Guard the Gates

In the last chapter of the book, Nehemiah has been absent from Jerusalem for a time and when he returns, he finds all kinds of trouble.

One of the priests has allowed Tobiah to move into a room in the temple, the sacred place. Now Tobiah was introduced back in the beginning of the book of Nehemiah. "But when Tobiah (and others) heard that the repairing of the walls of Jerusalem was going forward and that the breaches were beginning to be closed, they were very angry. And they all plotted together to come and fight against Jerusalem and to cause confusion in it." (Neh. 4:7,8)

Nehemiah confronts the people, "Why is the house of God forsaken?" He prays and he delegates reliable men to take care of things to restore order and get the people back on track. The people had failed to obey God's law in other ways as well. There is much written about the "foreigners." People were buying goods from foreigners on the Sabbath and marrying the foreigners. As applied today, this certainly does not mean racial separation. In the time of Nehemiah, interacting too much with foreigners meant the people were taking on their heathen gods and heathen lifestyles. Today God's people live among every nation, tribe and tongue. But we must guard against integrating our lives with non-believers so much so that we forsake the faith.

Nehemiah says, "As soon as it began to grow dark at the gates of Jerusalem before the Sabbath, I commanded that the doors should be shut and gave orders that they should not be opened until after the Sabbath. And I stationed some of my servants at the gates, that no load might be brought in...the merchants and sellers of all kinds of wares lodged outside Jerusalem..." He says to them, "Why do you lodge outside the wall? If you do it again, I will lay hands on you." Then he "commanded the Levites that they should purify themselves and come and guard the gates..."

Later on he finds others who had turned against God's word. "I confronted them and cursed them and beat some of them and pulled out their hair" for "doing great evil and acting treacherously against our God." Before we judge Nehemiah, let's remember all that came before. Nehemiah had invested his life rebuilding Jerusalem, the city of God. No wonder
he reacted so aggressively when he saw his people being led astray. He fought hard to defeat anyone who would tear the people apart and cause them to forsake God.

God is not fooling around when he cautions us about allowing evil to enter our homes and our lives. Don't prepare a room for it! When Tobiah couldn't prevent God's work from the outside as they built the wall, he weasled his way inside the walls! What better way to cause confusion! Nehemiah promptly threw him out. Don't let the enemy camp outside our walls either. Chase them away and guard the gates!

The book of Nehemiah is finished and so is our summer. We start school Monday. We have a couple more fun events in these next few days and then we will battle the enemy. We gather our weapons of prayer and the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God. We will finish the wall and the work God calls us to do.