Knee-hi-miah Wasn’t the
Shortest Man in the
Bible
March 3, 2013
1st Presbyterian Church
Pittsford, New York
3rd Sunday in Lent
The Story – Chapter 21
Rebuilding the Walls
Nehemiah
Nehemiah 4
The Story, pages 296-298
Nehemiah 7:1-2, 8:1-3, 5-12
The Story, pages 300-301
H
ere are some TRUTHS TO
REMEMBER:
With those words, a sermon rooted in
Nehemiah 2 was preached here on May 22,
2005 to introduce The Nehemiah Campaign,
a capitol campaign that this congregation
embraced for the rebuilding of our sanctuary
and church. They were followed with:
1. God wants spiritual fruit, not religious
nuts.
2. Dear God: I have a problem. It's me.
3. Silence is often misinterpreted, but never
misquoted.
4. Laughing every day, is like inner
jogging.
5. Sometimes the gene pool needs a little
chlorine1
Logic is a systematic method of coming to
the wrong conclusion with confidence.
Technology is dominated by those who
manage what they do not understand.
The opulence of the front office decor
varies inversely with the fundamental
solvency of the firm.
1
Taken from the sermon, Not Despair But
Repair, a sermon based on Nehemiah 1 & 2,
preached May 22, 2005 at First Presbyterian
Church Pittsford, New York for the Opening
of the Nehemiah Capital Campaign and the
Rebuilding First Presbyterian Church of
Pittsford. The Text that day was Nehemiah
2:18: I also told them about the gracious
hand of my god upon me and what the king
had said to me. They replied, ALet us start
rebuilding.@ So they began this good work.
Always draw your curves, then plot your
reading.
Murphy's Constant: Matter will be
damaged in direct proportion to its value.
This is why you can drive around in a 1984
Chevy and nothing will ever happen to the
car, but the minute you try to drive a new
Chrysler, you’ll be in a fender bender for
sure.
1
the town of Grove City, Pennsylvania and
although he loved basketball and the Bible,
we all knew that what he loved most were
the students in his class. He said to us,
“Well, men (he always called us men, even
though we were not, it made us feel more
adult and important) that is a good
observation, but I suggest that you read from
the book of Job. Check out Chapter 8,
verses 1 and 2.”
That day it was Trinity Sunday. The
confirmands had been confirmed the
previous week. We told the congregation
then if the message honestly caught them by
surprise and that they were expecting a
message on the subject of the trinity, then
they had my permission and encouragement
to slip out.
Then we told folks about a church in
Scotland where the collection plate was
rarely full and where a congregation had just
received an offering. When the plate came
back to the pastor to give thanks for the
offering as was the congregation’s custom,
he saw that the few pennies in it were even
less than usual. He held the plate up in front
of him and said, "Well Lord, we thank you
for the safe return of the plate."
Well, we returned to our seats, opened our
Bibles and read: “Then Bildad the Shuhite,
said: How long wilt thou utter such things,
And the words of thy mouth are a boisterous
wind?” Of course it made little sense to us,
and we returned to the lectern on which Mr.
Allen was leaning with the question, “So,
what does this mean?” Well, he said, if you
think Knee-hi miah was short, try Bildad the
Shoe-Height.”
It was at this point that we launched into the
book of Nehemiah and this prophet’s
rebuilding of the wall of Jerusalem. I
suspect that it was far less evident at the
time, that our exploration of Nehemiah had
far less to do with the actual rebuilding of
the building in which we meet today that it
did with the building of living stones, the
people who make up the church. That is
why my two favorite pictures of 1st
Presbyterian Church of Pittsford can be
found in our Fellowship Hall today, one
taken outside and one inside that shows the
people who make up the church.
Nehemiah was a great, unselfish man who
by constant prayer, hard work, and
indomitable will power revived the national
life of the Jews. His homeland was
conquered and he was carted away as a
hostage to a foreign land. He was homesick.
One day a benevolent king released him
from exile, and immediately he set out for
his hometown. Upon arrival in Jerusalem, he
discovered that his beloved city was in
shambles. Even the wall around the city, its
symbol and vital defense, was burned and in
ruins. It would have been easy for Nehemiah
to join the community of despair and wallow
in memories of what used to be. But
Nehemiah was made of better stuff than that.
