defended.
No wonder it was controversial.
But – and this cannot be missed – they were not alone in this significant endeavour.
Nehemiah certainly was not alone.
This verse speaks of three sources of support.
The first of these is God.
There is little doubt that God was on Nehemiah’s side. We saw in an earlier post how Nehemiah had sought God in prayer and fasting (Nehemiah 1:4, 2:4), and how, as cupbearer, his situation and proposal to the king both seemed thoroughly unlikely to succeed.
Yet they did.
And even more than Nehemiah had expected.
The second of these is the King.
We saw how Nehemiah didn’t just receive the king’s permission to be absent from his job for a time, he also received right of safe passage, materials for the construction work and (although he hadn’t asked for it) an armed escort (Nehemiah 2:7-9).
But the help we will explore in this meditation that made it possible for the job to be completed was the help of the people.
In other words, when the job was well beyond anything Nehemiah could do on his own, his fellow Jews stood beside him and bore the burden with him.
On first glance, Nehemiah 3 appears to be a boring chapter. It’s just a list of names and things they built, after all.
However, it is anything but.
This chapter shows us not just their names, but also their contribution to the build: how far these people were willing to go, how much they were willing to contribute, to rebuild the Jerusalem city wall.
The first group of people consists of those who built anywhere. That is, we see no restriction on where they built: they saw a gap and they filled it. It didn’t matter who they were. It didn’t matter where the gap was. They had bought into Nehemiah's vision. They were just there to work.
For example:
Nehemiah 3:1-2 NIV
[1] Eliashib the high priest and his fellow priests went to work and rebuilt the Sheep Gate. They dedicated it and set its doors in place, building as far as the Tower of the Hundred, which they dedicated, and as far as the Tower of Hananel. [2] The men of Jericho built the adjoining section, and Zakkur son of Imri built next to them.
Do you see this? People from cities nearby who didn’t even live in Jerusalem rolled up their sleeves and got stuck in.
These are the kind of people every leader dreams of. They are not there to serve their own ego. They just serve God. Wherever they are whatever it takes. They just work.
This teaches us that the work to repair the boundaries in our lives will affect others. It will cause changes.
Yes, we should be sensitive and considerate. Yes, there are ways and means of doing it that don’t cause unnecessary pain and hurt. We are still governed by the Royal Law to love God, our neighbours and ourselves.
But however it happens, however long it takes, that boundary between right and wrong must go up.
We also see people who built where they lived. For example:
Nehemiah 3:22-23, 28-30 NIV
[22] The repairs next to him were made by the priests from the surrounding region. [23] Beyond them, Benjamin and Hasshub made repairs in front of their house; and next to them, Azariah son of Maaseiah, the son of Ananiah, made repairs beside his house.
[28] Above the Horse Gate, the priests made repairs, each in front of his own house. [29] Next to them, Zadok son of Immer made repairs opposite his house. Next to him, Shemaiah son of Shekaniah, the guard at the East Gate, made repairs. [30] Next to him, Hananiah son of Shelemiah, and Hanun, the sixth son of Zalaph, repaired another section. Next to them, Meshullam son of Berekiah made repairs opposite his living quarters.
Their contribution was lower. It was a little less altruistic and a little more focused on their own situation. Their vision wasn’t as broad. Their generosity knew limits.
But do you know what? They still built the wall. They still did their bit.
And that’s still good.
Even the longest known wall in the world, the Great Wall of China, was partially made up of walls that people had built around their own property.
I wonder, though, if the ever regretted not making a bigger contribution to the rebuilding of the wall.
But there is a third group who I believe would have regretted their contribution even more: those who did not build at all:
Nehemiah 3:5 NIV
[5] The next section was repaired by the men of Tekoa, but their nobles would not put their shoulders to the work under their supervisors.
Tekoa was a desert town, south-east of Bethlehem. It wasn’t one of the great cities in Israel.
Yet its nobles of this small desert town lacked the humility to serve under someone else. By implication, it seems that they had delusions of grandeur and wanted to be the people to give the orders, not those who did the work.
We see plenty of that entitled behaviour nowadays. Anyone who has a public ministry has to be so aware of it. There is a reason why pride comes before a fall (Proverbs 11:2, 16:18, 29:23).
Now, this might not seem like much of a fall, but I want you to consider this: these leaders of a desert town were memorialised as refusing to serve and help in a matter of enormous national importance.
How would that feel?
A friend of mine is an ardent supporter of a football team. They made the decision to sell their stadium for real estate and move to a new one. To try to lessen the financial burden, the fans were offered to buy a brick, which would be inscribed with their name or a message, and would be placed in the walkway the fans used to approach the stadium.
