When we talk about the ground of the local church today, there is a fundamental standard and boundary that defines what is within and what is outside of this ground. In the Lord’s recovery, what ground is being recovered, and how is it recovered? One book in the Old Testament dealing with the recovery of something that has been lost—and the need to raise servants in a very dark age, much like today—is Nehemiah. There, we see a clear contrast between two cities, Babylon and Jerusalem, as well as the recovery of God’s people from one to the other, rebuilding and restoring the nature and testimony that had been lost among God’s chosen people. Specifically, the book of Nehemiah speaks of the recovery of God’s people and God’s will in three perspectives: the wall, the work, and the warfare.
The wall: Delineating what is within and without the proper ground
In the time of Nehemiah, God’s people were lost in a Babylonian culture, and the wall of the holy city was in ruins. The book opens with this report: “And they said to me, The remnant who are left from the captivity there in the province are in an exceedingly bad state and reproach, and the wall of Jerusalem is broken down and its gates have been burned with fire” (Neh. 1:3). To the world, Nehemiah was a nobody; coming from a low social state, he was little more than a servant. Joshua was a high priest, Zerubbabel was a governor, and Ezra was a scribe; but Nehemiah was only a lowly cupbearer. Yet he was set apart by God for the greatest work among all these—to rebuild the wall—and today is remembered as a crucial person in the Lord’s recovery. When the Israelites returned to Jerusalem from the Babylonian culture, standing, testimony, education, and value system, the people had no concept about the importance or function of the wall. Therefore, the important first thing Nehemiah spoke on was the need to rebuild the wall to recover God’s testimony on the earth.
Jerusalem’s wall delineated something beyond physical boundaries. It marks the strength of God’s testimony to withstand the Babylonian influence. Once the Israelites were recovered back to Jerusalem, they were anchored to this ground by the recognition that they were not of Babylon, but of God. This recognition initiates from within; it begins while we are still in Babylon. We, too, were once Babylonian, raised in a completely worldly culture with no appreciation for the ground of recovery, but then realized we were not meant to be Babylonian. Something within us started to feel dissatisfied, and there was a deep desire within to find and recover our sense of purpose: “Lord, who are You? Who am I? What is my life for? I want to be the one that I was created to be. Lord, I want to come back.” We see Nehemiah’s fervent desire for recovery when he heard of the breach of the wall and burning of the gates of Jerusalem: “And when I heard these words, I sat down and wept, and I mourned for some days; and I fasted and prayed before the God of heaven” (Neh. 1:4); “And I said to the king, If it please the king and if your servant has found favor before you, that you would send me to Judah to the city of my fathers’ graves that I may rebuild it” (Neh. 2:5).
We are God’s children and there is a city where God put His name; this is where He wants us to be. Before we can arrive, we have to come out of Babylon and into Jerusalem. The Israelites who were old enough to remember Jerusalem were joyful to go back. When they returned, they took ownership of the city and began to rebuild the wall “for the people had a heart to work” (Neh. 4:6). But many of the Israelites spent their whole lives in Babylon. Perhaps many of them were content in Babylon, or lived well there. Some were even set up as local rulers and nobles, maintaining a living in the system provided by the established rule through enslaving their brothers (5:1-11). So why do we need to be recovered? Between these two cities, one is fully for God and the other is wide open to idolatry. When we see the wall of Jerusalem in the Bible, we must be reminded that our condition and our living must be separated, pure and absolute. We are either in Jerusalem or we are in Babylon—there is no middle ground. Because of the wall, there is a clear inside and outside; what is inside the wall is of God, and what is outside the wall is of Babylon.
A solid wall enables us to see how empty and corrupted the creeds, morals, and culture of the world are, whether government, literature, poetry, philosophy, or religion. When we finally see reality, we realize the Babylonian culture is evil, prevailing in every domain. It’s not about avoiding sins or worldly things, but rather an encouragement for us to come back, to be energized to live in His victory—His reality—so that our coming to and being in the church life has substance. The word substance is related to our constitution. “Recovery” is all about reconstitution; this is what chapter eight of Nehemiah is about. We can repeat the scripture, repeat the law, or teach doctrine; in that sense, a person like Ezra offers us another Deuteronomy (Neh. 8:5-8). But to be reconstituted means we need a new Deuteronomy. After so many years of degradation, the age needs a person like Nehemiah to rebuild the wall—not just physically, but to be involved in God’s work spiritually.
