Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 1156
“There is much rubbish; so that we are not able to build the wall” Nehemiah 4:10.
REMEMBER that Jerusalem had been totally destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar and what is meant by the destruction by the Babylonians may be inferred from the vast heaps of the dust of powdered bricks and charred wood which have been discovered upon the sites of cities which were utterly razed to the ground by the fierce soldiers of that terrible king. The ruins are frequently so complete that even tradition has forgotten the name of the mound or heap which is the sole memorial to mark the sepulcher of a queenly city. The Babylonians made sure work when they did it, their plowers made deep furrows and their destroyers cried one, to another, “Overturn, overturn, overturn, till not a stone shall abide in its place.”
They reaped a nation with their swords as corn is cut down by the sickle and they beat their cities till the ruins were small as the dust of the summer threshing floor. Do you wonder that on the site of Jerusalem there remained much rubbish? Many modern destroyers have done their desolating work most wonderfully and I may venture to quote what I have seen of their doings as an example of the much rubbish with which the foundations of a ruined city are sure to be covered. I have stood upon the Palatine Mount in Rome, where formerly the pale of the Caesars raised themselves in more than imperial grandeur. But what an Alp of fragments! What a mountain of broken walls and columns, and stones peering upward like the natural rock of mother earth!
Houses, convents, palaces have been built upon the mass and for many seasons trees have bloomed and fruited, and gardens have brought forth their harvests above the spot where once the imperial tyrant was known to awe the nations with a nod. To restore the palaces of the Palatine, the first labor would be the unearthing of the foundations—and this would probably be as huge an undertaking as the rebuilding of the palaces, themselves. A mountain must be carried away before a stone can be laid. If you were able to visit the Forum at Rome, you would see, if you were there today, numbers of laborers with horses and carts continually at work taking away hundreds of thousands of tons of rubbish which have covered up all that still remains of the ancient center and heart of Rome.
Jerusalem, I do not doubt, was one vast heap made up of the debris of its houses, of the tower and armory of David, of the palace of the king, and of the Temple itself. And though now, at the period we are about to speak of, the temple had been rebuilt and modern houses covered the site of the older Jerusalem, yet, when they came to the wall of the city, with the view of thoroughly restoring it, they found it a complete ruin—and such a ruin that the mass which covered it up was difficult to dig through. They could not build the wall because there was so much rubbish.
Now, this, it seems to me, is intended, or at least may justifiably be used, for a type of the work which God’s people have to carry on in the name of Jesus and in the power of His Holy Spirit, in the world. We have to build the walls of the Church for God, but we cannot build it for there is so much rubbish in our way. This is true, first, of the building of the Church, which is the Jerusalem of God. And this is equally true of the temple of God, which is to be built in each one of our hearts. Full often we feel discouraged. Though we hear the voice that says, “But you, Beloved, building up yourselves on your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Spirit, keep yourselves in the love of God,” still we are apt to feel that we cannot build this wall because there is so much rubbish.
I. I shall speak first, then, of the great work comprised in THE BUILDING UP OF THE CHURCH. Now, this enterprise is the work of God. He alone can build the Church. “When the Lord shall build up Zion, He shall appear in His Glory.” And we may build as we may, but “except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it.” Still, our full and firm conviction that it is God’s working does not at all interfere with the grand Truth of God that He employs agents for the building up of His Church in the world! That, in fact, He has commissioned us, His chosen servants, and sent us into the world, each one according to our ability and opportunity, to labor for Him.
We work because God works by us. We are hindered, however, in this service by the fact that there is much rubbish in the way. It was always so. When Paul began to build for God, and the Apostles went forth as wise master builders, there lay before them, in towering heaps, the old Jewish rubbish—hard to remove, heavy to bear away—and in quantity equal to a huge hill. The foundation was there. Thank God we have not to lay that! That is laid in Christ Jesus, and firmly laid, and “other foundation can no man lay.” But the Jews, with their traditions, had overlaid the foundations— they had added to the Word of God. They had put glosses upon it. They had taken away its real meaning and put to it a meaning of their own.