Curt Harlow [00:00:00]:
Hello, my friends, and welcome to another episode of The Bible Study Podcast, the Bayside podcast about what we teach at all of our campuses on the weekend. And we're at week 1 on a brand new series this week. We're doing a series called Not Without, where we examine the core ideas biblically that a church should have, that, that we shouldn't go forward without. These are the ideas that would bring us forward in a God-honoring, biblical, New Testament, authentic way. And the first one is Not Without Vision. Of course, the assumption is not without God's vision, not my vision, your vision, or corporate vision, but really going, what does it mean to move forward with God's vision? And to do that, we're gonna go to everyone's favorite vision book, Nehemiah. It was either Nehemiah or Acts. Those are the two that really get it done.
Curt Harlow [00:00:51]:
But Nehemiah is really a great one. Of course, you guys are familiar with Nehemiah, but I'll just recap for everyone listening. Nehemiah is a Jewish exile. What's happened is because of the unfaithfulness of Judah, God has allowed the Babylonians to come in. They drag everyone off. And then Xerxes, the very famous Persian king, comes in and he conquers the Babylonians. So now you have a bunch of these dispersed, scattered, exiled Jewish people living basically in modern-day Iran. And one of them, very powerful, a guy named Nehemiah, works directly for the king.
Curt Harlow [00:01:33]:
He goes to the king, says, King, this is not right what these Babylonians did. Let me put it back together. Let me go into Jerusalem. There's a few people living there, a couple of priests and a few of the population. But man, there's no wall around them and they're surrounded by enemies, very vulnerable. This is a situation that didn't happen. And having so much favor with the king, the king— and how do you pronounce his name, Kevin?
Kevin Thompson [00:01:56]:
Artaxerxes.
Curt Harlow [00:01:57]:
Artaxerxes.
Dena Davidson [00:01:58]:
As creepy as when you looked it up.
Curt Harlow [00:02:00]:
Artaxerxes says, Nehemiah, you have my blessing, which is a very kind of— Nehemiah takes this as a direct divine intervention. And in fact, the text tells us it is. And he gets on a horse, gets a couple of buddies, Strange part of the text, he says, I'm the only one with a horse. He mentions that in the text. And he goes— I like these little details because they bring authenticity. He goes into the broken down, uh, completely in shambles city of Jerusalem. And that's where we pick up the story in verse 11, chapter 2, in one of probably the best moments of vision casting in all the Bible. And this book in particular is probably the most direct and best book just on the biblical idea of leadership.
Curt Harlow [00:02:53]:
There's lots of lessons on leadership in all throughout the Bible, but if you want to just go a book that was meant to show you what God-honoring vision casting is and God-honoring leadership, this is this character of Nehemiah. Do you know, why don't you go ahead and read the passage to us and we'll start, um, See what God wants to say and what he means by this and how we should apply it.
Dena Davidson [00:03:16]:
Perfect. I went to Jerusalem, and after staying there 3 days, I set out during the night with a few others. I had not told anyone what my God had put in my heart to do for Jerusalem. There were no mounts with me except the one I was riding on. There you go, Curt. By night, I went out through the Valley Gate toward the Jackal Well and the Dung Gate, examining the walls of Jerusalem, which had been broken down, and its gates, which had been destroyed by fire. Then I moved on toward the Fountain Gate and the King's Pool, but there was not enough room for my mount to get through. So I went up by the valley by night, examining the wall.
Dena Davidson [00:03:52]:
Finally, I turned back and reentered through the Valley Gate. The officials did not know where I had gone or what I was doing, because as yet I had said nothing to the Jews or the priests or nobles or officials or any others who would be doing the work. Then I said to them, 'You see the trouble we are in. Jerusalem lies in ruins, and its gates have been burned with fire. Come, let us rebuild the wall of Jerusalem, and we will no longer be in disgrace.' I also told them about the gracious hand of my God on me and what the king had said to me. They replied, 'Let us start rebuilding.' So they began this good work. "But when Sanballat the Horonite, Tobiah the Ammonite official, and Geshem the Arab heard about it, they mocked and ridiculed us. 'What is this you are doing?' they asked.
