Part 5: The Triumph and Failure of Reformation

Listen or read the following transcript as D. A. Carson speaks on the topic of The Triumph and Failure of Reformation from Nehemiah 13.

---

Male: We shall read from Nehemiah, chapter 13. Let’s hear the Word of the Lord.

“On that day, the book of Moses was read aloud in the hearing of the people, and there it was found written that no Ammonite or Moabite should ever be admitted into the assembly of God, because they had not met the Israelites with food and water but had hired Balaam to call a curse down on them. (Our God, however, turned the curse into a blessing.) When the people heard this law, they excluded from Israel all those who were of foreign descent.

Before this, Eliashib the priest had been put in charge of the storerooms in the house of our God. He was closely associated with Tobiah, and had provided him with a large room formerly used to store the grain offerings and incense and temple articles, and also the tithes of grain, new wine, and oil prescribed for the Levites, singers, and gatekeepers, as well as the contributions for the priests.

But while all this was going on, I was not in Jerusalem, for in the thirty-second year of Artaxerxes, king of Babylon, I had returned to the king. Some time later, I asked his permission and I came back to Jerusalem. Here I learned about the evil thing Eliashib had done in providing Tobiah a room in the courts of the house of God. I was greatly displeased and I threw all Tobiah’s household goods out of the rooms. I gave orders to purify the rooms, and then I put back into the rooms the equipment of the house of God, with the grain offerings and the incense.

I also learned that the portions assigned to the Levites had not been given to them, and that all the Levites and singers responsible for the service had gone back to their fields. So I rebuked the officials and I asked them, ‘Why is the house of God neglected?’ Then I called them together and I stationed them at their posts. All Judah brought the tithes of grain, new wine, and oil into the storerooms.

I put Shelemiah the priest, Zadok the scribe, and a Levite named Pedaiah in charge of the storerooms and made Hanan son of Zaccur, the son of Mattaniah, their assistant, because these men were considered trustworthy. They were made responsible for distributing the supplies to their brothers. Remember me for this, O my God, and do not blot out what I have so faithfully done for the house of my God and its services.

In those days, I saw men in Judah treading winepresses on the Sabbath and bringing in grain and loading it on donkeys, together with wine, grapes, figs, and all other kinds of loads. And they were bringing this into Jerusalem on the Sabbath. Therefore, I warned them about selling food on that day. Men from Tyre who lived in Jerusalem were bringing in fish and all kinds of merchandise and selling them in Jerusalem on the Sabbath to the people of Judah.

I rebuked the nobles of Judah and asked them, ‘What is this thing you are doing, desecrating the Sabbath day? Didn’t your forefathers do the same things, so that our God brought all this calamity upon us and upon this city? Now you are stirring up more wrath against Israel by desecrating the Sabbath.’ When evening shadows fell on the gates of Jerusalem before the Sabbath, I ordered the doors to be shut and not opened until the Sabbath was over. I stationed some of my own men at the gates so that no load could be brought in on the Sabbath day.

Once or twice, merchants and sellers of all kinds of goods spent the night outside Jerusalem, but I warned them and said, ‘Why do you spend the night by the wall? If you do this again, I will lay hands on you.’ From that time, they no longer came on the Sabbath. Then I commanded the Levites to purify themselves and to go and guard the gates in order to keep the Sabbath day holy. Remember me for this also, O my God, and show mercy to me according to your great love.

Moreover, in those days I saw men of Judah who had married women from Ashdod, Ammon, and Moab. Half of their children spoke the language of Ashdod or the language of one of the other peoples, and did not know how to speak the language of Judah. I rebuked them and called curses down on them. I beat some of the men and pulled out their hair.

I made them take an oath in God’s name and said, ‘You are not to give your daughters in marriage to their sons, nor are you to take their daughters in marriage for your sons or for yourselves. Was it not because of marriages like these that Solomon king of Israel sinned? Among the many nations there was no king like him. He was loved by his God, and God made him king over all Israel, but even he was led into sin by foreign women. Must we now hear that you too are doing all this terrible wickedness and are being unfaithful to our God by marrying foreign women?’

One of the sons of Joiada, son of Eliashib the high priest, was son-in-law to Sanballat the Horonite, and I drove him away from me. Remember them, O my God, because they have defiled the priestly office and the covenant of the priesthood and of the Levites. So I purified the priests and the Levites of everything foreign, and I assigned them duties, each to his own task. I also made provision for the contributions of wood at designated times, and for the firstfruits. Remember me with favor, O my God.”

Male: Let’s pray.

Heavenly Father, we thank you that you are a God who speaks. We thank you that your Word is not idle but it is our life. We thank you that you bring your Word to our hearts by your Spirit, and we thank you that you have done just that already this week. We pray that in your goodness and kindness toward us you would do that again as Don brings your Word to us. We pray that you would strengthen him, and as he speaks, may you open our eyes to your truth. May we rejoice in the hope that we have, and may we know your power at work in us. For Jesus’ sake, amen.

Don Carson: I must begin by thanking you for your hospitality, the many conversations I’ve enjoyed, some with friends of long-standing. I have lived in this country for 9 of the last 32 years, and my wife is from here, of course, and although I was brought up in French Canada, both my parents were born on this side, so in some ways, this is more homey to me than Chicago is. It’s a privilege to be back. I’m also grateful for conversations with new friends. It’s always a pleasure to remember that Christians never say their last goodbye.

We come now to the triumphant failure of reformation, chapters 11–13, but to avoid afflicting about 400 names on the reader, the reading was only chapter 13. We must remember how we have arrived at this point. Nehemiah was in Susa. He sought out reports regarding the standing, the well-being, of the remnant in Jerusalem and the city itself. This led to prolonged intercession. He wanted to rebuild Jerusalem. The expression is pregnant. It wasn’t just the city, but to rebuild the community.

He was sent in God’s providence by Artaxerxes, secured by him with fiscal support from him, rebuilt the wall, endured a great deal of opposition, and established the city in security. There was constant reading and rereading and explanation of Holy Scripture. Eventually, the feasts of the time were celebrated with joy, which led, in turn, to confession and repentance and covenant renewal, and all of this coming to this high point.

