Nehemiah 4

Nehemiah 4 is the chapter of the trowel and the sword — building under fire, with one hand on the work and the other on a weapon. Sanballat mocks: will they revive the stones out of the heaps of the rubbish which are burned? That word repays stopping on. He means it as a sneer — you cannot bring dead stone back to life out of a burnt heap — and he has, without knowing it, described the whole business of Yahweh with his people. Reviving what has been burned out of the rubbish is precisely what Ezekiel saw done to a valley of bones, and what will be done to every saint in the dust. The enemy’s insult is an accurate account of the resurrection. Tobiah sneers that a fox running on the wall would break it down. The scorn is meant to weaken the hands before a blow is ever struck — the same tactic that stopped the work in Ezra’s day. Mockery aims to drop the trowel before the sword is drawn.

Nehemiah’s answer is prayer and persistence together — and the prayer has a particular shape. He is a man of short prayers, flung up on the spot and mid-sentence: so I prayed to the God of heaven between a king’s question and his own answer; hear, O our God; for we are despised the moment the mocking starts; remember me, O my God, for good at the end of a working day. No liturgy, no retreat — the whole book is punctuated with them. He prays the way a man breathes while carrying stone.

He commits the reproach to Yahweh and keeps building: so built we the wall… for the people had a mind to work. Prayer and a mind to work are not rivals — he does not choose between trusting Yahweh and labouring hard; he prays and builds in the same breath, the wall rising to half its height while the enemies rage.

When the threat turns from words to swords, the answer is both halves at once: nevertheless we made our prayer unto our God, and set a watch against them day and night. Put it plainly — faith is not presumption. He does not pray instead of watching, or watch instead of praying; if Yahweh is to bless the work, the work must be there to bless. So Nehemiah sets a watch and arms the builders. They which builded on the wall, and they that bare burdens… every one with one of his hands wrought in the work, and with the other hand held a weapon. One hand on the work, one on the weapon — the saint’s posture exactly: laboring and watchful at once, never so absorbed in the building that the guard is dropped, never so braced for attack that the work stops. The trumpeter stays beside Nehemiah to rally them to whatever point is threatened.

And the courage rests on a single conviction. Be not ye afraid of them: remember the Lord, which is great and terrible… our God shall fight for us. Our God shall fight for us — the builders are armed, but the battle is the Lord’s; their weapons are real, their confidence is in him. The work that the enemy swore to stop goes on, because the people remember whose wall it is and who fights for them.

Build with one hand and watch with the other; pray and labor in the same breath, for the wall is the Lord’s and our God shall fight for us.

Hosea 14

Hosea ends not in judgment but in healing — the prophet who traced Israel’s adultery through thirteen chapters closes with the tenderest invitation in the book: return, and be healed and loved freely. O Israel, return unto Yahweh thy God; for thou hast fallen by thine iniquity. And he puts the very words of repentance in their mouth: Take with you words, and turn to Yahweh: say unto him, Take away all iniquity, and receive us graciously; so will we render the calves of our lips. Return, and bring words — he even teaches them what to say. That last phrase opens up: none shall appear before me empty (Exod 23:15), and Israel has no altar and no herd to bring — so the calves are to be words. It is the line the writer to the Hebrews reaches for: by him therefore let us offer the sacrifice of praise to God continually, that is, the fruit of our lips giving thanks to his name (Heb 13:15). The bullock they cannot bring is replaced by the thing they say. The Husband who was wronged writes the wife’s apology for her, so eager is he to receive her back.

The renounced idol is named as the proof of the return. Asshur shall not save us; we will not ride upon horses: neither will we say any more to the work of our hands, Ye are our gods. And the heart of it: Ephraim shall say, What have I to do any more with idols? What have I to do any more with idols — the same turning the Thessalonians made, the heart that has come home and cannot imagine going back to the calves it once kissed.

Then Yahweh answers the repentance with a flood of mercy — and the wordplay closes the whole prophecy. The book opens this chapter with shuvah, return; and Yahweh answers, I will heal their meshuvah, their backsliding. The word for their turning-away and the word for their turning-back are the same root. He does not merely forgive the wandering; he heals the wandering itself — cures the very faculty that turned. I will heal their backsliding, I will love them freely… I will be as the dew unto Israel: he shall grow as the lily, and cast forth his roots as Lebanon. I will be as the dew — and dew is resurrection-language, the quiet morning moisture that raises the dried field to life; the backslidden nation grows as the lily and takes root like the cedars when the dew of Yahweh falls on it. Healing, not probation; love freely given, not earned.

The book closes with a word to the reader over the head of the text. Who is wise, and he shall understand these things?… for the ways of Yahweh are right, and the just shall walk in them: but the transgressors shall fall therein. The same road is a path to the just and a stumbling-block to the rebel — the ways of Yahweh do not change; what changes is whether a man walks them or trips over them. Hosea ends by asking the reader which he will be.

Return and bring words, and he will heal your backsliding and be as the dew to you — the ways of Yahweh are right; walk them, do not stumble on them.

1 Thessalonians 3–4

These chapters turn from Paul’s anxious love for the young ecclesia to the great comfort that answers the fear of death: the dead in Christ are only asleep, and the Lord himself will raise them at his coming. Timothy returns with good news — they stand fast — and Paul breathes again: now we live, if ye stand fast in the Lord. He prays night and day to see them and to perfect that which is lacking in your faith, and that the Lord would make them abound in love and stablish your hearts unblameable in holiness at the coming of the Lord Jesus with all his saints.

The call to holiness is plain and bodily — flee fornication, possess your vessel in sanctification, for God hath not called us unto uncleanness, but unto holiness. And then the passage that has comforted the bereaved ever since. I would not have you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning them which are asleep, that ye sorrow not, even as others which have no hope. The dead are asleep, and grief is not hopeless — the Thessalonians feared their dead had missed the coming; Paul answers that they are only sleeping, and will not be left behind.

The mechanism is the resurrection, and it is worth holding exactly as Paul states it. If we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with him. God will bring the sleeping ones — by raising them — not lead living souls down from heaven, but raise the sleepers from the dust, as Jesus himself was raised. The proof that the dead in Christ will rise is that Christ died and rose; their resurrection follows his.

And the order of that day is spelled out. The Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout… and the dead in Christ shall rise first: then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air. The dead rise first, then the living are gathered — the sleeping are not at a disadvantage but at the head of the line. This readout takes the meeting in the air as a king’s welcome: the saints go out to the descending Lord as a city goes out to meet its returning king and brings him in. A more specific reading takes the details thus, and it is Bro Thomas’s in Eureka: caught up is harpazō, snatched away; the clouds are not vapor but the great company itself, the cloud of witnesses of Hebrews 12; and the air is located at Sinai, where the judgment seat is set. The two readings are not opposed — a multitudinous cloud gathering to its King is a king’s welcome — and the clouds reading has real weight, since it is the same cloud Daniel’s Son of man comes with and the same one that received him out of the disciples’ sight. Wherefore comfort one another with these words — the resurrection is given not as speculation but as comfort.

The dead in Christ are only asleep; God will raise them when the Lord descends, and they shall rise first — comfort one another with this, that death has not robbed them of the coming.