God can and does use walls to bring Him glory, and we look to Nehemiah as inspiration on our own journey to build a wall that will glorify Jesus. We are not a wall of separation, exclusion or imprisonment, but one of faith, salvation and glory.
Eternal Wall is based upon these biblical images of walls. This will not be a divisive landmark but rather a landmark of hope. This will be a place where visitors are inspired to encounter Jesus, where people catch a glimpse of the infinite DNA of the God who answers and see the breakthroughs they read about fulfilled in their own lives.
This is not a Wall that displays exclusion; this is a Wall that displays the glory of God. Implicitly, he was formulating a plan to remedy the situation in Jerusalem. The connection between the temple and the wall is significant for the theology of work. The temple might seem to be a religious institution, while the walls are a secular one.
But God led Nehemiah to work on the walls, no less than he led Ezra to work on the temple. If the walls were unfinished, the temple was unfinished too.
The work was of a single piece. The reason for this is easy to understand. Without a wall, no city in the ancient Near East was safe from bandits, gangs and wild animals, even though the empire might be at peace. The more economically and culturally developed a city was, the greater the value of things in the city, and the greater the need for the wall.
The temple, with its rich decorations, would have been particularly at risk. Practically speaking, no wall means no city, and no city means no temple. Even on strictly military terms, the temple and the wall are mutually dependent. Likewise with government and justice. No temple means no presence of God, and no presence of God means no military strength, no justice, no civilization and no need for walls.
This at least is the ideal towards which Nehemiah is fasting, praying and working. This means not only that he had immediate access to the king as the one who tested and served his beverages, but also that Nehemiah was a trusted advisor and high-ranking Persian official. When the king granted him permission to oversee the rebuilding project, Nehemiah asked for letters to the governors through whose territory he would pass on his trip to Jerusalem Neh.
This disagreement demonstrates how easy it is for godly people to come to different conclusions about what it means to trust God in their work. Perhaps each was simply doing what he was most familiar with. Nehemiah was a cupbearer to the king, familiar with the exercise of royal power. Both Ezra and Nehemiah were seeking to be faithful in their labors. Walls of Jericho, massive stone walls surrounding an ancient Neolithic settlement in Jericho, built about bce.
Though weapons of the hunt had been in use for centuries, the walls of Jericho represent the earliest technology uncovered by archaeologists that can be ascribed unequivocally to purely military purposes.
The Israelites then burned the city. There were no defensive city walls until BCE. In the passage, the author writes about a city wall of fire to protect the enormous population.
Begin typing your search term above and press enter to search. The enemies of Israel were determined to stop the walls being completed. They were furious — stirring up trouble and slandering the Israelites, lying to the King that Israel was starting a rebellion. But even though the task seemed too great and difficult at many times, God gave them success. The walls were completed, as Daniel was told would happen, many years in advance. Then for sixty-two weeks it shall be built again with squares and moat, but in a troubled time.
Walls are pretty important and symbolic in the Bible — especially the walls of Jerusalem. But more than that, walls, stones and breaches have a spriritual meaning for us as well.
We are his living stones, chosen and precious. But just like Israel and Jerusalem, we are chosen for a purpose — that we may proclaim the excellencies of God. Perhaps you might like to meditate on the idea of a wall… the building work involved… the danger of gaps and breaches, and the importance of the cornerstone. I find it interesting how upset the enemies became when the breaches were repaired in Nehemiah.
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