Author: Ryan Hale

Nehemiah had received news from his brother Hanani that the walls of Jerusalem were broken down. The Babylonians had been to Jerusalem many years before and had destroyed it, taking many of its people into exile. Subsequently, the Medes and the Persians ruled and now Nehemiah, one of the Jews in exile, served Artexerxes as his cupbearer.

Nehemiah was heartbroken at the news that the city of Jerusalem was in ruins. He immediately threw himself into prayer, fasting, and most importantly, repentance. At the same time, as he prayed, he asked God to remember back to his covenant with his people, that if the people of God would follow the Lord’s commands, then God would rescue them, gathering them from the scattering that God had done to them from amongst the nations.

So Nehemiah receives permission from the king to go. He receives permission to rebuild the walls. And he even receives letters that he can give to the nobles and rulers of the area showing that his permission to do what he is doing comes directly from the king.

As Nehemiah goes, he surveyed the walls and saw the true state of the ruin of the walls and the gates of Jerusalem. It was completely destroyed and it was a mess! He hadn’t said anything to anyone about his mission. He had initially just been there to see the situation and to survey the work that needed to be done.

But then came the call. Nehemiah wasn’t a construction worker. He was a cupbearer. But he knew that the men of Jerusalem could rebuild the walls, and so he called them into the work. He called them to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem.

So what can we learn from this? Maybe a few things:

First, let’s ask this question: Did the people of Jerusalem not see the state of destruction of their city? Of course they did, but they had two significant problems:

First, they had a problem of permission. They didn’t have permission to rebuild the walls. To do so could be considered an act of sedition, an act of rebellion against the prevailing kingdom over that area, the Persians, and that is definitely not a situation that they wanted to put themselves in. They didn’t want to be considered rebellious. They knew from experience what would happen if they rebelled against the king of Persia.

Second, while they could see the state of the walls, it was actually just their normal. They hadn’t acted because, well, that’s just how it was. Their walls were broken down. That’s how it is. Jerusalem is defeated. They were used to that idea, and so they didn’t need to spend a lot of time thinking about how it should be different. It didn’t need to be different because that is how it was.

But before the king, living in Susa, Nehemiah wasn’t used to those ideas. He happened to be relationally, or at the least, professionally related to the king. And the king had given him permission to rebuild the walls. He didn’t have a problem of permission.

And second, he wasn’t used to the idea of broken walls and gates. He lived at the citadel. The gates were strong and the walls were high, as they should be. He was able to see things as they should be, and he knew that Jerusalem was not as it should be.

At the same time, Nehemiah couldn’t do this work on his own. He needed others. Many others to be able to complete the work.

Yet at the same time, they also needed him. To begin to move, they needed permission. To begin to move, they needed a new vision. So Nehemiah, coming with a different vision from the outside, partnered together with those living in Jerusalem to rebuild the walls.

Then I said to them, “You see the trouble we are in: Jerusalem lies in ruins, and its gates have been burned with fire. Come, let us rebuild the wall of Jerusalem, and we will no longer be in disgrace. ” I also told them about the gracious hand of my God on me and what the king had said to me.

They replied, “Let us start rebuilding.” So they began this good work.

Nehemiah 2:17-18

Together is how it is done. One or more from the outside. Many from the inside. That is frequently how God accomplishes his plan, and that is how we see the story of Nehemiah begin.

It is a little difficult for us to hear today. In fact, it might seem racist even.

Ezra receives a report that the Israelites have been marrying foreign women, women from the other peoples from around them, the other nations there in Canaan. In reaction, he tears his clothes, sits in repentance, and calls out to God for forgiveness. What’s happening here? Why such a violent reaction to this news?

The Israelites, at this point, are under foreign rule. The people of Jerusalem and the surrounding area of Judea have been conquered. In their area, it started with the Babylonians. Nebuchadnezzar and conquered Jerusalem, taking many of the Israelites into exile.

The Babylonians had then been overcome by the Medes and the Persians and that is currently where we stand in this timeline. Ezra and the other exiles are living under the reign of the Persians. They have been conquered and are living under the rule of other nations.