Dena Davidson [00:04:39]:
'Are you rebelling against the king?' I answered them by saying, 'The God of heaven will give us success. We, his servants, will start rebuilding. But as for you, you have no share in Jerusalem or any claim or historic right to it.'".
Curt Harlow [00:04:54]:
Really good job. Couple tricky words in there. Uh, spoiler alert, this is chapter 2. Chapter 3, a bunch of people join in with this group, and by chapter 6, they get additional opposition, but they rebuild the wall. So yeah, this little vision-casting moment here, this little trip into Jerusalem, going around the city, it actually works. Kevin, what are we meant to learn by Nehemiah and his leadership in this chapter?
Kevin Thompson [00:05:26]:
Yeah, I mean, I would think there's a primary application of what's going on within the nation of Israel and its story. And then there's a secondary application where we can really start to look at basic leadership principles that we might apply to this day. So I think it would be dangerous just to look at Nehemiah chapter 2 and just, man— 5 ways to grow your business. Let me write my leadership book. And as you know, I mean, the temptation for us is to immediately apply this to whatever our church building is and use this for those purposes. That's the greatest temptation to immediately go there. A secondary application I think is fine. So in the big picture to see God has not forgotten his people, God's promises and plans are still coming through after all these years.
Kevin Thompson [00:06:06]:
Do not allow your present circumstances to define God's activity in your life or in this world or his sovereign plan over all things. I think those are the high-level big picture of what Nehemiah's trying to accomplish.
Curt Harlow [00:06:17]:
Say those all again. Every one of those were great biblical themes.
Kevin Thompson [00:06:20]:
I don't remember them. So you can't allow your present circumstances to define who God is or what he's doing. His eternal promises and plans will come through no matter what's going on. God's activity does not change. He works through his people. All those kind of things.
Curt Harlow [00:06:35]:
Right. Those big, in every book of the Bible themes.
Kevin Thompson [00:06:39]:
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.
Curt Harlow [00:06:40]:
I love it. My thing on this that just immediately strikes me is the level of confidence that he has. And I do think it's exactly what you're talking about, Kevin, here is his confidence doesn't come with strategic planning, doesn't come with clever techniques. It comes from an encounter he has with God where God tells him, go ask that king. And it also comes from this focus that he has on who God is, that, like you said, the promise-giving God. So, so God-honoring vision starts with God, shockingly enough. And for him to actually make this trip, call these people to this, he's got to be centered in, convinced of, focusing on not forgetting what has happened in the past, but pressing on towards the future. All of this is just, uh, it's very God-centric.
Curt Harlow [00:07:33]:
And the The ultimate thing here is not the fact that he's got opposition. I think that's part of it. We'll get to that. The thing that really exposes the confidence he has in God is the fact that he's willing to just look the problem in the eyes fully. I think sometimes when I approach something God's calling me to do at our church or in my family even, I'm afraid to look at the problem really closely because I might find out it's bigger than I think it probably is. I'm afraid to take it out into the light, as 1 John says, because it's always bigger. It's always bigger. But he gets a few friends together, doesn't come in, get a shower, introduce himself, do some hobnobbing.
Curt Harlow [00:08:26]:
We'll have to— we'll need this hobnobbing later. He gets on his horse and goes, let me go look at the worst parts.
Dena Davidson [00:08:32]:
Right.
Curt Harlow [00:08:33]:
And then when he finally does talk to the officials, he doesn't start with, you guys have done so well surviving here without us. And no, he goes, y'all know this is a disaster.
Kevin Thompson [00:08:42]:
Yeah.
Curt Harlow [00:08:43]:
Just the courage to be a problem-facing. And I think what happens, Nina, and you can tell me if you agree with this, Christian could sometimes be artificially positive in a way that isn't helpful in terms of leadership.
Dena Davidson [00:09:01]:
100%.
Curt Harlow [00:09:01]:
So I think we could sometimes just go, you know, there's a massive gambling problem coming down our culture with sports betting. And yeah, pornography is worse than it's ever been, and we're very divided. But praise God, I think by Sunday we'll get it figured out.