The work: Rebuilding the wall and restoring the testimony
When the Israelites returned to the ground of Jerusalem, they faced their true condition: a broken city with a broken testimony, and so they had to rebuild. But what did they have to rebuild? What is the wall? The wall is Christ. It is a perimeter indicating what is of Christ, and what is not—what is within the wall and what is without. This rebuilding is considered the work, making sure Christ is both the centrality and universality of the truth among us—the center and the perimeter of our living, our working, and our existing. This wall is the only way for us to differentiate the truth; this wall—Christ—allows us to hold on to the proper ground of the testimony. The detail, order, and handling of the work is controlled by the wall—by Christ.
So how do we rebuild the wall? We know that this building is not an individual effort, but a corporate one. Each household builds up the corporate testimony of Christ in the church. When the Israelites came back and found the wall utterly destroyed, it was up to each household to build the section of the wall in front of their house. If even one family chooses not to build, then the purpose of the wall is defeated because any gap, no matter how small, renders the wall ineffective. Furthermore, this building work was thorough. Each one had to build their part of the wall up from its foundation (Nehemiah 3). Building up from the foundation and the center of the Lord’s administration requires our union—our mingling, our oneness—with the Lord. There is a governmental understanding to every person who is serving the Lord, who are the workers of God: we must be spiritual. We must be one with Christ as our center and circumference. This oneness is how we can both protect the Lord’s interest and ourselves be protected from the enemy forces threatening from without. As a serving one in between, we have to have the foundation—the strength—of the wall. When we are one with Christ, we are able to differentiate what is and what is not in this sphere, or domain, of our testimony. Then, the work is controlled by that sphere.
We must know that our serving and doing the work according to Christ as our center and perimeter—as our wall—can only happen in oneness with Christ. Our testimony is only Christ. So the old Adam has to die, then be resurrected and ascended through the priestly service. That’s our qualification. In the Old Testament when the priests serve, they put on the ephod. The ephod is the qualification for these people to touch the incense. The incense and the intercessory prayer reaches God from there. Eventually, in the New Testament, the holy place and holy of holies is one place (Heb. 9:4); there is a freedom of the soul to contact and to mingle with God. Today, when we serve, our soul needs to be freed to access this new and living way. We have to be a freeman to God, disengaged from any bondage so that we can be a heavenly people—an ascended people. We are completely in His victory—in His ascended, heavenly atmosphere. Nobody can touch us as pillars of smoke (Song of Songs 3:6), touching both heaven and earth in the spiritual domain. The emphasis of our work today is that we have to die to become spiritually resurrected and heavenly ascended, claiming the victory. This is the reason that today the holy of holies is so mysterious. Our serving has to be anchored in this nature for this building, recovering the testimony of oneness with Christ on the earth today.
The warfare: Defending against the enemy through prayer
Nehemiah gives us the perfect roadmap from this understanding to the ultimate building; behind the building is a warfare. There are enemies who don’t want us to build. While the Israelites built, they also carried a spear (4:16). The work doesn’t stop at building; we also need to defend, because being involved with God’s work requires that we are also involved in God’s battle. Eventually, our building is geared towards this battle; when we come back to the ground of the Lord’s recovery, there is warfare.
“For our wrestling is not against blood and flesh but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the world-rulers of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenlies” (Ephesians 6:12).
The enemy is near; in Nehemiah’s age the enemy was persistent to wear out, confuse, scheme against God’s people to frustrate the building (ch. 2:10, 19; 4:1, 3, 8; 6:1-8, 12-13; 13:4-8). And the enemy continues on, nearing his last and final attacks today. He is conspiring against us, causing confusion, and will not give up. He will try every way to attack us, but we should not be afraid of the enemy. Actually, the biggest frustration to the building is that we have more internal issues than external ones, and cannot differentiate what is within and what is without. In Nehemiah 13, we see that the last scheme of Tobiah is hiding in the chamber of the house of God, robbing the serving ones of their supply, meal offerings, etc., so that they returned to work the field, causing the house of God to be forsaken. The people lacked discernment while Nehemiah was gone and allowed the natural, flesh and blood attachment to bring in damage to the house (4-8). Therefore, the building of God’s testimony requires those fighting with great resolution, who will not give a way for the enemy to infiltrate, because they have the wall—Christ—within themselves.
