Let Us Rebuild Jerusalem’s Walls!
What did Nehemiah do after his earnest prayers, careful preparations and confidential investigations (Neh. 1:1-2:16)? He called God’s people to a public meeting.
At that assembly, Nehemiah first outlined the problem. In material terms, Jerusalem’s walls were mostly rubble and its gates were charred wood, as he had witnessed personally on his secret night ride around the city’s perimeter. In more emotional terms, Nehemiah reminded the people that they were ridiculed by their enemies.
But did the people themselves not know this? Of course they did! And Governor Nehemiah knew that they knew it: “Ye see the distress that we are in, how Jerusalem lieth waste, and the gates thereof are burned with fire” (17). The leader clearly states the pressing issue so that all are agreed that this is the problem.
Second, Nehemiah presented the obvious solution. We must rebuild the walls and the gates. Then we will no longer be taunted and mocked, as if our God were unable to defend and care for His people. How did David put it? “Is there not a cause?” (I Sam. 17:29). The cause may be fighting Goliath or building up a local church or training our children in God’s glorious truth or battling against incessant discouragement or a larger scale project, such as establishing a Reformed day school.
Third, after stating the problem and its solution, Nehemiah exhorts, “come, and let us build up the wall of Jerusalem, that we be no more a reproach” (Neh. 2:17).
Fourth, this raises the issue of identification. Nehemiah did not say, “You have a problem and I will give orders to you and you must work to effect the solution.” Instead, Nehemiah identified himself with the problem and its solution, and included himself in his exhortation. Look out for “we” and “us” in the governor’s address: “Ye see the distress that we are in, how Jerusalem lieth waste, and the gates thereof are burned with fire: come, and let us build up the wall of Jerusalem, that we be no more a reproach” (17). Nehemiah spoke of “we” and “us,” because he was a living and godly member in Israel, and he had gotten to know God’s people in Jerusalem.
Fifth, Nehemiah reinforced his exhortation by presenting his double authorization. In the first instance, Jehovah had called and led him: “Then I told them of the hand of my God which was good upon me” (18). At this point, Nehemiah may have informed them of his persevering prayer in his closet (1:4-11) and his ejaculatory prayer in the palace (2:4). “I was Artaxerxes’ cupbearer and am now governor of Judah and I will rebuild Jerusalem’s walls, by our Lord’s good providence.”
In the second instance, Nehemiah appeals to his authority from Medo-Persian Emperor Artaxerxes: “Then I told them [1] of the hand of my God which was good upon me; [2] as also the king’s words that he had spoken unto me” (18). The governor informed them that Artaxerxes had granted him imperial authority to rebuild Jerusalem’s walls (5-6) and to requisition the necessary timber from the emperor’s forests (8). There are situations, even in our day, when the Lord’s work requires civil authorization, for example, permits to erect church buildings. Rev. Stewart
The Civil and Ceremonial Laws (2)
We continue our answer to the question: “Is it true that the Lord Jesus teaches in Matthew 5:17-19 that all the law of Moses, including the ceremonial and civil laws, are binding and must be ‘fulfilled’ by believers in the New Testament age?” Having spoken of the ceremonial laws last month, we focus on the civil laws in this article.
The civil laws of the Old Testament are those that had to do with Israel’s every-day life: food and cooking, bodily adornment and appearance, sanitation and health, work and possessions, government and taxes, crime and its punishment, marriage and family. There is not an absolute difference between these and the ceremonial laws, but it is these laws that are haled by Christian Reconstructionists and Theonomists as still in force and necessary for the establishment of their future post-millennial golden age.
These movements teach that, unless such laws are explicitly abrogated in the New Testament, they are still obligatory in the New Testament. Some of them even argue against particular passages of the New Testament that do abrogate various Old Testament laws. Peter’s vision of the unclean animals let down in a sheet from heaven, and the command given him to rise and eat, they say, does not do away with the Old Testament food laws, but was only a command to preach the gospel to the Gentiles. Certainly God used a change in those Old Testament food laws to teach Peter and the church about preaching to the Gentiles. Yet God’s word to Peter did concern those formerly unclean animals. Peter was commanded to eat what he formerly was not allowed to eat: “And there came a voice to him, Rise, Peter; kill, and eat. But Peter said, Not so, Lord; for I have never eaten any thing that is common or unclean” (Acts 10:13-14; cf. 11:7-8).
One finds these Theonomists and Reconstructionists scrambling to explain how some of those civil laws apply in the New Testament. The law of Deuteronomy 22:8 required the Israelites to build a “battlement” or parapet around a flat roof that was used as living space. In societies where such roofs do not exist, this is applied to swimming pools and the necessity of a fence around them.
We use this example deliberately. The wisdom of the rule regarding flat roofs, and the wisdom of having a fence around a swimming pool that is accessible to children is unquestionable, so much so that some municipalities require a fenced pool. Such is, we believe, what the Westminster Confession of Faith calls the “general equity” of the Old Testament civil laws (19:4). This refers to legislative principles that are not arbitrary, but just and right. Nevertheless, a man does not break God’s law if he does not have a fence around his swimming pool. He may have to suffer the consequences of that decision but he does not sin simply by having an unfenced pool.