Dena Davidson [00:09:20]:
That's so true. And to be honest, I think that we do that overly positive because we don't want to feel the pain. I remember I was in a small group. I shall not reveal names because that's against small group rules. But we were just talking about how this particular girl in the group, she was having trouble actually lamenting, being sad. She couldn't cry. And I was like, "Oh, that's an interesting thing that you're sharing." Because it was a group of girls. She's like, "Yeah, I don't really do this." And so then she's like, "I was reading Nehemiah and I was just struck by how everything great started by Nehemiah praying.
Dena Davidson [00:09:57]:
Like, you know, he started praying and then God worked through him in these mighty ways. And I just laughed because I remember Nehemiah 1, which is part of the context I don't think we covered. It started by him getting news and he just literally sat down and he wept.
Curt Harlow [00:10:13]:
Yes. Yes.
Dena Davidson [00:10:14]:
And he cried. I was like, hey, to that friend in the small group, hey, can you reread that passage out loud to us? And she's like, "Sure." Quite confident I was gonna say it started with prayer, but no, it started with pain and the willingness to feel the pain of the present moment. And I think if we're gonna have God put something in our heart, then it has to start with us saying, "We're not going to distract ourselves and just chase comfort and easing the problems of this world. We're gonna have to look the problems of the world in the face and let them affect our heart." before God can really start to put his vision inside of our heart.
Kevin Thompson [00:10:52]:
Yeah. And the idea of, because we can miss this in one of two ways. We can be just overly positive. So we're saying, oh yeah, these things are true, but overly positive. Or as you know, in the Christian world, we can just hammer the problem.
Curt Harlow [00:11:07]:
Right.
Kevin Thompson [00:11:08]:
And so there's no hope in what's going on. So Nehemiah's balance here within this to do both, to see the realities of what's around him. That means he steps out of denial, which by many in that day were in, but then to see what takes eyes of faith to see, which is the hope of God that's still involved in this. You think about this from a parenting, from a pastoral situation. I mean, our boss, Ray Johnson, always talks about the leader should be the most hope-filled person in the room. And so we don't live in denial of that. But I always think even from a parenting standpoint of whenever Ella or Silas are in trouble. We have to confront the issue.
Kevin Thompson [00:11:46]:
But my job as a parent is to take that issue into a bigger picture, which is God's still at work here. Look at the lessons that can be learned. And so to live both in the truth and the hope at the same time, which I think is what Nehemiah does so brilliantly here.
Curt Harlow [00:11:59]:
That's really well put. So he focuses on, he faces the problem. Zero, he weeps. Yeah, he takes the horse around. You just get this real cinematic view the way it's described. You can't fit the horse. It's so broken down, it can't fit the horse through at one point. But both in the way he talks to the Jewish priests and the Jewish people, and then how he responds to the first opposition, they're, they're both the same.
Curt Harlow [00:12:30]:
They're exactly what you just said, Kevin. He says to the priests and the Jewish people, he says, I told them about the gracious hand of my God. 'on me and what the king had said to me.' So he immediately— he doesn't tell him, 'Ah, yeah, you're right. I was weeping for 2 days about this.'.
Dena Davidson [00:12:47]:
Right, exactly.
Curt Harlow [00:12:47]:
Which would have been true.
Kevin Thompson [00:12:49]:
2 verses. In 2 verses, right? He says both the truth of what they can see and the truth of who God is, right? And back to back.
Curt Harlow [00:12:57]:
Exactly. Precisely. Uh, 'What is this you're doing?' they asked. 'Are you rebelling against the king?' No, I am serving the actual king. I said, this is the king that took over for the king. It's so— his response to the opposition is so beautiful because he immediately rebukes them. And I don't think he meant to do that. I don't— it doesn't feel like he's going, I gotcha.
Curt Harlow [00:13:22]:
It feels like he's so focused on the fact that there is a king and this king is a bigger king than the king you're referring to. It just comes out of him. My king will do this. He will absolutely do this. My God.