So how did the Israelites fight? The first thing the Israelites did was pray: “And all of them conspired together to come and fight against Jerusalem and cause confusion in it. But we prayed to our God, and because of them we set a watch against them day and night” (Neh. 4:8-9). Prayer is essential and intimate between man and his Creator. The Lord is able to use our prayers because the ground for which and on which we pray is God’s business; it’s where He put His name. When the ground was given to His chosen people, it was given to the priestly service. In every generation, God needs His priesthood. This is also what God is doing today:
You yourselves also, as living stones, are being built up as a spiritual house into a holy priesthood to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. (1 Peter 2:5)
We are in the great house of God, in which the brothers and sisters are beside us being built into a holy priesthood. Our lives are also linked to all the precious saints before us, who laid a foundation for us that we are able to continue today. We have gleaned the riches not only from our dear brothers and sisters in the Bible, but from saints across the generations whose lives and work are still resonating with us today. When we talk about the building work through the ages, its hallmark is not in the outward look of doing spiritual things, but having the fragrance of the sweet smelling myrrh that is pleasing to the Lord. The incense altar is the center of God’s work and God’s warfare in His building, which is the tabernacle. The lives of all the spiritual brothers and sisters before us in history are like incense, carrying a sweet, sacrificial fragrance. They are like pillars of smoke, upholding the spiritual building in God’s tabernacle. Prayer is our incense and our service. Every servant of the Lord has to be spiritual and a sweet smelling fragrance to Him. There is a deep consecration today the Lord is mingling with. There needs to be someone who takes initiative to burn the incense first, because the incense altar—our union, mingling, and oneness with the Lord—is the center of God’s building and administration, enabling others to touch it.
We are not just rebuilding the wall as in Nehemiah’s time, because that physical wall was already laid and built. Our charge today is something beyond, just as Nehemiah and those saints after him were dispensational beings in their time, living in an era ahead of their own, seeing something in advance. Do we belong to this fallen generation or are we those who are seeking Him in this dark and evil age, committing ourselves to this work of recovery unto His return? May the Lord help us to have this wall with its foundation and incense to realign our work, so that we may have the Lord’s administration for His building.
The true recovery today, spiritually, is about building the New Jerusalem. When we touch the work, the New Testament ministry, we are immediately shifted from an earthen ground to a heavenly ground. We move from our own personal struggle to fighting for the Lord’s move in the same nature that He moved from generation to generation, from continent to continent. The recovery didn’t just begin in recent years, or even with Nehemiah’s rebuilding of the wall—it has happened throughout history since the decline of the early church and continues today. Actually, the moment the enemy invaded—when sin came into man in the Garden of Eden—the recovery had already begun. And nothing will stop it. The Lord’s move has its own flow, and the Lord’s life has its own way to spread. This is the most glorious thing we can ever touch in human existence: the corporate vessel the Lord has prepared to receive His speaking and carry out His move in each generation.
The authenticity of the ground of the church depends on whether or not we stay within the wall and are constituted. We don’t need to do much. We just need to have ears to hear and eyes to see. Across generations, the Lord speaks. There is a judgment, a cleansing, a restoration and a building. On the surface, it may look like we are weak, or the church life is not overcoming. But if you look at the global perspective, you see that we are very hidden, very promising. We are looking unto a blossoming of the New Jerusalem above. If we want to live the best life—one where the enemy cannot touch us—we have to stay within the wall, being constituted and involving ourselves with God’s eternal building. This era is calling many to serve a corporate testimony, not just a few spiritual giants. Another era is coming to a close. We need to have a new generation. We need to serve our young people. And our young people need to catch this inheritance. And return. Build the wall.
(Above are notes of fellowship taken from a gathering on 6/16/2019, not reviewed by the speaker.)