We now really come to the point of the whole; namely, the repopulating of Jerusalem. If you’re going to rebuild Jerusalem, you have to have not only walls but people in it, who then serve all of the functions of the city. As Nehemiah puts it, all of this takes place because God in his sovereign goodness kept putting things into Nehemiah’s heart, into his head, and protecting the enterprise again and again.

So we come, then, to the high point of the reformation, toward which Nehemiah has been aiming all along, which brings us then to the first heading: The triumph of reformation. Chapter 11, verse 1, all the way to 12:47. The text focuses on three highlights. First, repopulation, 11:1 to 12:26. In some ways, chapter 11, verse 1, picks up 7:73. “The priests, the Levites, the gatekeepers, the singers, and the temple servants, along with certain of the people and the rest of the Israelites, settled in their own towns.”

That is, so many of the builders had gone back. There’s only a tiny scrap of the population in Jerusalem, making it difficult even to mount adequate security. Nevertheless, it was not time then to repopulate. There was a need for covenantal renewal, confession of sin, reinstruction on the Word of God, public confession, renewal in the covenant itself, and that has taken chapters 8–10.

Chapter 11:1: “Now the leaders of the people settled in Jerusalem, and the rest of the people cast lots to bring one out of every ten to live in Jerusalem, the holy city, while the remaining nine were to stay in their own towns. The people commended all the men who volunteered to live in Jerusalem.”

Now to choose them by lot, of course, would be understood in our day to be a matter of blind chance, but in biblical thought, this is going to be sovereignly overruled by God himself. What does Proverbs 16 say? “The lot is cast into the lap, but which side of the dice comes up, that depends entirely on the sovereign will of God.” That’s a paraphrase, but it is really what the text is saying.

Verse 2 speaks of volunteers especially commended. Whether these volunteers are, in fact, the first group, namely those who are chosen, with some flexibility in the allotment of each clan (perhaps, for example, the allotment chose some percentage of each clan, and then how that was divided up allowed for some volunteering), or whether this was an additional group apart from those who were actually assigned by lot, we cannot know.

The implication is that all of this was considered hardship duty. This was not some boy on the farm hating every moment of it, just dying to get up to London. Rather, out in the country they had their own fields, by this time their own security, their own communities, their own friends, their own income, a certain amount of wealth, and now they’re going into the city with less land, less security, uncertain prospects, more danger of attack, away from family and friends.

Moreover, we look at the map and think, “Well, Beersheba itself isn’t all that far from Jerusalem. You can get there in 20 minutes on the motorway.” But of course, 10 miles is a long way if you’re walking. You can’t sort of drop in on the weekend to taste Mummy’s cooking or to get your laundry done. It was a big thing to move into the city. You’re half a day to a day and sometimes a day and a half of walking from your friends.

So this was a loneliness assignment, hardship duty. This was considered self-sacrifice for the sake of the covenant, for the sake of God, for the sake of reestablishing Jerusalem. Yet the agreement to commission this percentage to the task of repopulating Jerusalem is seen as more than a shrewd political move. Note the reference to “the holy city” in verse 1. It reminds us that this entire reformation is being brought to a climax in the reestablishment of the city.

The people as a whole doubtless saw all of this as an important step toward reestablishing Jerusalem, the holy city, as the real capital, which brings together ultimately in hope the Davidic line, the restoration of the Davidic kingdom and the security of the temple and all of its rites and rituals and the Day of Atonement and all of its sacrifices and the corporate praise and the choirs. Ultimately, perhaps, political control that would reestablish the nation itself, because at the moment they’re just a tiny part of a satrapy. That’s all they are.

It’s not really establishing the city as a capital city. This is only a first step toward that, but that’s what the hope is. That’s what the sacrifice is for. There’s a hope here that the people would no longer be vassals under regional rulers and under the despotism of the reigning superpower. No, no, no. The kingdom of David would be reestablished. The covenant community was being restored to the land. The promises of God were being fulfilled. “For this we’ll sacrifice. We’ll come together and rebuild Jerusalem.”

Now the book of Nehemiah is largely made up of Nehemiah’s memoirs, but we’ve already seen that it is supplemented by various lists, five of them, to be precise. So far we’ve seen three of them, the first in chapter 3. There is a description of the sections of the wall and the names of those who rebuild each section.

In the second list, chapter 7, there is a genealogical record examined, probably 75 years old. Not composed by Nehemiah but inserted by Nehemiah. Lists of the first exiles with 50,000 people and all of their names and associations, and so on, nicely summarized for us. The third list is in chapter 10, as we’ve seen. The names of the leaders, at least of those who participated in the covenant renewal. Now there are two further lists. Chapter 11, verses 3–24. As part of the repopulation plan, a list of those who returned to live in the city of Jerusalem.

Then in chapter 12, verses 1–26, a list of priests and Levites who returned with the first exiles, and this under Zerubbabel and Jeshua a century earlier, all the way through in their successors to the time of the rebuilding of the wall in Nehemiah, and all the way down post-Nehemiah to at least Darius II and maybe Darius III. That’s what the text says. This has obviously been annotated so the names are brought up to date, so that the priestly line can be shown to be continuous.

Now this is not the time or the place to go through these lists line by line, name by name, teasing out a bit here and a bit there, but let me make a few observations so that we see the power of it just the same. Verses 3–4 of chapter 11 give background explanation. “These are the provincial leaders who settled in Jerusalem (now some Israelites, priests, Levites, temple servants, descendants of Solomon’s servants lived in the towns of Judah, each on his own property in the various towns, while other people from both Judah and Benjamin lived in Jerusalem).”

It’s explaining how the restored community largely lived in these towns all the way around, as far south as Beersheba, and only a few lived in Jerusalem. That is the reason now for these allotments, this percentage being culled. Then you get, in verses 4–9, the lay heads of families, and in verses 10–20, the list of priests who move to Jerusalem. Instead of commuting back and forth when their number came up to do their priestly service, they’re actually moving back into the city.