But it isn’t just because they didn’t have a very good military and couldn’t fight the Babylonians. Yes, the Babylonians were one of the most powerful nations and armies on the earth at that time, but the Israelites had faced down many powerful armies. And yet, because God was with them, the Israelites had come away as victors each time.

So what changed? Why are they in captivity now instead of remaining in their own land as their own people with their own God?

The answer is that they had rejected God. The Israelites had walked away from him. They wanted their own king, a human king, just like all of the other nations around them. They wanted this human king because they no longer followed God. They were no longer interested in him. Instead, they followed the other evil gods of the peoples around them. And they followed the other evil gods because they had not kept themselves separate from the other people. They had, instead, gone and intermarried with the foreign women of the land. And by intermarrying with these women, they were introduced to the foreign gods and began to worship them instead of worshiping the One true God.

After these things had been done, the leaders came to me and said, “The people of Israel, including the priests and the Levites, have not kept themselves separate from the neighboring peoples with their detestable practices, like those of the Canaanites, Hittites, Perizzites, Jebusites, Ammonites, Moabites, Egyptians and Amorites. They have taken some of their daughters as wives for themselves and their sons, and have mingled the holy race with the peoples around them. And the leaders and officials have led the way in this unfaithfulness.”

Ezra 9:1-2

And so this is the problem. The women, themselves, aren’t necessarily the problem. In fact, they are part of the Gentile nations that God will call into his kingdom, opening the door through Christ to all peoples. God loves the Gentiles, those other than the Israelites as well, but they worshiped other gods and so this became a massive problem. The problem is that the Israelites worshiped the foreign gods and wouldn’t leave them behind. And by doing this, God withdrew himself from the Israelites, leaving them to their own devices. He didn’t protect them any longer, but instead brought the Babylonians and each of the subsequent nations as a punishment for walking away from him.

Now it has come down to this… The Israelites had rejected God as their king and have instead preferred to have their own king. Since that time, they have had Saul who disobeyed God as he ruled Israel. So God rejected him and instead God chose David.

David was a good king, but he wasn’t universally accepted. He united Israel, but the politics of Israel were still strong. There were many that still thought that the house of Saul should rule Israel. David now, however, was ruling with all of both Judea and Israel under him. Yet as he sinned with Bathsheba and caused the death of Uriah, he showed weakness and his son Absalom, hungry for power, rose up and began to challenge David, even raising up an army for himself.

We could see it coming. War was inevitable. Instead of uniting the nation of Israel, it was tearing it apart. And why? Because they, the nation of Israel, had rejected the Lord as king and instead desired a king like all of the other nations around them. What did that cause? It caused them to begin to play politics, which ripped their nation apart.

David’s army marched out of the city to fight Israel, and the battle took place in the forest of Ephraim. There Israel’s troops were routed by David’s men, and the casualties that day were great—twenty thousand men. The battle spread out over the whole countryside, and the forest swallowed up more men that day than the sword.

2 Samuel 18:6-8

Absalom was coming for David in an attempt to strike him down and complete his struggle for the power and prestige of the seat of the king. Absalom wanted to eliminate the threat for the king’s seat that his father represented. Even if David had abdicated the throne by leaving Jerusalem, Absalom knew that he would not be safe as long as David was alive. There were those that loved him and were more loyal to David than they were to Absalom.

So it came to this. Absalom would march out against David, but David found out about it through those who were advising Absalom yet were loyal to David. In so doing, David amassed a counter-strike and his armies struck him down.

So we should ask… What is the lesson that we should learn? There are many, but one lesson is crucial to understand: There is only one king. There is only one head. And that head is Jesus Christ. He is the king. He and he only. There are many that lead our nations. There are many that other parts of our government. And more to the point that I’m trying to ultimately arrive at… there are many that lead our churches, but there is only one head: Jesus.

