Pulling Into the Delegation Station
Nehemiah is one of my favorite books.
However, Nehemiah 3 is one of the more difficult chapters to read.
The difficulty lies not just in trying to pronounce all of those names, but in the concept on display: delegation.
God had planted a vision in Nehemiah to go back from Persia to Jerusalem and rebuild the wall around Jerusalem—a tall task given that the Babylonians had exiled the Israelites not long before.
Nehemiah had secured what was needed for this job by the graciousness of King Artaxerxes. He called for the workers to “arise and build,” even with the enemies already entrenched and discouraging (Nehemiah 2:19-20).
So, Nehemiah could have tried to do it all himself (impossible) or he could rally the troops, so to speak, and give them each some ownership of a piece of the wall that needed repairing. As the delegator, he delegated.
For those who were the delegatees, some had the choice spots, like fixing the main gate to the city, while others were tasked with fixing the Dung Gate—a necessary fix, mind you, but who would see their handy work except those who needed to take care of the necessary business of bodily functions.
Still, they pressed on and completed the work in 52 days.
The work and the delegation of that work all started when God placed that vision in Nehemiah’s heart. It continued by Nehemiah continually coming before the Lord in prayer, whether the prayers were long (Nehemiah 1:4-11) or were “flare prayers.”
Takeaways:
When God plants a vision, he plants a vision in faithful people (or person) to be His hands and feet.
While God calls out a champion for His vision, He also calls for that champion to gather others to the work. He’s not called to do everything himself.
Those who are gathered have the privilege and responsibility to do the work delegated to them for the glory of God.
When God plants that vision, we must continually pray to Him as we obey.
Enemies will arise and multiply (see Sanballat and Tobiah, then Gesham, then others). Sadly, disobedience is contagious—but so is obedience!
What are some of your takeaways from the narrative of Nehemiah?