He rallied the faithful and set out to rebuild
the wall of the city. Even though enemies
passed by and taunted him and threatened
him, he knew his purpose and in 52 days the
work was done. By the time we read to
chapter six of Nehemiah in The Story this
week we heard this prophet so busy that he
said, "I am doing a great work and I cannot
If ever there was a biblical character who
understood these things, it was the Old
Testament leader Nehemiah. When I was
in about 9th grade in Sunday School a group
of buddies and I came to the conclusion that
Knee-hi-miah was the shortest man in the
Bible. We shared this wonderful insight
with our Sunday School Teacher, Mr.
Robert Allen – who is still living, by the
way. Mr. Allen had been the post-master for
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come down." He was focused. He knew his
mission. And as we moved toward the end
of the chapter, the wall completed, we read
about the celebration of the finished
construction project where the people
worshipped together and Ezra read from the
Bible. The scripture reading was so moving
that many people wept at that time.
repair, a time when the people pulled
together and in a short 52 days, rebuilt the
wall. It is a story for us because Nehemiah
did more than rebuild a wall. The people
were restored so that they might walk
faithfully with God.
Jerusalem in ruins is a picture of a life that
has lost its defenses against attack and lies
open to repeated hurt and misery. You
can=t pick up a newspaper and not see the
hurt and misery of people whose walls have
been broken down. Jerusalem in ruins is an
image of danger yet Nehemiah depicts
recovery - from breakdown and ruin to a
condition of peace, security, restored order,
and usefulness.
If you were to ask me what the Mission of
First Presbyterian Church is, I would say to
us that we are to:
MAKE DISCIPLES
MATURE DISCIPLES
MOBILIZE DISCIPLES
The spire of this building can be seen from
I-490. It stands as a beacon, calling people
to faith, asking them to follow Jesus, for
their own well-being and the well-being of
the world. But spires alone cannot do this.
Only human beings can really be effective in
such a ministry. We should be asking others
to do this winsomely, kindly, affirmatively.
We should make disciples and then
encourage them to grow and mature in their
faith so that they might better be able to live
out what they say they believe and we
should mobilize them for mission.
In Nehemiah we learn the reason why it is
difficult to keep our resolutions and our
promises – mostly because there is
insufficient recognition of God as a
necessary part of the process! The most
widespread secular illusion of our day is that
we do not need God to do what we want to
do. We think we can function quite
adequately without the Lord. Then some
catastrophe strikes and we see immediately
that accomplishment alone is a pretty rough
road.
Our building has been the house and home
base for this mission and yet we are the
living stones as the New Testament
theologian Paul would describe us.
Sometimes we too become scorched by the
fires of disappointment, societal change,
illness, loss, and despair. We gather almost
weekly for encouragement but especially to
give thanks to God whose continual message
of love and forgiveness may be the most
significant message the world needs to hear.
I find that I become engaged in activities
and automatically assume that I must
accomplish something and ignore my need
for God in the process. It is easy to look
over the schedule on the calendar and
determine that if I cut out prayer time and
exercise I can get to the expectations I think
others have of me. We neglect to have a
Sabbath rest and fill the time with work.
But, everything doesn’t run as smoothly as
you think it ought. Our defenses are down
Now, Nehemiah’s construction project took
place in the fifth century before Christ. It is
the story of a movement from despair to
3
and we can become vulnerable to every
temptation imaginable.2
published under the title, Rebuilding Your
Broken World. In the book he tells how his
life was transformed within the community
of a congregation in Dallas, Texas because
God was present in their lives.
Nehemiah was down in the dumps. You
could see it on his face. Indeed, Chapter 2
begins this way:
Notice the description of Jerusalem. The
people were in trouble. They were feeling a
great sense of disgrace and reproach. The
walls of the city were broken and the gates
had been burned with fire and were no
longer usable.3
In the month of Nisan in the twentieth year
of King Artaxerxes, when wine was brought
for him, I took the wine and gave it to the
king. I had not been sad in his presence
before; {2} so the king asked me, "Why does
your face look so sad when you are not ill?
This can be nothing but sadness of heart."