But very frequently, even if we don’t say that we are removing Jesus as the head of the church, we effectively do so. For example, in the church in Corinth, some said that they followed Paul. Others said they followed Peter. And still others said that they followed Apollos. Do we not do the same? Do we not say that we go to this person’s church, or that person’s church? Do those who lead not act as if they are the head of a particular local church?

My point is that we need to be very careful that we don’t repeat the same mistakes that we read about with the nation of Israel. We need to make sure that we do not replace, neither in word or deed, the kingship of Jesus. By having one king, even if we struggle, we have peace. By having one king, even if we struggle, we have one authority, and we don’t go to war with one another but instead remain in unity.

God’s Spirit had left Saul and he was no longer walking with the Lord. Even though he was the king over Israel, the fact that he wouldn’t serve God and obey him led God to reject Saul as king. Now, David would be raised up to be king after having been identified an annointed by Samuel.

But there was something more that I was reading today. The word says that an evil spirit came from God to torment Saul. Here is the full couple of paragraphs and context:

Saul was very angry; this refrain displeased him greatly. “They have credited David with tens of thousands,” he thought, “but me with only thousands. What more can he get but the kingdom? ” And from that time on Saul kept a close eye on David.

The next day an evil spirit from God came forcefully on Saul. He was prophesying in his house, while David was playing the lyre, as he usually did. Saul had a spear in his hand and he hurled it, saying to himself, “I’ll pin David to the wall.” But David eluded him twice.

1 Samuel 18:8-11

What is this saying? If God is a good God, how can he send an evil spirit? How is this possible?

It is important to remember that God is the creator over all things and can use all things, both good and evil, for his ends. Let’s remember back to Job’s situation. It was Satan that had come to God, asking that God to take everything from Job. God didn’t allow Satan to destroy him, but he did allow him to take away everything to test him.

Could it be similar in this situation with Saul? Saul was the king of Israel. He was the king of God’s people. Surely he would be a highly valued target for Satan, wouldn’t he? If so, then we can imagine a similar request from Satan to God, possibly to even allow him to destroy Saul similar to how Satan had taken everything from Job.

In this situation with Saul, though, we see that the Spirit of the Lord had left Saul, so he was easily taken by the evil spirit and he was not only angry, but it urged on his jealousy of David. The fact that the evil spirit had come on Saul was what brought David into the palace in the first place, so that David could play the lyre and soothe Saul. So God had used the presence of the evil spirit to bring David into the palace as royalty.

Yet possibly the evil spirit saw its opportunity to also take out the both Saul as well as the next king of Israel, the next leader of the people of God. When the evil spirit came upon Saul, he would try to kill David. Can we imagine that this was in the mind and was the intent of the evil spirit? Definitely!

Throughout the Bible, we see God use evil for his purposes. God isn’t evil, but he allows it and uses it. Even in the New Testament, Jesus drove out demons from the demoniac to show his power over evil spirits. Or God allowed the spirit of Satan to come into Ananias and Sapphira to bring a great fear upon the first church in Jerusalem for the power of the Lord and his people in that first church. Or even as Paul told the church in Corinth to turn the man stuck in incestuous sin to be turned over to Satan to be brought to repentance. God allows and uses evil, turning the circumstances for our good and for his glory.

We are very concerned about our appearance. We make ourselves look as nice as possible. We dress to impress. The pictures that we post on Facebook or Instagram are all the nice memories. We want to show ourselves to be living the good life. We want to show ourselves to be competent. We want to show ourselves worthy.

And why? Because we want the approval of others. If they see me looking good, then maybe they will invite me into their club. Maybe I can get the job that I’ve always wanted. Maybe I can make more money or attain greater prestige. These are very frequently our desires, and the outward appearance, designed to impress others, is the path that the world tells us is the way to achieve what we want.

Except that isn’t precisely the scenario in 1 Samuel 16. God has sent the prophet Samuel to choose the next king of Israel because he has rejected Saul. Saul has not obeyed God, but he instead has gone his own way. Instead of intending to impress God, Saul attempts to please the men around him. He wants the men to be happy instead of remaining in obedience to God.

