More on Preaching Christ in Nehemiah

The other day I blogged an outline of my sermon on Nehemiah 5; someone asked me about some of the more general themes in Nehemiah I'd been thinking through, so that's what this post is about.

Specifically, in approaching Nehemiah I was asking a few questions:

• What's a reasonable way to apply Nehemiah's wall-building to the church today? Is it reasonable to take the wall building as a metaphor for stuff like church planting?
• I've come to general agreement with N.T. Wright's proposal that Israel had not truly returned from exile at this point; but if that's the case then what *is* actually going on?
• There's no escaping the insular nature of Ezra/Nehemiah; there's an unmistakable agenda to purify Israel and to keep the Gentiles out. Is it OK to ignore that in making application to the church, or should that drive us to a greater awareness of certain themes in the gospel?

Here's my thinking, without much structure as it's late at night:

In A Complete Literary Guide to the Bible, the chapter on Ezra/Nehemiah brings out this intertwined dual "building" metaphor - that, on one hand there's physical building (Temple, then Wall) but there's a second strand of rebuilding the covenant people. Ezra in particular seems to come as a "builder" but we find that he's not a physical builder, he's a teacher of Torah. I'm thinking of all this as a "double helix" - two interwoven strands of building; restoring Temple and Wall, and restoring a faithful, purified, Torah-observant people.

The really noteworthy aspect of it all, and it's this that becomes for me the biggest sticking point in the way the book is often applied in the church, is that all of this is drives at separation between Israel and the nations - all of it! The Temple building is striking in this respect; neighbouring Gentiles seem to offer help in good faith, but are told they have no part in it. Likewise the dealing with covenant faithfulness is primarily about marriages with Gentiles; those foreign wives end up getting sent away. Under Nehemiah, even the half-blood Israelites get cut off.

And Nehemiah's wall itself is such a symbol of division with the nations. Interestingly, it only covers a small area and will not house many people. I'm quite sure it's primarily about a Kingdom restoration - Yahweh will reign over the nations from Jerusalem. Nehemiah is prophetically enacting certain aspects of the restoration (perhaps even thinking that he may be God's agent to bring them about) - but anything to do with Gentiles coming in is completely and utterly overlooked.

Think about Galatians 3:8

And the Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying, “In you shall all the nations be blessed.”

This just doesn't get a look-in in Ezra/Nehemiah! Furthermore, think about Ephesians 2:13-16

But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For he himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances, that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace, and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility.

So, one of Christ's great achievements was to tear down the "dividing wall of hostility" - part of the Temple but the Jerusalem wall also qualifies, as does the "wall of hostility" of driving foreign wives out or refusing to let neighbours participate in the building. In fact, Ezra/Nehemiah pretty-well qualifies in entirety as a big story of the building of the dividing walls of hostility!!!

Where do we go with that in terms of preaching about what Nehemiah's doing, then? Well, we have to see him as faithful to God's covenant purposes at the time for sure. But we can't miss the specific role of Israel, and the fulfilment of that role in Jesus the Messiah. Israel was elected to bring blessings for all the nations, and when Jesus came the whole destiny of Israel climaxed in an unexpected way. In his flesh, the wall (that Zerubbabel, Ezra, and Nehemiah in their own ways had constructed) was torn down and the Gentiles brought in. This is a glorious truth that should blow our minds - but it's going to get buried under tons of rubble if we stick with the wall-building as some kind of allegory for stuff we should be building today.

I suspect it also gets buried if we take the line that return-from-exile had taken place but it's already/not yet. As I mentioned in the previous post, the "not yet" aspects are way too many to overlook: no king, no presence of the LORD in the Temple, Moab not judged, the Gentiles still are their overlords, there's still poverty and injustice, etc.

Anyway, I hope there's a bit of food for thought for someone in all this - I'd love to hear anybody else's views on this!