Again, in verses four and five we hear a short prayer from
Nehemiah, succinct and to the point, trusting the Lord, pleading for Him to do
what He has promised, and then we see them moving on with the work. Sometimes we make things too difficult. We don’t have to have elaborate prayers, we
simply need to leave things with the Lord and do what we have been given to
do. The people, at first, had a mind to
work. As they reached the half-way
point, however, the opposition from Sanballat and Tobiah became not silly
taunts but angry plots to kill and destroy.
Those Israelites who were not in the city but were near these men then
began to plead with the inhabitants and workers to leave and abandon the
work. Nehemiah knew that this was a
greater danger than outsiders attempting to stop the work. The work was carried on by having half the
people work and the others protecting them.
Everyone was armed, the workers worked with one hand on their burden and
the other on a weapon. We need to have
the same attitude, always prepared for attack, but we forget we have an
enemy.
We should never look down on small things. That is the mistake Sanballat and Tobiah made
in our first reading. They thought the
wall could never be restored because of its pitiable state but Nehemiah saw a
vision of what it could be and would be and persuaded the people to work based
on that vision. Jesus says the kingdom
of God is like leaven and a mustard seed.
When you make bread you use a lot of flour and a little bit of yeast for
leavening but if you don’t have the yeast you won’t get bread. When the yeast works its magic, the lump of
dough greatly increases in size. The same
with planting a mustard seed and watching it grow into a tree. We should never despise the day of small
things, but always see what it is God is doing that will eventually mean
something great will come into being.
There are 144,000 from the nation of Israel but a great
multitude from all nations, tribes, languages and people. They are waving palm
branches just like when Jesus came into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, and they are
speaking the truth, “Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and
to the Lamb!” This multitude is made up
of those who passed through the “great tribulation.” They will be comforted forever in the
presence of God for all they suffered. There
may not have been great numbers in any age and place but when they are gathered
together they are a great multitude, an impressive array. We may sometimes feel alone, like Elijah, but
we are never to forget these who have gone before, the pioneers, who ran the race
and now cheer us on. The cloud of
witnesses is great.
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