So as Samuel looks at each of the brothers that their father Jesse has presented before him, Samuel says that each one is not the one that God has chosen. How does Samuel know that? Because God has told him that he shouldn’t look at the outward appearance. He shouldn’t look at what man is used to looking at to find a leader. He should look at what God looks at, at the heart.

But the LORD said to Samuel, “Do not consider his appearance or his height, for I have rejected him. The LORD does not look at the things people look at. People look at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart.”

1 Samuel 7:7

Because Samuel isn’t able to see the heart, he must listen to God. Samuel waits until God chooses. He waits to see what God will do, and then he acts. Once David is presented to Samuel, Samuel knows that this is the one because God tells him, “This is the one.”

So Samuel anoints David with oil, indicating that David will be the next king of Israel. He will be the ruler, the one to whom the nation of Israel will look for leadership, both as a nation as well as a people of God. He will be the king over the people of God.

How common is this also for us? How frequently do we look at the outward appearance. The answer is: All of the time!

How do I know that? Because it is the way of the world. It is for this reason that people attempt to make themselves look as good as they can. As fit as possible. As rich as possible. As famous as possible. The reason is that this is what is accepted. The world rejects those who are good in heart, but accepts what is acceptable on the outside.

But we must put ourselves, instead, in the place of Samuel. We must wait on the Lord to speak to us. We must listen to him so that we can know that which is right within the heart. And when we do that, we will be aligned with the heart of God. He will have chosen that which is good internally, not just what is good externally, and that will be God’s path, God’s way forward, not just that of man.

God had told Saul clearly that he wanted him to wipe out the Amalekites. They were supposed to go and completely destroy them. No ifs. No ands. No buts. Wipe them out.

This is what the LORD Almighty says: ‘I will punish the Amalekites for what they did to Israel when they waylaid them as they came up from Egypt. Now go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroy all that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys.’

1 Samuel 15:2-3

But Saul wanted to please his men. He was more interested in making men happy than making God happy, and so when they brought him back the king of the Amalekites, named Agag, along with several good cattle and sheep, instead of killing them all, Saul decided to go on up to Carmel and present a sacrifice. He was doing what was typically considered to be a good thing, but he was doing it out of disobedience. Saul’s sacrifice was more of a victory lap than it was a true desire to give to God, and now he will be rejected and punished for what he had done.

But Samuel replied:
“Does the LORD delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices
as much as in obeying the LORD?
To obey is better than sacrifice,
and to heed is better than the fat of rams.
For rebellion is like the sin of divination,
and arrogance like the evil of idolatry.
Because you have rejected the word of the LORD,
he has rejected you as king.”

1 Samuel 15:22-23

God’s plan was for Saul to do what God had told him through Samuel. But as Samuel said, Saul rejected the word of the Lord. He didn’t want to obey it, and instead he preferred to be praised by men. The fact that he was offering sacrifices didn’t matter. The obedience to God’s word is what God wanted, but because Saul didn’t want to offer obedience, but instead wanted to do things his own way, his headship, his kingship over Israel would be cut off as God would reject him as king.

Sacrifice can be used for sins, but it can also be used for worship or fellowship with God. But Saul, in fact, wasn’t interested in worship or fellowship with God. He was interested in raising himself up. He was interested in having himself be lauded. For this, he raised up a monument to himself at Carmel, and this was the context in which he was offering sacrifices. To whom was Saul offering praise? It was to himself! Even if he was saying that these sacrifices were for God, Saul was instead raising up himself.

So this is the danger of leadership. As leaders, we must maintain Christ as our head. As leaders, we must continue to call people to leadership in obedience to what Jesus has called us to do. As leaders, we must submit ourselves to the headship of Christ so that both we and those that we are leading can know Jesus in complete submission to God. This is who we are called to be and what we are called to do. Only in this way will God accept our leadership of others for the time in which he has called us.

The decline had continued. The people of Israel continued to walk away from God and even the sons of the leaders were no longer following the ways of the Lord. The time had come and the people were ready to walk completely away from God to create their own nation, with their own king, to be like the other nations around them.