Now that’s A/B, if you like, the lay heads, then the priests, and then it’s B/A. Verses 21–24 give some background notes on some of the temple staff. One could say more about that, but I’ll pass by. Verses 25–36, some background notes on some of the lay heads and their families, where they lived and so forth. Then in chapter 12, verses 1–26, the line of priests and Levites, and so forth, from Zerubbabel down.

Now I cannot read such lists without marveling that these are all real people. Each of them had fears and faith and failures and hopes and dreams. They were making decisions about what to do and what not to do. They were part of the community, sacrificing here, going there, rearing their children, facing old age, suffering from arthritis. They’re all real people. Their names are all recorded in Scripture because of the important role they played in this reformation.

I doubt if many of them thought to themselves, “Because I’m doing this, my name is going to be read centuries later,” or not read, as the case may be. In one sense, each one of them is, dare I say it, pretty insignificant, yet together, committed to the covenant, committed to the Word of God, they take these steps and constitute a movement that reconstitutes the city, that fulfills God’s promises, in this first step at least, of bringing the exile to an end. Ordinary people.

I know it’s quite possible when you’re down in Cornwall somewhere and a long way from the nearest evangelical church, or hidden up north somewhere in some community where you’re the only evangelical witness for about 20 miles in any direction, to go through moments where you do wonder what this is all about, and yet you constitute a movement of renewal of the people of God.

What this will look like in 100 years’ time or 200 years’ time or 500 years’ time, if the Lord tarries, only God knows at this point, but it wouldn’t entirely surprise me if in 300 years students will be reading about the history of the reformation of preaching that began in the 1980s and eventually brought about a movement of God, restoring confidence in many churches to God’s sacred Word and the truth and glory of the new covenant and the supremacy of Jesus Christ.

Not because any one of us is all that important. We all have our lives and our arthritis. Yet the Lord knows our names. Whether they’re recorded in any book here, they’re recorded in the annals of heaven. He knows them all. I find this immensely encouraging just to read these names. So here’s the first element that is stressed, the repopulation. In some ways, it’s the climax of the book.

Then secondly, the celebration. Verses 27–43. A marvelous scene, really: two choirs on the wall, setting out and going around in opposite directions until they meet. Not a fox making the wall fall down, in Tobiah’s assertion, but choirs … big ones. The wall was made in smaller circumference than the original wall so they could hear each other all the way around. Probably their singing was antiphonal. That’s the way so much of it was done. That is, not singing at the same time but one part singing and then the other part answering, and so on.

Moreover, these were big choirs. These weren’t scrapped together from a few people still in the city. No, no. Look at verses 27–30. The numbers were swelled for the celebration, as people were brought in, musicians, singers, all dragged in from the countryside for miles and miles around. There was preparation here with huge choirs. It must have been a wonderful sight, being in the city, listening to these antiphonal singings back and forth … in Jerusalem, the place of God, the city of the great king!

Verse 36, with a connection made with David, the man of God. What that does is establish the voices of the choirs as connected with history, with Scripture, the high point of the united monarchy, corporate praise, the renewal of the covenant, the center of the temple itself. It reminds us of a psalm, like Psalm 48. This is a great passage. I would love to spend more time on it.

Thirdly, organization. This, too, is part of the triumph of the reform. Verses 43–47. Verse 44: “At that time, men were appointed to be in charge of the storerooms for the contributions, firstfruits, and tithes. From the fields around the towns they were to bring into the storerooms the portions required by the Law for the priests and the Levites, for Judah was pleased with the ministering priests and Levites.”

They served well. They enjoyed the choirs. They liked the way things were running efficiently. The temple service was appropriate. The people were pleased. “They performed the service of their God and the service of purification, as did also the singers and gatekeepers, according to the commands of David and his son Solomon.” Again, this sense of deep-rootedness in the tradition, in the history, continuity, restoration of the Davidic monarchy.

“For long ago, in the days of David and Asaph, there had been directors for the singers and for the songs of praise and thanksgiving to God. So in the days of Zerubbabel and of Nehemiah …” That is, when they first got back and now again as it’s being reformed by Nehemiah. “… all Israel contributed the daily portions for the singers and gatekeepers. They also set aside the portion for the other Levites, and the Levites set aside the portion for the descendants of Aaron.”

That, finally, is the end of this climactic section. One begins to think, “You know, if I had been writing this, I would have had the names, then I would have had the organization, and then ended with the choirs.” Doesn’t this feel like a bit of a downer? I mean, you have the choirs. Then you end up this section with organizing what’s going to be in the storerooms.

The fact of the matter is that whenever you have genuine reformation, if it is in any sense enduring, it issues not only in celebration and rejoicing but in renewed or reformed structures or nothing is preserved. Nothing. You can have a revival with a great deal of intensity, but nothing is preserved for the next generation unless you change the structures. Even then, as we’ll see, nothing lasts all that long in this broken world. Nevertheless, you have to change the structures, and that’s the way it ends up.

My favorite wife and I were married 29 years ago in 1975 between submitting my PhD dissertation and defending it. Talk about timing. We honeymooned in Wales. One of my wife’s relatives loaned us a caravan, and we started visiting various places in Wales. Dirt poor but visiting old castles and going for long walks and so on. We went to the castle at Tenby and came out one afternoon at 4:00 or 4:30, and there was a so-called Calvinist Methodist church that was offering tea for tourists in the afternoon.

So we went in, and there was this old duck there (she had to be 85 if she was a day) who was offering the tea. We went in and got our tea, and I started looking around this building. It was plain as a pikestaff. The thing was so far left you needed field glasses to see it. There was just no sign of the gospel anywhere. Inevitably, I couldn’t help thinking to myself, “This dear old duck has to be 85. This is 1975. I wonder if she was around in the Welsh Revival.” So I said to her, “Been in this church long?”

“Oh, all my life.”

“Must have seen a lot of changes over that time.”

“Oh yes, a lot of changes.”

