The book of Nehemiah gives us a spectacular picture of godly leadership and initiative: Facing a run-down Jerusalem with a broken-down wall after the Babylonian exile, Nehemiah, the book’s namesake, leads the people in rebuilding the wall and rededicating the city and its people to God. Yet at the outset of the “great work” that Nehemiah accomplishes and the challenges that accompany it, Nehemiah 2:11 contains a simple sentence that we may be tempted to overlook: “I went to Jerusalem and was there three days.”
Why “three days”? Based on all that we read in the opening sections of the book, we can reasonably imagine that Nehemiah was champing at the bit to get started with the rebuilding efforts. After months of travel, anticipating the opportunity for work, could somebody so keen to lead and be active waste his time like this?
In fact, Nehemiah didn’t “waste” his time; he used it strategically, to rest from his journey. This is something that we do well to meditate on. By and large, our culture is reluctant to acknowledge what is an essential element in every task—namely, rest and relaxation. The models that young men and women in the marketplace are encouraged to follow are the kind of dramatic, unsleeping tycoons who appear on the covers of magazines, charging from one task to another with a laptop open in front of them. Yet despite the apparent worldly success that accompanies such a lifestyle, it comes with a cost—often one that impacts the church and the family first.
The kind of hard-driving leadership that we often want to emulate in our culture needs to be held up to the light of the Scriptures. In this simple sentence, Nehemiah provides a necessary antidote for many of our frenetic and frantic existences. After a journey of some eight or nine hundred miles, without the privilege of air travel or a highway system, there was one thing he knew he needed: rest. The task to which he had been called was crucial. The work would be demanding. It required his full strength. And because Nehemiah was a wise man—and, we may safely assume, because he understood the pattern of rest that God had established in the Sabbath—he took the time to relax.
Many Christians are overtired, and they don’t realize it. They’re too busy to observe their own exhaustion. Their judgment is impaired, their efficiency is diminished, and they’ve bought into a way of thinking that says we’re only effective when we’re running around from one task to another. They haven’t found their security in God alone. They haven’t learned to rest in His love and provision. They’re trying to justify their existence by trying to do it all—and they can’t!
A wise man or woman, no matter how dramatic their conviction regarding the project in front of them, no matter how consumed they are with the vision, no matter how tempted they are to charge ahead at the first available opportunity, ought to learn from this simple sentence: “I went to Jerusalem and was there three days.” If Nehemiah thought it was wise to take a break and a breath, even while his beloved city’s wall was yet a ruin, shouldn’t we?
This article was adapted from the sermon “Planting the Vision” by Alistair Begg.
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