So my friend purchased one of those bricks. Now, every time tens of thousands of fans approach the Emirates Stadium to watch Arsenal FC, they walk over the brick he got engraved with his name.
He is memorialised there.
Imagine if you were a fan of Arsenal and all of your friends did this, but you did not. Then every time they went to watch a match, they could see their names, but yours was not there.
Now imagine how it would feel for these men to read this book in the Hebrew Scriptures, and for them and their descendants to read of their pride in failing to rebuild the wall.
The sense of regret would be profound.
Now imagine how it would feel if you had a chance to rebuild the wall, the boundary between right and wrong in your life, and you had to stand before a holy God and justify to Him why your life did not reflect His righteousness and His glory.
I would not want to bear that level of regret.
As Nehemiah came back from riding his horse around the ruined wall that night, I wonder how he would have felt. The task before him was enormous – more than he could ever do on his own. That much would be abundantly clear.
But what also would be clear is that he needed the help of other people to stand beside him and work with him.
He was asking a lot of them. Rebuilding this wall would put them into the firing line – literally and figuratively. They would be sharing his burden.
But that was what needed to be done.
I want you to read these verses carefully:
Hebrews 10:23-25 NIV
[23] Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for he who promised is faithful. [24] And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds, [25] not giving up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching.
Rebuilding a damaged life is not easy. It is not a task you can take on alone. The beauty of church is that you need other people’s help and they need yours – we need each other. That is why there is no such thing as a solo or lone wolf Christian. To survive, to be strong, to grow, to rebuild, we need God.
But we also need each other.
Conclusion
Nehemiah 2:17 NIV
[17] Then I said to them, “You see the trouble we are in: Jerusalem lies in ruins, and its gates have been burned with fire. Come, let us rebuild the wall of Jerusalem, and we will no longer be in disgrace.”
November 2013 was a horrible month for my wife’s family. They were blasted by the biggest storm to make landfall in modern memory. By some miracle, their houses were relatively unscathed, but the church and the school had incurred damage that made them both close to inoperable.
And help was not coming. Up north on the island, the damage was much worse. Thousands of lives had been lost. My family’s village was just not a priority.
But it was for us.
We saw the damage in photos our family sent when the electricity was restored. It broke our hearts. It was too much for the family to fix. It was too much for the villagers to fix. It was too much for us to fix.
It just seemed impossible.
The storm was headline news. People in our church and my daughter’s school asked how my wife’s family were. We shared the photos.
And God did something so special.
He moved wonderfully in the hearts of those who saw those photos.
Before aid organisations or the government sprung into action, building projects begun to repair the church (our Scottish church led the way) and the local elementary school (our daughter’s school took the lead). Within a remarkably short time, the church was repaired and the school had a small stage on which their children could graduate.
The situation had seemed impossible. The repairs were beyond us.
But God brought other people to help.
We saw in these verses a situation that was far beyond the reach of one man to fix. We saw a summons to fix it that was a tall order. We also saw how God provided the means, through a willing king and willing people, to complete the job.
My mother used to love jigsaw puzzles. It can be a challenge to complete a jigsaw puzzle when all the pieces are in the box.
However, often when we try to complete the jigsaw puzzle of our lives, the pieces are not in the box. Instead, they are with other people – or rather, they are other people. It’s only when all the pieces fit together that we finally see the picture of who God intended us to be.
I want to end this post with a very encouraging verse:
Nehemiah 6:15 NIV
[15] So the wall was completed on the twenty-fifth of Elul, in fifty-two days.
All those miles of broken brickwork. All that determined opposition (which we will read more about in the next post). All that hard work.
Yet the work was completed in just fifty-two days!
Paul says this to the Philippian church:
Philippians 1:3-6 NIV
[3] I thank my God every time I remember you. [4] In all my prayers for all of you, I always pray with joy [5] because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now, [6] being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.
The work may seem hard and long and never ending, but we can be assured of this:
God will finish what He started. We will become Christ-like in heaven.
And along the way, we will encourage others to rebuild their lives too.
Prayer
Lord Jesus, I hear Your summons. My situation is not great. I am beaten down by the task in front of me and the opposition I face. Raise my head, I pray. Encourage me to keep building, knowing that You are working with me and will finish the job. Amen.
Questions
Just how bad was the situation Nehemiah faced? How does this compare to your situation?
Did his summons seem realistic? Given the situation, how would you have reacted if you had heard if?
Are you prepared to work with others to repair their lives and yours?
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