“Who’s the minister here now?” She gave me the name. “Enjoying his ministry?” I was far more subtle in those days than I am now. It took me a long time to get to the point. “Well, some of the young people really like him.” I thought to myself finally, “Don, for goodness’ sake, just ask your question.” So I said to her, “Tell me, was it true that in the Welsh Revival when people got converted the miners in particular lost so much of their vocabulary the pit ponies couldn’t understand them anymore?”

Her eyes grew big. “You know about the Welsh Revival? Oh, that’s exactly the way it was. My father was a miner.” She burst out laughing. “And his pony wouldn’t observe anymore. That’s when I got converted.” She told me about the meetings. We talked and talked for 45 minutes. People just didn’t get their tea while we talked about the Welsh Revival.

Finally I said to her, “What on earth are you doing for spiritual nourishment now?” She reached across the table and patted my hand and said, “I listen to Back to the Bible broadcasts out of Morocco,” which is taped in Lincoln, Nebraska. I don’t deny for a moment that the Welsh Revival, especially in its opening chapters, was a great movement of God. It really was. You cannot read the literature of it without seeing the hand of God in it.

In various ways, it became peculiar and bizarre toward the end. But worse, it captured nothing. It didn’t touch a school. One tiny little evening set of classes was eventually formed, which eventually became the school in Barry, but it changed none of the structures. It changed none of the accountability, captured none of the schools. Nobody did anything about it. It was just a movement of the Spirit of God, and no structures were introduced.

Oh, I’m thankful for this passage. It introduces a real note of realism. To have genuine reformation, you must change the structures that preserve some of this too. That’s why the passage is here. The enthusiasm of the public confession and the enthusiasm of the covenantal vows don’t mean very much unless they actually get off their duffs and organize to provide the actual materials to keep the whole thing going.

Then, inevitably, chapter 13, which brings us to the failure of the reformation. None of this should surprise us, of course. Think of how the Pentateuch ends, with Moses, the man of God, the meekest man who ever lived, not himself able to enter into the Promised Land. Or think of Paul, his wonderful connection with the churches in Ephesus and Asia Minor generally, warning them in Acts, chapter 20, about how grievous wolves will come in and ravage the flock, and then having to say in his last epistle to Timothy, “All those in Asia have abandoned me.”

Or think of Jonathan Edwards, that massive reformation starting in Northampton, 12 years later being kicked out of the ministry, partly over debates regarding the so-called halfway covenant, partly over personality conflicts and power grabs. Oh no, none of this should surprise us. Note some of the characteristics of this change.

1. New legalism.

Chapter 13, verses 1–3: “On that day the book of Moses was read aloud in the hearing of the people and there it was found written that no Ammonite or Moabite should ever be admitted into the assembly of God, because they had not met the Israelites with food and water but had hired Balaam to call a curse down on them. (Our God, however, turned the curse into a blessing.)” We can’t have a bad ending here. “When the people heard this law, they excluded from Israel all who were of foreign descent.”

Now it’s quite possible to read this paragraph as further triumph of reformation. In my judgment, it is at very least more ambiguous, and in the context it may instead be indicating what is already going wrong. Is this biblical fidelity or one step too far? One understands why it might be thought to be fidelity. Perhaps even Nehemiah when he found out about it.… It doesn’t say he led it here or thought it was a good idea.

One understands when there are so many attacks that one needs to draw a line somewhere, but observe. The decree regarding the Ammonites and the Moabites, in particular, prohibiting them from joining the assembly to the tenth generation was peculiar to the Ammonites and the Moabites. There is nothing in the Old Testament that extends that to all peoples, but here that’s exactly what’s done. It is extended to all non-Israelites.

Secondly, the Law itself made provision for non-Israelites to become Israelites. They could put themselves under the covenant. The men could be circumcised. They could vow to follow the God of Israel. Of course, they could not become priests, because they weren’t Levites and they weren’t sons of Zadok, but they could become part of the covenant community. Nothing is here being said about if they are willing to come under the God of Israel or anything like that. No, they’re foreigners. Draw the line.

Moreover, even with respect to the Moabites, Scripture has already given one or two very remarkable exceptions. Think of dear Ruth, great-grandma to King David, if you please. Now they’re out to restore great David’s city, but we begin by excluding all Moabites. Strictly speaking, Ruth in being accepted was breaking.… No Moabite was supposed to be in any line of anybody for 10 generations, but she’s in the line of David; a point, of course, which Matthew delights to point out in the opening chapter of the New Testament.

Moreover, how can other steps of reform at this time be taken to be a sign of unmitigated triumph? Ezra’s steps, for example, with mixed marriages in Ezra 9–10. It’s not just that certain people then get excluded from the community. He demands that these families be divorced, that the children and the wives be sent away in disgrace. Where is it in the Law that that is what is prescribed under these circumstances?

The truth of the matter is that when people become concerned for reformation, it is very easy to begin the drift toward legalism. What begins as a movement of the Spirit of God inevitably casts up some half-baked changes or drifts away from what is genuinely from God until what you do is start putting up legal barriers, and then you start having a fence around Torah. It has happened again and again and again.

2. The triumph of nepotism

 Verses 4–9. Eliashib, we’re told, was closely associated with Tobiah. The Hebrew expression can mean he was actually connected with him in kinship, perhaps by marriage. It’s quite likely, and certainly there were other connections. Down in verse 28 we read, “One of the sons of Joiada son of Eliashib the high priest was son-in-law to Sanballat the Horonite.” Of course, it was his sidekick who was Tobiah.

So despite all of the vows of chapter 10, this bit of family nepotism has risen all the way to the priestly families, and the temple itself is what is being compromised. In the very rooms where all of the provisions are supposed to be stored that keep the entire machinery going, they’ve decked out a suite now for dear Tobiah, who has not exactly been a friend to the community of God all along.

Fuller Seminary was founded in 1947. It was founded by Old Man Fuller. He was known for his radio broadcast all over America. He was, in fact, a godly man and was concerned about the drift. We had lost most of the schools in one fashion or another, and most of what we had now were third-rate Bible institutes doing their bit, but first-class theological seminaries were hard to come by. It’s true that Westminster had been founded in the 1930s as a breakaway from Princeton, but our theological institutions were thin on the ground.

