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No wonder then that few were found ready to help in the temple services. The first Sabbath after Nehemiah's arrival, he sets out, with an anxious heart, to see how it is kept by his fellow-countrymen. In the solemn covenant the people had promised carefully to observe the day of rest. They have broken their word in the matter of the tithes; have they kept their promise with regard to the Sabbath?
Be thankful and glad; and remember that the purest worship is the worship of God-fixed joy, 'the joy of the Lord is your strength. And that is as true, brethren! with regard to us, as it ever was in these old times; and we, I think, need the lesson contained in this saying of Nehemiah's, because of some prevalent tendencies amongst us, no less than these Jews did.
The sin of Nehemiah's days is still to be seen; the same temptation which beset those Jerusalem Jews, besets us even in these more enlightened days. We all love company. There is in us a natural shrinking from being alone and desolate. That feeling is born in us; we inherit it from our first father Adam. 'It is not good for the man to be alone, said the Lord in His tenderness and His pity.
But let that young man be aroused, be awakened, be converted to God, let the good work of grace be begun in his soul, and at once Satan will stir up the storm of difficulty and opposition. Very often it begins, just as Nehemiah's storm began, in laughter. It has been said that laughter hurts no one.
He tells him that he feels his own life, as one of Nehemiah's best friends, is also in danger, and therefore he proposes that they shall go together after dark to the temple courts, and, passing through these, enter into the sanctuary itself, the Holy Place, in which stood the altar of incense, the golden candlestick, and the table of showbread.
The mention of that relation brings at once to Nehemiah's mind the terrible unfaithfulness to it which had marked, and still continued to mark, the whole nation. Unprofitable servants they had indeed been. The more loftily we think of our privileges, the more clearly should we discern our sins. Nothing leads a true heart to such self-ashamed penitence as reflection on God's mercy.
They did not get on very well, and at last were carried away into Captivity in Babylon. So much he did for his people; and when he brought them back again to the Promised Land, it was to a very trying and difficult situation; and worse still followed after Nehemiah's day.
But in Nehemiah's day, Jerusalem, in spite of her sins, was still the Holy City.
It is not the posture of body God looks at, but the posture of the heart. Reverence there must be, but such reverence as comes from the inner sanctuary of the soul, and which only finds outward expression in the body. Nehemiah stood with the jewelled cup in his hands, yet Nehemiah's prayer was heard.
It was an arresting conception, and Barstein found himself sitting on the table to discuss it. The reverence with which Nehemiah listened to his views was touching and disconcerting. Barstein felt humbled by the celestial figure he cut in Nehemiah's mental mirror.
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