The people of Israel had forgotten God. They had forgotten all that the Lord had done for them. They had forgotten how he had brought them out of slavery. They had forgotten how he had fought their battles for them, causing the opposing armies to go into confusion while they routed them.

No, now they wanted to create their own solutions. They were willing to take on heavy loads, to pay a heavy price, to live in their own way instead of living for the Lord, with Yahweh as their king. The solution seemed right to the Israelites, but it came at a great cost to their freedom as they would now serve a human king, not God as their king.

So the time came that Samuel the prophet summoned all of the people of Israel and told them:

This is what the LORD, the God of Israel, says: ‘I brought Israel up out of Egypt, and I delivered you from the power of Egypt and all the kingdoms that oppressed you.’ But you have now rejected your God, who saves you out of all your disasters and calamities. And you have said, ‘No, appoint a king over us.’ So now present yourselves before the LORD by your tribes and clans.

1 Samuel 10:18-19

Samuel had already anointed Saul, but they would go through a ritual to show the selection that would be made. Samuel would call the tribe of Benjamin, the clan of Matri, and finally the son of Kish, Saul. But Saul wasn’t there! He was hiding amongst other people, scared and unwilling to be chosen. Not truly acting as the king, and it was noticeable to the people as they questioned him.

In a similar way, Christ calls himself king and has called each of us into his kingdom. We are not to be present nor subject ourselves to human kings, but we are to subject ourselves to Christ as our king. He has paid a price for us, the greatest price, so that we will be his. He is the one on whom we can depend. He is the one that gives us the freedom that we desire. He is the one in whom we have the greatest joy.

But frequently we, instead, give ourselves to another king, the king of the kingdom of darkness. That can take the form of another person, or it can take the form of ourselves. It is a spiritual reality in that we are serving Satan, but the physical manifestation is that we serve man. Yet the only man that is worthy to be served is Christ as he is not only a man, but he is God.

Very frequently, our plans have us as the main actor in the story. We plan to do this or that and we plan to overcome the challenges through our own strength.

The Israelites, in the time of Samuel, knew that they wouldn’t be able to overcome the Philistines. They had been subject to them for decades and the Philistines had been too strong for the Israelites to defeat. But finally, the Israelites made the right move.

The Israelites asked Samuel to continue to cry out to God, that he would rescue them from the Philistines. As the ark of the covenant returned to them, the Israelites repented of their sins, repented of their idolatry, and put away all of their foreign gods. Instead, they looked to the Lord for his help, which at that point, is what God did.

While Samuel was sacrificing the burnt offering, the Philistines drew near to engage Israel in battle. But that day the LORD thundered with loud thunder against the Philistines and threw them into such a panic that they were routed before the Israelites.

1 Samuel 7:10

Even while Samuel was still sacrificing, the Philistines came to attack the Israelites but God released an incredibly loud thunder upon them. The force of the thunder threw the Philistines into a great confusion and panic such that they weren’t able to even fight well, as they normally would, before the Israelites. And so the Israelites routed the Philistines and were rescued from their hand as they had asked.

When we repent, when we put the Lord first, when we call out to him, he can and will bring the solution. Very rarely can we see the solution coming. It usually, seemingly comes from nowhere, but he does it! God does it. When we are faced with daunting circumstances, we must cry out to the Lord in repentance and in expectation that God will work. He will move. He will bring the solution, even one that we don’t expect. And in these solutions that God brings, we will see the glory of the Lord.

Samuel is a young boy, yet he has been given to the service of the Lord at the house of the Lord in Shiloh. A man there who was in charge of the service to the Lord named Eli was unable to control the evil that his sons committed so a prophecy was given to Eli that his sons would die on the same day.

The Philistines were one of the nations that remained in the land of Canaan after the Israelites had entered into the Promised Land. They continued to fight against the Israelites, and in fact, in this time, were subjugating the Israelites under their control. They were now in power over the Israelites. At this time as Eli was leading the people spiritually, the Israelites were going out to fight against the Philistines. They lose one battle badly, and then subsequently bring the ark of the covenant, their representation of the God’s relationship with them, to the camp where the army was staying as they believed that it would be a strength to them and allow them to win the battles.