He had the money from this great radio ministry to support the founding of the new school, and so Fuller was founded. It was less than 20 years later that his son, Daniel Fuller, went and did his doctoral studies under Karl Barth and came home and quite frankly admitted to his father and to the faculty, who did not want to hire him, that he had changed his views on Scripture.

But the father thought that if he got into the faculty he could be reformed by the influence of the others. So with money bags on his side, he insisted that nepotism prevail, and Dan Fuller was hired. Then, because of the Fuller name, when the old man retired, the board thought it best to make Daniel Fuller the new president, and the rest is history. All because of nepotism. Nepotism trumps the gospel.

Here, undoubtedly, Nehemiah takes the right action. What has gone on is shocking, but the fact of the matter is that this evil was perpetrated after the renewal of the covenant in chapter 10 by a priest. So how deeply had the reformation taken root?

3. The neglect of covenantal faithfulness, especially with respect to the temple

Verses 10–13. Again, the importance of the temple. We saw this dramatically yesterday. This is not just a question of preserving ritual from the perspective of the structure of the old covenant. This was the place where men and women met with God. This is where the sacrifices were offered. This was the point of corporate worship.

So to corrupt the temple was more than a thumbing of your nose against certain kinds of religious practices that we might not approve of. It was, in fact, thumbing your nose at the very means God had given for the people to know him, to love him, to be faithful to him, to be restored in covenantal faithfulness to him through the sacrifices, and so forth.

Again, the action Nehemiah takes is right, but what does it say about the depth of the reformation? In passing, note this refrain in verse 14, another of these “Remember me” prayers. We’ve seen one or two of them. Now there is an entire cluster of them. I’ll reflect on them in a moment.

4. The triumph of profit over piety

Verses 15–22. His concern is Sabbath, of course, but making a buck on the side. Again, Nehemiah is right, but what does it say about the depth of the reformation? Then another “Remember me” verse, 22b. Then mixed marriages, verses 23–28, apparently after chapter 4, verses 1–3. The people never learn.

At least what Nehemiah does is more restrained than what Ezra did. He merely pulls out some hair, bashes a few people around, and puts them all under a solemn oath yet again. What do you think the oath was about in chapter 10? But it has happened again, and all the way up to priestly circles. Again, Nehemiah is right, but what does it say about the reformation? Then verse 29: “Remember them, O my God, because they defiled the priestly office and the covenant of the priesthood and of the Levites,” and in the last line, “Remember me with favor, O my God.”

Thus, we reach the final summary of the end of Nehemiah’s mission in verses 30–31. Listen to it now. We’ve had the glory of the public confession of chapter 9. We’ve had the glory and intensity of the public vows of renewal in chapter 10. We’ve had the marvelous celebration with antiphonal singing around the walls, and this is how the book ends. “So I purified the priests and the Levites of everything foreign, and assigned them duties, each to his own task. I also made provision for contributions of wood at designated times, and for the firstfruits. Remember me, O Lord.” I read these lines, and I remember T.S. Eliot.

This is the way the world ends

This is the way the world ends

This is the way the world ends

Not with a bang but a whimper.

It’s faithful. I’m grateful. It feels thin. What shall we make of this repeated line, “Remember me for blessing; remember them to give them a hard time”? Now about any one occurrence of the refrain, one could easily infer that this is simply an Old Testament parallel to what Paul says in 2 Timothy 4:7–8: “I have fought the good fight. I have finished the race. I have kept the faith. Now there is in store for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award me on that day.”

“So remember me for this also, O my God, and show mercy to me according to your great love.” A mere Old Testament equivalent of what Paul himself says. Whenever I come across these reward-type passages, I’m reminded of the illustration of C.S. Lewis. How do you integrate reward theology into the massive structures of grace so endemic to Scripture?

Lewis portrays two men. The first goes into the red-light district of a town, finds a woman, pays his money, and has sex. He has his reward. The other falls in love with a young woman, courts her with honor and dignity, gets to know the family, woos her with tenderness and affection, and eventually there’s a wonderful marriage. He has his reward.

What’s the difference? The difference, Lewis says, is that in the first case, the payment is so incommensurate with the reward as to make the transaction obscene. In the second case, the reward is nothing other than the fulfillment of the relationship. Not bad. That is one of the reasons Romans can speak of us receiving our rewards according to grace, because, after all, in the teaching of Jesus we’re all, at the end of the day, unprofitable servants. It’s not as if the great structures of grace are being overturned by this sort of language.

Yet for all the parallel in conceptuality between Nehemiah’s refrain and Paul’s comments in his last letter, don’t you worry just a wee bit that it’s cropping up so often at the end? I mean, once I could see the parallel, twice under a push, but four times in the last chapter? It sounds to me like a man who is getting old and cranky.

In the late 1980s, I interviewed at Trinity Carl F.H. Henry and Kenneth Kantzer, who were by then both in their 70s. In North American terms, there were no two leaders more influential in the revival of the evangelical movement after World War II than those two. They had been everywhere, seen everything, done everything.

They had given lectures on the history of evangelicalism in the twentieth century in North America, with touches from around the world as well. Then I interviewed them on video in front of our students the next day and didn’t tell them in advance what the questions were going to be. I was asking them questions about, “What do you make of the Southern Baptist Convention at this point in their history?” and “How do you relate to Billy Graham?” and as many awkward questions as I could think up.

Then the last question was, “So many men, when they get older, become backward-looking. They begin to destroy the very ministries they built up. They begin to resent younger men coming along, but you two haven’t done that. You’re both constantly looking to the future. I can’t detect an ounce of rivalry between you or toward the younger generation coming along.