We could take Jerusalem as a metaphor for
our lives as it was sometimes used in
scripture and suggest that there times when
we fit this description. We look back on our
lives and see places where our walls are
broken. There is little ability left to resist
destructive attacks. We fall victim to habits
that we now find difficult, if not impossible,
to break.
The book of Nehemiah is designed to teach
us that only with God's help can we actually
change ourselves and recover from the
damage and ruin of the past. That is the
central lesson of this book.
When we examine ourselves we find it hard
to criticize the moral failures of others
because of our own shortcomings. When
prominent television evangelists were
catapulted into nightly talk shows and
featured on magazine covers, many of us
became smug about the events in their lives
feeling rather righteous that they were not
happening that way in ours.
When we talk about addictions and
behaviors on which we might get hooked,
we tend to overlook some pretty destructive
things. Perhaps you have a bitter spirit. You
can be an addict of a critical, censorious
attitude that complains about everything as
much as you can be an addict to drugs. It is
so habitual that you find yourself having
difficulty stopping it. Perhaps your drift
began innocently. You did not realize you
were forming a habit, but now you just can’t
stop it. Your defenses are gone. It has
become your personality. The walls of your
city are broken. Perhaps also your gates are
burned. Gates are ways in and out. They are
the way by which other people get to know
you as you really are.
Among those who got caught in such a web
was a man who was widely respected. He
was not a flamboyant sensationalist. He was
a widely respected, godly man. His name is
Gordon McDonald. To everyone's horror
and surprise it was learned that he had fallen
into adultery. He spent over a year in a state
of self-imposed exile, seeking to restore his
relationships with his wife and family. He
wrote an account of his recovery and it was
2
From Despair to Repair – sermon preached on
Nehemiah 1 & 2, September 30, 2001, First
Presbyterian ChurchPittsford, New York by
Rev. Mr. Bruce G. Boak.
3
Ray Stedman, Don=t Despair, Peninsula
Bible Church, Palo Alto, CA., January 1989,
Catalog No. 4157.
4
Maybe you felt abused as a child. This
phenomenon seems to be surfacing more
and more frequently in our day. The shame
of it, and the scarring of it, has kept you a
recluse. Your gates are burned and nobody
has access to you. Perhaps you were a
victim of some bitter experience -- and you
feel betrayed or sabotaged.
In some ways this sounds like the season of
Lent, doesn’t it? Isn’t Lent a time to mourn
our sins? To fast and pray before the God of
Heaven? Nehemiah has a deep sense of
personal concern. He is willing to face the
facts, to weep over them, and tell God about
them. That is always the place to begin.
There is nothing superficial about this.
Without blaming or attempting to involve
somebody else, tell it all to God. By
yourself, alone, face the facts. Take all the
time you want and pour it out before God.
Weep, if you feel like it. Tell God all the
hurt, the fear, and the pain. That is always
the place to start, according to Scripture. A
broken spirit and a contrite heart God
always welcomes.
You want to run and hide. No one can reach
you. You have been so badly burned you are
now touchy and inaccessible. There are parts
of your life about which you cannot talk.
You do not want anyone to know. You have
a sense of great personal distress and are
feeling reproach and disgrace. Your have
been scarred emotionally.
To others you appear to be a success. They
think you are doing fine, but inwardly you
know you are not. As you examine the walls
and the gates of your life you find much of it
in ruins. How do you handle that?
The ruin you are concerned with may not
always be yours personally. It may be that of
someone close to you whose life you see
falling apart because of certain attitudes they
have allowed to enter their experience. You
feel like Nehemiah, and you want to weep
and mourn and tell God about it. That is
always the place to start, for God is a
responsive God. God gives attention to the
prayers of his people. And God is a God of
power and ability, and, above all, a God of
love.
That is the great question many face. But
this is where the Bible comes in. That is why
the Scriptures are given to us. The men and
women of the past have been through these
self-same difficulties and they have told us
how to handle them. This great book of
Nehemiah is one of the most helpful pictures
we have of how to recover from broken lives
and burned walls.
The second thing Nehemiah did was: he
repented of all personal and corporate sins:
The steps that Nehemiah took cover seven
chapters. They are specific, orderly, and
effective. The first of them is actually found
in chapter one with the words,
"I confess the sins we Israelites, including
myself and my father's house, have
committed against you. We have acted very
wickedly toward you. We have not obeyed
the commands, decrees and laws you gave
your servant Moses."5
When I heard these things, I sat down and
wept. For some days I mourned and fasted
and prayed before the God of Heaven.4
4
This is an honest facing of his own guilt.