But God was not with the Israelites. The Israelites were far from God and not pursuing him. Instead, they committed evil, and even doing so directly in the house of the Lord. And so the Israelites were hoping for a “god” that would lead them against the Philistines, but it would be a false hope as the one, true God was no longer with them.

On the most fateful day that saw Eli’s sons, and even Eli himself, pass away, the Philistines defeated the Israelites, killing 30,000 of the Israelite soldiers. Eli’s daughter-in-law had a son that she named Ichabod before going on to pass away herself. She named him Ichabod, meaning, “The Glory has departed from Israel”.

She named the boy Ichabod, saying, “The Glory has departed from Israel”—because of the capture of the ark of God and the deaths of her father-in-law and her husband. She said, “The Glory has departed from Israel, for the ark of God has been captured.”

1 Samuel 4:21-22

God had left Israel. God had not been with them. He was allowing Israel to fall into the hands of the enemies of the Israelites, even allowing them to be subject to the Philistines. And so, upon the death of Eli and his sons, and upon the death of tens of thousands of Israelites, and finally, now also upon the capture of the ark of the covenant by the Philistines, it was finally acknowledged that God was no longer with them.

Today, we can draw connections to our relationship with God as well. We see that John says that he and the other disciples saw the glory of Jesus, the glory of the one and only Son of God. This is what we see when we are with God. We see his glory!

On the other hand, we also see that, when we sin, we fall short of the glory of God. We do not live in the light of his glory, but instead we live in the dim light of our own pride, the light of our sin. This is what happened with the Israelites, and what even continues to happen today. God cannot be where sin is present, so our first step in reestablising our relationship with him is to repent. We must turn away from our sin and return back to him. Only in this way will we see the light of the glory of God and know him once again.

There had been a famine and the food had run out in Judea. They didn’t have anything else, so Elimelek and Naomi took their sons and went to the Moabites so that they could survive. The people of Israel were not supposed to intermix with the other nations around them, but this was a matter of life or death.

The Moabites were the descendents of Moab, the son born out of an incestuous relationship between Lot, the nephew of Abraham, and his oldest daughter. They were pagans who did not serve the God of the Israelites, Yahweh, but instead worshiped the god Chemosh.

Now, however, Elimelek and Naomi’s sons have married Moabite women and then subsequently Elimelek and his sons both pass away, leaving Naomi and her two daughters-in-law, Orpah and Ruth. Naomi urges them both to return back to the Moabites, to their own people. Orpah decides to return, but Ruth stays with Naomi. She refuses to leave and we see that she will stay, serving both Naomi as well as the God of the Israelites:

Don’t urge me to leave you or to turn back from you. Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God. Where you die I will die, and there I will be buried. May the LORD deal with me, be it ever so severely, if even death separates you and me.

Ruth 1:16-17

The relationship between Naomi and Ruth is strong. Ruth is completely connected to her mother-in-law and desires to stay with her. Despite the fact that they come from different peoples with different customs, and completely different worship, Ruth desires to stay only with Naomi, and is willing to go so far as to completely change who she is to stay with Naomi.

What type of love is that, that someone would completely change who they are? Clearly, Naomi has cultivated an incredible relationship with Ruth. Clearly, she has given what she has to Ruth, and now Ruth will reciprocate. She will give all that she has back to Naomi and she will stay with her and that dedication in both directions will pay off. Naomi’s love for Ruth will be reciprocated, and Ruth’s love for Naomi will become known amongst all of the Israelite people with whom they will stay when they move back to Bethlehem.

Love makes an enormous difference. It can overcome many deficits. It can overcome many gaps. It can bring people to a place where they will make incredible changes because of their desire for the connection of love. What is our commitment to love for the other? In our family? Amongst our friends? Amongst those that are unlovable…amongst those that are very different from us. We see here that it caused an amazing change. Are we willing to love like that?