You’re known to be encouragers of another group coming along behind. How have you managed that? Now don’t just tell me it’s the grace of God. I know that. But how has the grace of God worked out in your life so that this is where you’ve ended up instead of like so many bitter old men?” Well, they both spluttered at the same time. It was wonderful to have a video recording of two earnest, very capable communicators sputtering, embarrassed. Finally Carl blurted out, “How can anyone be arrogant when he stands beside the cross?”

Here is a man now who seems to me to be thinking a fair bit about his heritage and wants to have his strokes from God himself for what he has done. Once or twice I could see him in the same heritage as Paul. That’s how the reformation ends. What shall we say? Is this the final or even the only lesson of Nehemiah, that there is sin at the beginning, sin in the middle, sin at the end, so the primary focus, even the only focus of this book is, “The law doesn’t work, so let’s get to Jesus”? Well, isn’t it a bit more complicated than that?

First, yes, that is part of the thrust of the book, in exactly the same way that part of the thrust of Deuteronomy is that there’s a sad ending, in a book that anticipates more, ultimately a prophet like Moses coming, while Moses ends his life in something of a disgrace, at least a mixed verdict. The law cannot finally transform. Paul understands that. Nehemiah 13 is a bit of a downer. So is the end of Deuteronomy. So is the end of Judges. So is the end of Chronicles. So is the end of 2 Kings. We need a Savior.

In that sense, this book does fit into a whole pattern of things that projects forward. Secondly, one must, nevertheless, acknowledge that a great deal was accomplished on the short term. This was a genuine reformation, and this, according to the text, by the sovereign, providential hand of God, who was blessing Nehemiah in the eyes of Artaxerxes, who was putting things into Nehemiah’s mind.

If you start criticizing this reformation too strongly, you criticize God. A great deal was accomplished. The city was rebuilt, and thus, prophecies about it were being fulfilled. But thirdly, although I would not want to minimize or underestimate the power of the gospel, the fact of the matter is that gospel consummation has not yet arrived, and we face something similar.

From the gospel, in this life, comes forgiveness of sins, the transforming power of the Holy Spirit, the communion of saints, this new and wonderful thing called the church, which is no longer located in the locus of a nation like Israel but is a transnational, transracial, transcultural community of redeemed men and women, taken from every tongue and tribe and people and nation, regenerated by the Spirit of God, justified by the death and resurrection of Christ, sanctified by all the redeeming power of God within us. Oh yes, this is a great triumph. We have come a long way since the old covenant.

But from the gospel also comes, in the future, sinlessness, resurrection body, a new heaven and a new earth, perfection in love, a sin-free universe, and we sure aren’t there yet. Not that I’ve been able to detect. Between the triumph of the cross and the consummation of the end stand many victories and many failures, many reformations, and many reformations withering away. Are we so different? Read the after-flow of the reformation in Europe.

It didn’t take them long to forget a few things too. Legalisms on the one hand, wild sins on the other; inventing new legalisms to protect what was there because the people are going astray; redefining sanctification and redefining sanctification; various moral failures in church discipline. In Britain, it only took a couple of centuries until things were so disgusting that, quite frankly, I shudder to think what would have happened to this country if God had not raised up Harris and Wesley and Whitefield and the rest.

Are we so different? Is this not why we have found so many parallels between the account of Nehemiah’s reformation and the New Testament? So brothers, press on. Have great confidence in Christ and in his gospel, but even if the Lord should open the floodgates of heaven and pour out a mighty revival and reformation upon us, understand this: there will be tares sown among the wheat, and it won’t last all that long anyway.

If the Lord blesses it, there will be some structures that change that preserve as much good as possible, and you should strive for that, but at the end of the day, because we procreate new generations of sinners, strictly speaking the church is never more than one generation away from annihilation. It’s why there must always be evangelism, planting, church planting, new reformation.

So we live and serve in the light of the cross, the empty tomb, Pentecost, and we give great thanks to God that we are the people of the new covenant and we have come a long way since the stipulations of the old. We thank God for where we are in our spot in history, but we live and serve in the painful acknowledgement of our failures and disappointments and inconsistencies, and we cry with the church from every generation, “Even so, come, Lord Jesus.” We live and serve in that tension and nowhere else until Jesus comes again. Let us pray.

Grant us, we pray, great confidence in Christ Jesus, the head of the church, and in the gospel he secured by his own death and resurrection, but great realism too, for his Word teaches us that in this in-between time, the rage of Satan is directed against us, precisely because he knows his time is short.

We earnestly seek reformation, but help us never to be so foolish as to imagine that by our reforms, by our organization, by our gifts, somehow we will bring in utopia. For this, merciful God, we await in eager anticipation the return of your dear Son, and we cry, “Have mercy upon us. Come, Lord Jesus, come.” Amen.

I am commanded by the higher authorities to reserve a few minutes now for questions and hopefully for answers. You see, I have just proved that the age of miracles is not dead. Occasionally I can be briefer. So there are at least a few minutes for Q&A, and you will have time for coffee before hearing the climax of the week in the exposition of Dick.

Male: [Inaudible]

Don: It depends what you mean. If you mean walls with an unambiguous antitype, I doubt it. But one of the things I did skirt over here a bit that I could have spent more time in but purposely left out just because I had to make choices in what I would put in.… Just as there is something of a temple typology, which I briefly sketched out yesterday, there is also, of course, a Jerusalem typology. The Jerusalem typology brings with it various elements.

You have historic Jerusalem, but, in fact, we are gathered into the Jerusalem that is above, to use the language of Paul in Galatians 4. We gather in the heavenly Jerusalem, assembling with the saints, as it were, before God, according to Hebrews, chapter 12. Our fundamental assembly is before him. Our assemblies here are sort of the manifestation in time of our fundamental assembly before him.

Then the book of Revelation, of course, pictures the final climax of things. Not as a city coming out into the new heaven and the new earth. They’re two separate images. “I saw a new heaven and a new earth” and “I saw a new Jerusalem.” It’s the same thing under a different image. And this city has walls. The whole point of the walls in that context is security, absolute security. Nothing vile shall enter. Absolutely nothing, we’re told. No death or anything.