Along these same lines, there was a great deal of wisdom in the food laws which God gave Israel but there is no obligation in the New Testament to follow them. One may eat pork (and eat it much more safely) in the New Testament. Nevertheless, God’s word to Peter stands. One may even have his sons circumcised, though never as something necessary for salvation (Acts 16:1-3; Gal. 5:1-3). What is more, the application of these laws to modern society by way of establishing a Christian society comes very close to a denial of salvation by grace and by faith alone. Fenced swimming pools and a pigless diet do not make a Christian society. God’s sovereign grace alone makes a Christian society and that society is already in existence. Scripture calls it the church: “But ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people; that ye should shew forth the praises of him who hath called you out of darkness into his marvellous light” (I Pet. 2:9). That “society” exists within a society that is always and inimically opposed to the kingdom of God, and which cannot be transformed by the mere application of Old Testament civil law.
The Westminster Confession of Faith is correct when it says that these laws “expired together with the state of that people,” that is, with the expiration of Israel as God’s chosen nation came also an expiration of these laws. There is more that must be said, however, since all this raises the question of how God-given laws can be changed or abrogated.
Here the statement of the Belgic Confession 25 is important: “We believe that the ceremonies and figures of the law ceased at the coming of Christ, and that all the shadows are accomplished; so that the use of them must be abolished amongst Christians; yet the truth and substance of them remain with us in Jesus Christ, in whom they have their completion.”
This Reformed creed reminds us that there is, and always was, a difference between the precepts of God’s moral law on the one hand and the civil and ceremonial laws on the other. The moral law forbids things that are inherently sinful. Idol worship is always wicked because it is a denial of the great truth that there is no God beside Jehovah. The civil and ceremonial laws, however, were an application of the moral law to Israel’s life in the Old Testament. They command and forbid things that were not in themselves sinful or matters of life and death. There is nothing inherently wrong about eating pork, except that in the Old Testament it was forbidden by God. The example has been used of a fish in its watery environment. God’s law for a fish is that it stay in the water. It is a matter of life and death to the fish to “obey” that law. If I try to make the fish truly free by bringing it up onto dry land, the fish dies. So it is with the precepts of the moral law. They are life and death to me. Outside of them are bondage and death; within are liberty and life.
The addition of the civil and ceremonial laws to God’s people in Moses’ day was something like taking that fish out of the lake in which it lived and putting it in an aquarium. Then it is under another law which is much more restrictive, but it is not a matter of life and death, nor something which cannot be changed in the future.
The civil and ceremonial laws, different from the precepts of the moral law, were tools by which God taught Israel the fundamental and unchangeable principles of the moral law, just as a father might use a rule about not riding one’s bicycle on the Lord’s day to teach his children that the Lord’s day is different. There is, of course, nothing wrong in itself about riding a bicycle on the Lord’s day. Indeed, if that is the only way to get to church, it ought to be done, but the rule may nevertheless be useful until such a time as a child learns that the day belongs to the Lord in a special way, at which time the rule should expire.
That the civil and ceremonial laws were used to teach Israel is clear from passages like Leviticus 10:9-11 and 11:45-47, where various civil and ceremonial laws are described as teaching the difference between holy and unholy. They do not stand on the same level as the moral law.
We use the example of parental rules deliberately. In Galatians 4:1-7, the apostle Paul reminds us that the church of the Old Testament (Acts 7:38) was in its childhood and was, therefore, under a kind of bondage to parental rules that were used by God in the same way we make our rules, not all of them matters of sin and righteousness, to teach our children. Through the coming of Christ and His Spirit, Galatians tells us that the church entered its adulthood and now enjoys “the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free” (Gal. 5:1), liberty from the “bondage” of those Old Testament rules but also the liberty of spiritual maturity, a maturity which has learned the grace of God in Christ and obeys not just for the command’s sake, but out of love and no longer needing the endless rules of childhood.
That principle is applied to us in Galatians 5:1. We must stand fast in the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free and not be entangled again in a yoke of bondage, that is, in bondage to all those Old Testament civil and ceremonial laws. But we must also not confuse liberty with licence (13), as though our freedom in Christ means that we may live as we please without regard for God’s moral law. Freedom is always within the bounds of the moral law, as the example of a fish, used above, reminds us. All this discussion is useless unless we, as New Testament Christians, practise fervently our liberty in Christ, serving God faithfully out of love and gratitude for what the Lord Jesus has done in saving us.
There is one more thing I wish to address: the statement of Belgic Confession 25 that “the truth and substance” of the civil and ceremonial laws remain with us in Jesus Christ. The Confession applies this by saying: “we still use the testimonies taken out of the law and the prophets, to confirm us in the doctrine of the gospel, and to regulate our life in all honesty to the glory of God, according to his will.” This needs explanation in the next issue of the News, DV. Rev. Ron Hanko