Kevin Thompson [00:13:35]:
Such a communication masterclass of— right? Opponents are giving you a question. He does not buy into the premise, but instead spins it to a much larger kind of concept, making it obvious that there's no way you oppose me in this because clearly you're on my side. I mean, it's just a masterclass of communication there.
Curt Harlow [00:13:53]:
There is a part of the passage that bothers me a little bit though. And that is— and this is the leadership. This is the leader in me that wants this to be more of a leader manual than a God fulfills his promise theology, which you're exactly right about, Kevin, is when he gets to the persuasive part. So he starts with a problem. There's destruction. Then he goes to the solution. God has already spoken to me. His grace is already on me to do this.
Curt Harlow [00:14:21]:
I am called. This is— God is behind this. That's the solution.. And, um, and then when he engages the leaders, it's like a phrase and it says, and so then we started to do it. I wanted that to be a half a chapter with, with steps and step subpoints and stuff. But, uh, so he, he tells them the problem, tells them God's on me. Uh, I also told them about the gracious hand of my God. They replied, let's start building.
Kevin Thompson [00:14:51]:
So they began this good work. Sometimes it's the way I tell about the birth stories of my children. Jenny and I tell those different. So Ella or Silas, I say, yeah, we got up from the hospital, I had Chick-fil-A, and the baby was born. Well, you've kind of brushed over the work of what happened. It seems like the text does that here.
Curt Harlow [00:15:10]:
Yeah. Well, in chapter 3, then it goes into this. It mentions 42 different groups of people and/or teams of people, depending on how you look at it, and 40 different sections of the wall. So from the— this problem is horrible, almost impossible. By the way, we are going to be opposed. Here's the opposition. Happens 2 seconds after I cast the vision. And then, yeah, let's do it.
Curt Harlow [00:15:37]:
Yeah. From, yeah, let's do it to almost all of chapter 3, it is it is total engagement. It's like what every pastor— this is why I want more in that section. How do you do that? Everyone volunteered for the children's ministry.
Kevin Thompson [00:15:53]:
This is where the book's written. The verse that the Bible skips, the chapters that the Bible skips is actually where we would want— we would buy the book. Right.
Curt Harlow [00:16:01]:
Yes, exactly. But fundamentally, what is the lesson of the fact that they do? What is the lesson of the fact that the initial group buys in and then all of a sudden it explodes? And there's this very deliberate thing of in chapter 3 where not only does it mention each group specifically, it mentions each section of the wall. So not everyone's doing everything. Every— the responsibility is very— it reminds me of the Book of Judges. When Moses is overwhelmed and he is like, okay, let's divide all this up. And it has that same biblical thing of a miracle of organization happened.
Dena Davidson [00:16:46]:
Yeah. I think, I mean, this is maybe too application point, but I think sometimes we don't ask for God-sized visions because we assume we're going to have to do the work all on our own. And it's like, God, I don't really want to think about homelessness in my area. I don't really want to think about children who have diseases. I don't wanna think about poverty. Like, I don't wanna think about these things, 'cause we assume like we're gonna be carrying the burden ourself. But I think in here, it's a really beautiful example of how God does a great job of distributing the work, right? Sometimes he gives a leader a vision, and maybe you're the leader that the vision comes to. Maybe you're the worker that needs to listen to that vision and say, well, I can help build the wall, I can do my part.
Dena Davidson [00:17:32]:
I think that that's powerful.
Curt Harlow [00:17:34]:
So, I mean, are you saying here that the success of the engagement here is related somehow to the size of the problem? Yes. Yeah. So what we think is if I call people to serve and give, I should just give them baby steps. Right. And hopefully, after baby step after baby step, they'll get all the way up to the level of serving and giving that Christ wants from them. But it seems like the opposite is true here, where he goes, it's impossible other than God's grace is on me. Yes. And then that the size of that works.
Kevin Thompson [00:18:15]:
Yeah. I wonder if maybe sometimes I miss this in this passage, because I'm so quick to make myself Nehemiah, when in reality I'm probably far more often Tobiah the Ammonite.
