Let’s spend at least a couple of days in Nehemiah, one of my favorite Old Testament books. From Nehemiah 1.3 to 6.15, we go from a problem to a solution:

The wall of Jerusalem is broken down, and its gates are destroyed by fire…So the wall was finished on the twenty-fifth day of the month Elul, in fifty-two days. (Nehemiah 1.3 and 6.15, ESV)

The title and Part One of my book Everyone on the Wall comes from Nehemiah. Here are some simple observations from the first two chapters:

• Nehemiah was a layman, both in wall building and in potential leadership in Israel. Not a priest. Not a prophet. “I was a cupbearer to the king.” (Nehemiah 1.11)
• God obviously put it on Nehemiah’s heart to lead this effort, especially after 4 months in prayer. He probably didn’t start out thinking he would lead. He was just sad about conditions and began to pray. As he prayed, no doubt God began to say to him, “What are you going to do about it?” “Me? What can I do? I’m a captive in a foreign land serving the king.” But he formed a plan and continued to pray.
• Prayer, planning, and petition – he asked the king for what he needed. And, as I pointed out yesterday, because God was with him, the king was with him.
• Nehemiah goes to Jerusalem, and there is opposition mentioned from the beginning: Sanballat, Tobiah, Geshem. (The first two were mentioned early in chapter 2 and Geshem at the end of chapter 2.)
• Nehemiah scopes out the damage first hand. There’s a lesson: don’t go by what you hear or read about a problem. Witness it, first-hand, on the ground.
• Then Nehemiah casts the vision, challenges the leadership, and the first guy mentioned as “on the wall” is the high priest! I’ll write more about that tomorrow.

Then I said to them, “You see the trouble we are in, how Jerusalem lies in ruins with its gates burned. Come, let us build the wall of Jerusalem, that we may no longer suffer derision.” And I told them of the hand of my God that had been upon me for good, and also of the words that the king had spoken to me. And they said, “Let us rise up and build.” So they strengthened their hands for the good work…Then Eliashib the high priest rose up with his brothers the priests, and they built the Sheep Gate. They consecrated it and set its doors. They consecrated it as far as the Tower of the Hundred, as far as the Tower of Hananel. (Nehemiah 2.17 – 3.1, ESV)

Where there is no vision, the people perish… Proverbs 29.18, KJV)