Notice the absence of self-righteousness. He
5
Neh 1:4 NIV.
5
Neh 1:6b-7 NIV.
does not say, "Lord, I am thinking of those
terrible sinners back there in Jerusalem. Be
gracious to them because they have fallen
into wrong actions." No, he puts himself into
this picture, saying, "I have contributed to
this problem. There are things that I did or
did not do that have made this ruin possible.
I confess before you, Lord, the sins of
myself and my father's house." There is no
attempt to excuse or to blame others for this.
It is a simple acknowledgment of wrong.
His problem began when his owner decided
to clean his cage with a vacuum. She stuck
the nozzle in to suck up the seeds and
feathers in the bottom of the cage. Then the
phone rang. Instinctively she turned to pick
it up. She barely said hello when
sswwwwwpppp! Chippie got sucked in.
She gasped, let the phone drop, and snapped
off the vacuum. With her heart in her
mouth, she unzipped the bag.
There was Chippie - alive, but stunned covered with heavy black dust. She grabbed
him and rushed him to the bathtub, turned
on the faucet full blast, and held Chippie
under a torrent of ice-cold water, powerwashing him clean. So she did what any
compassionate pet owner would do: she
snatched up the hair dryer and blasted the
wet, shivering little bird with hot air.
It has always been true of the people of God
that any degree of self-justification will
cancel out recovery. If you try to excuse
yourself for what is wrong in your life, you
block your own recovery. Just admit it,
declare it. This is exactly contrary to the
spirit of the age in which we live, but this is
God's way. How could we imagine that the
spiritual disciplines of Lent would be laid
out so much for us in this book of
Nehemiah? But, God seems to work this
way, giving to us for our time, some
message from the inspired pages of
scripture.
The lady who tells this story says at the
conclusion: “Chippie doesn’t sing much
anymore.”
We face enough attack and we seem to give
up a lot of our ability to praise, don’t we. If
we make people feel sufficiently bad about
themselves, if we heap on ridicule rather
than encouragement, halt growth and
progress rather than promote it, attempt to
get people to do what we want out of fear,
eventually their songs will grow faint and
the wall construction will grind.
Will it all go smoothly without a hitch? I
doubt that it will. By the time we get to
chapter 4 in Nehemiah, we found that there
was a whole contingent of folks who wanted
to project to fail with Sanballat and Tobiah
at the top of the list.
This is hard for us because almost
instinctively we feel that we need to give up
when we feel we are under attack . . . it is
hard to persevere.
It is hard for us to use a metaphor about
walls since there are instances where we
want to tear down the walls that divide us . .
. walls that separate and keep us apart. But,
there is the imagery in Nehemiah where the
walls of the city are built and people are
restored.
Chuck Swindoll used to tell a story about
Chippie the parakeet. He never saw it
coming. One second he was peacefully
perched in his cage singing, the next he was
sucked in, washed up, and blown over.
But we must be on the lookout for attack . . .
attack from without and attack from within.
The enemies of God will attempt both.
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Nehemiah reminded himself of the nature of
God: God is a God of forgiveness, a God of
restoration, a God of great power. When the
heart is right, God can change all the
external circumstances of a situation and
make it entirely different. God will do so,
especially for those who
Know God’s mission for them
Tell their concerns to God in prayer
Repent of their sins to God
Open themselves to God’s promises
Again Pray acknowledging God
And whenever you pray, pray that God will
give you the grace, the strength and the
determination to take these steps. Let me
rephrase them as the four R’s.
 Recognize the character of God.
 Repent of personal and corporate sin.
 Recall that God=s promises are filled
with grace.
 Request specific help from God to begin
the process.
Let me ask this personal question. You only
need to answer it in your own mind. Do you
want to be a better man or woman by
Easter? Do you long to be free from old
habits, old attitudes and old practices? Then
start here with Nehemiah, and focus your
life on God. You will find the rebuilding of
your walls will be easier than first imagined.
And if all of did this together, working side
by side – we could change the world.
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