Curt Harlow [00:18:29]:
Right? This is why we do the Bible Study Podcast. This is the stuff right here.
Kevin Thompson [00:18:33]:
So I read the other day that pessimists are more often right, but optimists are the only ones who get anything done. And so it is this idea of pessimism probably has a more realistic view of what the world is. And so it's not here that Tobiah was wrong. Tobiah's probably more right than Nehemiah because he truly gets the depth of the problem, the plight that is actually there. But if all you do is sit in the sorrow of the situation and never actually look up to the solution now of the Savior, then you're in this horrific position of just always criticizing and never getting anything done. And here's what scares me is who was he criticizing? He was criticizing the very one God was about to work through. And so it's a great conviction to me here. Be very careful who you criticize.
Kevin Thompson [00:19:20]:
If for no other reason, you shouldn't be that critical. But beyond that, is it possible that you're criticizing the very one that God has actually chosen? Now, that doesn't mean that we excuse bad behavior, obviously anything— Or that every.
Curt Harlow [00:19:30]:
Big vision is from God.
Kevin Thompson [00:19:32]:
No, not at all.
Curt Harlow [00:19:34]:
But there is something about— there is something. So I went to this youth pastor's training way back in the day. And one of the speakers got up and said, there is no such thing as a big youth group anymore. And we've got to have these small youth groups and we got to set our expectations smaller and do more in-depth things. And there was some truth into some of the stuff he's saying about discipleship in depth especially. But he was just completely convinced you could not rally. And he tied it to generation. And it was millennials.
Curt Harlow [00:20:09]:
This is back in the day when millennials were teenagers. Yeah, these millennials, they don't want to do this, that, and the other thing. And then the next night, I went to a U2 concert in Oakland, and it was sideways rain, freezing. The line is around the Coliseum, and there's 600, maybe 800, um, 19 to 21-year-olds out there for, um, uh, what's the human rights organization you two worked with a long time out there.
Dena Davidson [00:20:44]:
For?
Curt Harlow [00:20:44]:
Um, I can't remember, but they're out there getting petitions signed and their clipboards are soaking wet and they're having the time of their lives. And I'm like, well, apparently, um, if you actually give them a cause, yeah, yeah, there's nothing wrong with millennials and they're really willing to work hard in hard situations and enjoy themselves for doing it. So there is something about— there's a quote from an old book we used to use in Kairos called Discipleship by Design. And I was trying to look for it here, but the basic gist of the quote is, if you ask people for small little things, you're going to get small little efforts. But if you ask people for great and grand things, you're going to get great and grand efforts. And I do think that's part of what's going on here. Is that everyone knew that wall was horrible. Everyone knew that turning stones back onto themselves was hard.
Curt Harlow [00:21:39]:
Everyone knew that they were surrounded by people that didn't want the Jewish people to take back this territory. So they were going to get opposition and enemies. Everyone saw the problem. One guy prayerfully said, God, give me the, give me the grace to do this. And that when you find that person, you kind of go, I wish that would've been me, but I'm also glad it's him. And let's go. Let's go do this.
Dena Davidson [00:22:07]:
I have two Bible study tangents, if that's okay.
Kevin Thompson [00:22:09]:
Oh, wow. Here we go.
Dena Davidson [00:22:10]:
Okay. One is I'm remembering back from a few episodes ago where you kind of took us through the evolution of how people went from being nomads to forming cities. Do you remember, like, talk to me about the significance of walls, like, in that transition? Like, when they went from, like, moving from place to place, and then they started to form a city, and then they built a wall around it, essentially, that was when they were able to settle.
Curt Harlow [00:22:37]:
We should have my wife on this program, 'cause she is the number one expert on old walls. When we go on vacation overseas, this is all she wants to do. People wanna go to really foofy places. She's like, "Let's go look at old walls.".
Dena Davidson [00:22:50]:
'Cause I think we sometimes, 21st century, read this and like, like, oh, like they wanted a wall. Like, oh, that's— they were sad that their city was broken down.
