2 November 2011

Psalm 72; Neh. 13:4-22; Rev. 12:1-12; Matt. 13:53-58

Every parent can relate to this passage from Nehemiah. He left for a short while to return as promised to the king and while he was gone all the work he had done was undone. Tobiah has taken up residence in the temple courts where the tithes and offerings were stored, the Levites have abandoned their jobs and Jerusalem has become a secular city like any other. Nehemiah is a man of action and immediately throws out Tobiah’s things from the temple and confronts the officials about the state of the temple. His final act is to shut the gates at evening on the Sabbath to prevent merchants and other profiteers from entering the city so that the Sabbath won’t be business as usual. He must have felt like Moses on coming down the mountain and finding the people partying with their new gods. Nehemiah should be one of the most admired figures in the Bible.

The hometown folks decide that in spite of what Jesus is doing and the power of His teaching they know something about Him that means He can’t be who all this would indicate. They don’t know what they think they know, do they? They know He is the carpenter’s son except that He isn’t the carpenter’s son in the sense of DNA. The carpenter raised Him but genetically He isn’t the carpenter’s son at all. We will never believe and know Jesus in truth so long as we get that piece wrong. If He isn’t uniquely the son of God, as John wrote, the only begotten, we will never truly believe in Him. His origin gives Him unique authority in all things otherwise He was simply a good man, another Nehemiah in some ways. Jesus is more than this, He is one with the Father in all things. Our unbelief often prevents Him doing greater things among us.

We go in time to Jesus’ birth, death, resurrection and ascension. Satan desired to destroy Him from the time He was in His mother’s womb and ultimately, at Gethsemane, it looked for all the world that satan had won the victory. Ultimately, he is defeated in the resurrection and ascension of Jesus and though we don’t see the victory as complete yet, we will see the day when there is no more enemy of the saints of God. Then, all will know that Jesus is unique in all of history and every knee will bow and every tongue confess that He is Lord. We live in that in-between time when we know the work is finished but the victory isn’t complete. The remaining work is to throw satan not only out of heaven but out of everything but hell where his dominion will be eternally.