But the glory of the nations shall be brought into it, which does not mean the city is isolated and the rest of the fallen world is out there and now brings its stuff in. That’s making the metaphors walk on all four. What it means is this city is utterly secure and is brought up from what is best, from common grace, from special grace, from every tongue and tribe and people and nation, in this city built like a cube, if you please, because it is the Most Holy Place. It’s the only cube in the Old Testament. We’re always now forever in the presence of God.

Then you start listing the things that are not there. There’s no light, because the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its light. There’s no temple, because the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple. The whole point of the exercise, then, is that we are in the presence of God. Now we see what it truly means to say, “God will have his dwelling with us. He will be our God, and we will be his people.”

That’s language that goes all the way back to Exodus and Leviticus, but it has been ratcheted up, as we saw yesterday, until the triumph of perfection in the new heaven and the new earth. Now in that context, clearly the walls are doing something, but to try to make it a simple typology, I doubt it.

Male: [Inaudible]

Don: In 25 words or less. I knew I was sort of throwing out the odd grenade yesterday when I drew your attention to Hebrews 7:11–12, because it is so antithetical to a lot of our thinking on the traditional tripartite view, which is fundamentally Thomistic even though it has been mediated to us through Calvin. My problem is I don’t know how to answer that one briefly. I do not want to say that there’s nothing in that tripartite division.

At the heuristic level, that is, the level of actual description, it has some useful things to it. My objection to it is that when you come to the New Testament writers, who then point out what continues from the old and what does not continue, nowhere is it clear in the text itself that they are establishing there patterns of continuity and discontinuity on the a priori of the tripartite distinction.

You see, if you make the tripartite distinction an a posteriori function, that is, after you’ve established whatever it is that continues or does not continue, then, after the fact, that which changes least call moral law, you have a category for moral law. On the face of it, to avoid Marcion, it’s transparent that there are some things that continue.

So the same apostle who can say, “One man regards one day above another, another man regards all days the same; let each be fully persuaded in his own mind,” does not say, “One man regards sleeping around as a good thing, one man regards sleeping around as a bad thing; let each be fully persuaded in his own mind.” There’s something of continuity and discontinuity, and, after the fact, if you call the things that change least moral law I’m not upset.

But the structures that enabled you to get there, it seems to me, are not the traditional ones of systematic theology. I think they are bound up rather more with some fairly complex notions of fulfillment and typology. We’re used to the notion of the law having a prophetic function when it comes to things like the temple. The temple is prescribed by law, but the temple also has a prophetic function in the scheme of things.

In the New Testament, the antitype of the temple is one of three things. It’s preeminently Christ as our temple or it’s the church or, in one instance, it’s our bodies, but it’s not our buildings. I worry about a building with a sign on it, “Temple Baptist Church,” or something like that. It is breaking all of the categories. So we’re familiar with the notion of law having a prophetic function in the stream of redemptive history. I would argue that all the law or the law taken as a whole, including what we traditionally call moral law, has a prophetic function.

Now I could put it this way, somewhat provocatively. This is not quite fair, but you’ll get the idea. Will there be any signs posted in the new heaven and the new earth, “Thou shalt not commit murder”? Well, it’s probably pretty hard to murder resurrection bodies anyway, but quite apart from such details, one assumes such signs will be unnecessary, because we will so be transformed that the thought of murder would be inconceivable to us. You don’t have to prohibit something that nobody is going to do.

Does that mean, therefore, that the law of murder has been abolished? Wrong category. It has been fulfilled, rather, in such transformation that all people love one another. Then you hear the voice of the Master, “Do not think that I have come to abolish the law but to fulfill it.” What come next are six antitheses in the moral realm. I think they’re prophetic categories, prophetic in this predictive sense, based on a certain typology of law.

Now to justify that would take a long time, but those are the frames of reference in which, it seems to me, we’re much, much closer to biblical language and away from the a priori of the tripartite distinction. Let me go one step further. In our workshop yesterday, a related question came up having to do with Old and New Testaments.

One of the hardest things in preaching, and it’s the sort of thing first-year preachers hardly ever get right, except accidentally.… It’s the sort of thing you struggle with for quite a while before the penny dawns a wee bit. It’s not just how we must take what the Scripture says and apply it to the culture. We’re all aware of that kind of tension. There’s another tension between good solid exegesis on the one hand and the categories of systematic theology on the other.

In this country (by this country I mean England, not the UK; it’s a bit different in Scotland, for example), systematic theology is, by and large, so despised universally in academic circles and pretty extensively elsewhere that many of us are influenced by that, to some extent, and are worried about it. So we overcompensate. We want to emphasize the structures of biblical thought and biblical truth and confessionalism, so we have our systematic theology, and then we are in danger of using the categories of systematic theology and reading them back into the text and domesticating the text.

One of the important things that needs to be done by a well-informed preacher, then, is to show how you can responsibly move from the text in terms of the categories of the text to the categories of a broader systematic theology. Because we all have systematic theologies whether we admit it or not. The only question is whether they’re good ones. Let me give you a couple of illustrations, and then I’m going to drop this one. I’ll pick up on one or two of the ones we briefly scanned yesterday.

We who come from strong confessional backgrounds insist that we may speak rightly of ourselves being reconciled to God and God being reconciled to us. We sing it in our hymns, do we not? “My God is reconciled, his pardoning voice I hear.” The fact of the matter is that the noun katallage and the verb katallasso is never, ever used … not once … in Scripture of God being reconciled to us. It’s always used of us being reconciled to God. He’s the immutable one, and we have to be reconciled to him. To speak of him being reconciled to us is simply not a biblical category.

Nevertheless, the systematic theology is not wrong, because there is a sense in which he stands so much against us the question is.… How is he ever going to accept us? How will he ever be reconciled to us in the sense of letting us in at all? Out of that comes the doctrine of substitution and propitiation, and so on, so that in the categories of systematic theology and the hymn writers, in fact, that is what is being affirmed by this.