Curt Harlow [00:22:57]:
This is, this is why we, we have this podcast. Okay, so the first thing you have to do is expunge from your mind anything that you now believe about the presence of a police force or a protective army. There is no state patrol, there's no sheriff's department, there's no 911. And even if there's military around, The military, your military, is going to come and take over your home and eat all of your food and stay there as long as they want. And what are you going to do? They don't care. They don't care.
Kevin Thompson [00:23:31]:
We have an amendment to prevent that from happening.
Curt Harlow [00:23:33]:
We do have an amendment. That's exactly what that amendment is for, that exact dynamic. And that existed for thousands and thousands of years. So you have this evolution where people go, okay, we figured out how to put seeds in ground. And the seeds in ground grow us enough foodstuffs so we have a little more security during the non-growing and winter months. But the second we're stationary and our riches, these foodstuffs, are out in the open, we have the problem of wolves and bears and people. We got those 3 problems. So you're a farmer, I'm a farmer, he's a farmer.
Curt Harlow [00:24:12]:
Let's all farm together. We'll build one fence while you're sleeping. I'll, I'll patrol. And so their own police forces then. Well, we're patrolling. You know, that farmer, he's a really, really good leader. Let's make him the head farmer. And you go all the way from like, ah, you know what? There is some fertile ground on top of that hill.
Curt Harlow [00:24:33]:
We'll see the enemies coming. And then you go all the way to if we built— while we're digging up the soil, putting the seeds in it, there are a lot of rocks in this soil. If we put these rocks together, we could have a fence around this thing, a wall around this thing. Or like we always pray for one another nowadays, God, put a hedge of protection around Dena and Shane as they drive. What's a hedge of protection? It's a dense thorn fence. So it's not, you know, that little hedge and marge your neighbor's house. It's— I was at a metal shop the other day.. And the guy at the metal shop— this is a true story, long context— but he says, we live in a place where the wind blows every single tumbleweed in this area into our parking lot.
Curt Harlow [00:25:23]:
And there's this pile of very dense tumbleweeds. This is a hedge of protection. And it's the early instinct of we need a wall. This area particularly— and I'm going way too long for this question.
Dena Davidson [00:25:35]:
No, I think this is why people like the Bible study.
Curt Harlow [00:25:38]:
This area in particular, if you get out the old board game Risk, Okay. Everyone knows you win risk. You got to— you take Australia. That's your best chance. Africa, your second best chance. South America. South America is probably your second best chance. Africa is your third best chance.
Curt Harlow [00:25:55]:
No other place works. You can't take Eurasia, you can't take Europe, and you certainly can't take the Middle East. Why? Too many entrances. There's literally a place, and it's right at the northern end of the Valley of Armageddon. And it's the center of every spice trade, ancient old world trading. It's the center of it. And Solomon builds a fortress there. You can go to it to this day.
Curt Harlow [00:26:22]:
And the two things God says to Solomon is don't have a lot of horses and don't have a lot of wives. And it's filled with stables and bedrooms for concubines. It's— and it's right there in Armageddon. And you can go to it. That is the hardest place in the world to hold militarily. This is Jerusalem. This explains Jerusalem. This explains why in our news to this day, we have conflict over Jerusalem and explains why the Messiah comes to Jerusalem.
Curt Harlow [00:26:54]:
He comes to the center of the.
Kevin Thompson [00:26:55]:
World to reach the world. It's the worst place if you're trying to hold on to something. It's the best place if you're trying to get something out. Oh, Kevin.
Curt Harlow [00:27:06]:
That'S good. But it's true. They all just went on the trade routes. That's how they got to North Africa so fast. That's how they could get from, from the Mediterranean to Spain. The other thing that's so fun about this idea that he, that he came to Jerusalem and it spread so fast there is this story of the Babylonians coming in and taking Jewish people and putting them in Iran, modern-day Iran. This is the story of why Every different type of Jewish person is there on Pentecost and ends up the first giant Holy Spirit revival. The horror of the sinfulness of man to capture other humans and disperse them.
Curt Harlow [00:27:50]:
God flips it on his head and he makes it the beginning of the church.
Dena Davidson [00:27:54]:
Yeah, that's so good. So essentially, a wall was like identical with security. No wall, No security, right? No ability to feed your kids come next winter, right?
Curt Harlow [00:28:06]:
Because you're a seeder. No locks, no police, no Ring camera.
Dena Davidson [00:28:09]:
And no food for next year, because it's going to get stolen even if your people are left alive.
Kevin Thompson [00:28:13]:
And then there became a point where even once you had moved past that, still the reputation, the appearance of the wall. I mean, we still see it a little bit even today. The walls aren't nearly as necessary, and yet many big mansions have these beautiful walls because it's the appearance of wealth and affluence.
Curt Harlow [00:28:30]:
Yeah. Well, so this is such— if you— have you been to Jerusalem? I have not. You need to go, Kevin. Oh my goodness. Have you been?
Kevin Thompson [00:28:38]:
No.
Curt Harlow [00:28:38]:
I'm not paying for it, but both.
Kevin Thompson [00:28:39]:
Of you need the Bible Study Podcast live.
Curt Harlow [00:28:44]:
From Jerusalem. Yes.
Dena Davidson [00:28:45]:
Bree, book it.
Curt Harlow [00:28:46]:
Start buying lotto tickets. Okay, so one of my guides, one of the times I went, he said, I want you to— so there's a ruin that you could see. It's an ancient Roman ruin. And you approach it coming up a hill, which is exactly what you do going into Jerusalem. The Psalms of ascent, you're on that road, and then you go up into the 5 mountaintops of Jerusalem. He said, I want you to imagine that you are a 13-year-old boy, and this is your first Passover, and every single village you've ever seen has small clay and stone, clay brick and stone houses with small, small roofs. And there's a cluster of them with maybe 120 people. And that's Capernaum, 120 people.
Curt Harlow [00:29:37]:
And that's what you've seen your whole life. And your family's never been able to afford to bring you to Passover. But now you're 13 and you must go. And you walk up this hill and all of a sudden the hill crests. And you see Temple Mount with stones that are hard to explain how they moved them there now today. And this incredible, incredible House of the Lord. And, you know, if you stand next to the Wailing Wall, it just, it literally towers over you. He said the awe and shock and awe of that was purposeful and meant to be.
Curt Harlow [00:30:19]:
Extremely profound. So this, to your point about the wall, the wall was like when we carpet bomb to intimidate the enemy. The wall was, you come in there, you've seen walls this high your whole life, and all of a sudden you're looking at this thing going, I have no chance. I'm not bringing my soldiers here. I'm not bringing my bandits here. I got no chance here. That's exactly what the wall is meant to do.
Dena Davidson [00:30:45]:
I think every movie you watch where you see the people from the outskirts trying, like running and racing to get inside the wall. And then you see the gate close and you as a human watching it, you're like, "I can breathe again." Like, that is what Jerusalem had lost. They couldn't breathe that way. And they had been without that ability to breathe a deep sigh of safety for hundreds of years. That's where they were at.
Curt Harlow [00:31:12]:
Right. Yeah. When you really get into the context, this is a beautiful question, Dena. You know, why is he crying? For the reputation of the Lord? He knows the Lord's gonna be all right. For the destruction cost? Yeah, maybe part of it. For the mothers and children that had no protection, that could not breathe, for the vulnerable that literally had no protection, no one protecting them. Then all of a sudden you go, oh, I see.
Kevin Thompson [00:31:44]:
I see why he grieves so much. Yeah. I think for me, the practical takeaway for me in this— All right, let's get to application. There we go. Is the idea of I need to look down more often. I need to see the broken things of this world and have the courage to see them and not just live in denial of them. I need to look around more often to see how people are suffering because of that and to recognize God's given us as a church resources., and then I need to look up. I need to understand that God wants to involve himself in the brokenness of this world and to use us now to make this world a better place.
Kevin Thompson [00:32:19]:
So I think if we look down, look around, and look up, that's a.
Curt Harlow [00:32:23]:
Great takeaway from Nehemiah 2. Well, you should've went last because that was pretty good. Oh, I did? I got one. I got one. It's not as cheeky as yours. Dino, how would you apply this passage?