So if I’m handling these texts, I acknowledge that the particular language of reconciliation is used one way, yet there is a broader thought that does not use the language of reconciliation, per se, that nevertheless conceptually is talking about reconciliation. To use another example, at the time of the Reformation, people spoke dominantly of justification as being God’s declarative act that marks the entrance of our pilgrim experience, and so on. We are justified before God, declared righteous in his presence by the death and resurrection of Christ.

Then sanctification is the ongoing process by which we are rendered more and more holy with time. Of course, the Reformers were good enough exegetes that they found some texts where sanctification was not that sort of thing at all; it was, in fact, what they called declarative or positional sanctification. So Paul writes to the Corinthians and says that they are sanctified in Christ Jesus, even though, from a Reformation vocabulary perspective, they’re a singularly unsanctified bunch.

So we make that safe. They’re sanctified. That’s as instantaneous in the religious sphere as justification is in the forensic sphere. Then David Peterson comes along, bless his heart, and argues that always in Paul the sanctification language is used that way. I’m not sure it always is, but it’s jolly close. Even if it’s jolly close, do you then start saying, “Does that mean the Reformers got it all wrong?” No, no, no. It doesn’t mean that at all.

The New Testament speaks often of our growth in grace, increasing conformity to Christ. “Brothers, I do not count myself to have apprehended, but I press on for that also which I have been apprehended in Christ, forgetting those things which are behind and pressing on.” All of Philippians, chapter 3, is about sanctification without ever using the word once. So there you have the doctrine of sanctification without the word. In the New Testament you often have the word without that doctrine.

Suddenly you realize that sometimes, if you’re being faithful to the language of Scripture, you can make appropriate connections to systematic theology while still not reading your systematic theology onto the New Testament just because you’re watching vocabulary and nothing else. Now I would want to argue that some of that has gone on in this law/grace/gospel continuity/discontinuity thing.

One of the reasons it is so hard to handle when somebody asks a question in 25 words or less, or 25,000 or less, is because there are so many misalignments of vocabulary from one tradition to another or between systematic theology and exegesis and so on. But I don’t want to sound, at the end of the day, by throwing out a grenade like quoting Hebrews 7:11–12, that I’m a crypto-Marcion. Do you see? You asked. A couple of fast ones now before we come to an end.

Male: [Inaudible]

Don: I don’t know of an outstanding one. In many ways, Williamson’s is really good at dealing with many, many issues, but he takes some critical positions here and there that I really don’t like. The older one by Myers has a lot of useful information in it. In brief compass, Leslie Allen is a summary of the best of other ones, but too cynical by half here and then. You have to take him with a grain of salt, and so on.

Then there are standard older ones as well. I don’t know one that is just so outstanding that you should sell your shirt and buy that one and then you don’t have to read anything more. Oh yeah, there’s Kidner’s one as well. He’s an artist, isn’t he? He cannot write a boring sentence. I write many of them. He writes none of them.

Male: [Inaudible]

Don: Once you’ve raised the question that Willow Creek raises, you have to have a very firm biblical theology in place or else you become merely pragmatic, even mechanistic. So I would want to argue, for example, that for the sake of communicating the gospel faithfully, you don’t want simply to have an assembly that looks as much like a theater as possible with a lot of entertainment and video images and all of that sort of thing. I think that really, really good, honest, transparent corporate worship can itself be powerfully evangelistic.

When I’m involved in guest services, where I’m controlling something as opposed to just being invited to speak somewhere, and if I know we have a whole lot of non-Christians who are really biblically illiterate, then far from just sort of having a film and making a jazzy little talk without having a Bible or anything like that, then because it is the Word of God which convicts and quickens, and so on, in addition to corporate singing, you want to explain everything to make it user-friendly. You want to avoid as many clichÈs that will darken things as you possibly can, but on the other hand you want it to be genuine.

So I will say something like, “Christians have always been a singing people. In this church we sing some things that are a thousand years old because we’re part of a great heritage; some that were written in the last year. This first one was written by a slave trader who was converted. You may have heard it. It is sung pretty widely, actually. ‘Amazing Grace.’ That’s what happened to the slave trader. When the music begins we stand to sing, and you’ll find the words on page 322 of the blue book in front of you in the racks.” I mean, it’s still a hymn. It’s still singing, but on the other hand it’s user-friendly.

When they’ve all sat down again … “God is a talking God, and marvelously, he likes to hear us talk too. When we talk to him, we call it prayer. In our church, when we pray, we bow our heads as a mark of reverence and close our eyes to shut things out. If all of this seems strange to you, that’s all right, but listen as the community of God here addresses God.” Then don’t pray for 30 seconds because longer than that is embarrassing. Pour out your heart for seven or eight minutes, but not in clichÈs, so there’s genuineness about it.

See, you can make a service profoundly evangelistic while still being user-friendly in the best sense. That’s the sort of difference. It seems to me that the Willow Creek approach is trying to be as little Christian as possible to communicate. I want to be as deeply Christian as possible but with as few barriers to communication as possible. Now that’s the heart of it. Everything else I would say is footnote. I’d better take one on this side now or else you’re going to think I’m right wing, or maybe from your point of view I’m left wing.

Male: [Inaudible]

Don: Oh, I haven’t. If you would listen carefully, I haven’t.

Male: [Inaudible]

Don: Yes, and then once I have used revival, I’ve sometimes distinguished between revival and reformation, because revival is a kind of reformation without the changes in structure, and so on, that begin to solidify things.

Male: [Inaudible]

Don: I think there’s some justification in what you’re saying. Partly it’s influenced by the Welsh stream. Partly it’s influenced by Lloyd-Jones’ great interest in the evangelical awakening. He was hugely interested in that, and one ought to be interested in that. On the other hand, in some parts of the world there’s a flip side that is so interested in reformation it speaks condescendingly and slightingly of revival and wants structures and confessions and this sort of thing without piety and devotion and intensity.

That is an equal mistake. What God has joined together let no man put asunder. I want to sometimes speak to my friends on both sides and say, very respectfully, “A plague on both your houses.” What we need is massive doctrinal re-conformity to the Word of God, along with massive devotion and intensity and confession and prayer and genuine piety.