Dena Davidson [00:32:34]:
What should we do then? I think I would just start asking the people around you, is there anything God has put in your heart? Like as a church, as we're going through this next series, I think just asking people like, hey, we go to church together. Is there anything you heard on the weekend that really stood out to you that you feel like God is moving you towards next? Is there something that hasn't even been mentioned that's been in your heart for a long time? I think if spouses were asking each other that question, if parents were asking their kids, if Friends were asking, rooted members of the Rooted group asking each other, I think that God is probably putting all of these visions in our heart, but we're maybe not listening as well as we should be. So just start asking people, is there anything that God is putting in your heart to do?
Curt Harlow [00:33:23]:
It's very good. I think at the risk of sounding leadership cheeky, like we talked about at the beginning, these guys are, Dena's probably heard me say this to the Thrive students, especially in terms of helping them become better persuaders. And then the lead pastors hear me say this at least 2 meetings, 2 times a meeting, which is Scott Morton, who is a navigator who trains people to raise money. His whole premise is the way you persuade people is problem, solution, your part. And I'm studying and preparing for this podcast. I'm like, That's what Nehemiah is doing, is exactly what he's doing. And, you know, what Scott would say is, if you're not trying to solve a big enough problem, why are you trying to persuade people to do something? If you're actually asking people to change their lives, persuade them to get involved, you better be asking. And he would also say, we Christians skip the problem part because we are too positive.
Curt Harlow [00:34:23]:
We want to get right away to the solution. And then the solution, if it's not anchored in God, then it, you know, it's the old thing of, yeah, Jerusalem Council, you can call these guys back in and whip them. But if they're with God, there's nothing that's going to stop them. And if they're not of God, nothing will come of it. If it's not anchored in God, why are you working for that solution? If you're not absolutely convinced God has called you and that God is behind you and that God's grace is on you the way Nehemiah says, why are you doing that? And if you just stop and do those two things, am I working on God's problem and I— am I working God's solution? It clarifies a lot of things and it helps you edit out some stuff you shouldn't do. Then what's my part? What's interesting to me is Nehemiah doesn't build the whole wall. Um, no one of these groups mentioned in chapter 3 build the whole wall. The best things that happen at Bayside, when the best stuff happens, I always leave that stuff going.
Curt Harlow [00:35:26]:
Everyone played their part. I was so proud of everyone. They all did what they could do. I can't do that, and they did it, and I can't do that, and they did that. And it's fun watching them. And that just feels like we've all been on that team. I don't know if we all have, but if you've been on that basketball team with the no-look pass guy that gets where you're going. That's that feeling.
Curt Harlow [00:35:51]:
And it's exactly what happens here. They got a God-sized problem, they're doing God's solution, and everyone plays their part. And boom, against the odds, the wall gets built.
Kevin Thompson [00:36:00]:
Yeah. Amen.
Curt Harlow [00:36:01]:
They changed the odds. Interesting. They changed the odds. Only there was a podcast. That's another podcast he leads. It's about marriage. They can make your marriage better. It's a very good podcast.
Curt Harlow [00:36:14]:
Thank you. Bree, who are we having on next week? Wesley. Oh, wow.
Kevin Thompson [00:36:18]:
Next week, really taking down the academic knowledge in this chair just a little bit.
Dena Davidson [00:36:22]:
Really good.
Curt Harlow [00:36:23]:
So much less creepy. We're going to talk about faith next week, which is an issue that the church likes to talk about quite a bit. But maybe we need— like, I find all of the things that are the most familiar to us need a double look because they easily go into a cartoon version of themselves. So not without vision. We need God's vision. But to actually make that vision happen, we need to know how do you have faith? How do you walk in faith? What does it mean to walk in faith? That's what we'll be examining next week with Wesley Brown. Will you be here, Dena? Yes. You know, it'll be a good episode because Dena will be here.
Curt Harlow [00:36:58]:
So thanks for watching again. Like, subscribe, tattoo, all of this stuff so that more people are actually learning about how to do Bible study in context correctly. And thank you so much for your time.