Bible Commentaries

Nehemiah 3:28

I. The ruins which need repair. Most of us have got so familiarised with the evils that stare us in the face every time we go out upon the pavements, that we have come to think of them as being inseparable from our modern life, like the noise of a carriage wheel from its rotation. The beginning of Nehemiah's work of repair was that sad midnight ride round the ruined walls. So there is a solemn obligation laid on Christian people to acquaint themselves with the awful facts, and then to meditate on them, till sacred, Christlike compassion, pressing against the floodgates of the heart, flings them open, and lets out a stream of helpful pity and saving deeds.

II. The ruin is to be repaired mainly by the old Gospel of Jesus Christ. If you get His love into a man's heart, that will produce new tastes and new inclinations, which will reform, and sweeten, and purify faster than anything else does.

III. This remedy is to be applied by the individual action of Christian men and women on the people nearest them. (1) If you are a Christian man, you have in your possession the thing which will cure the world's woe, and possession involves responsibility. (2) If we have found anything in Jesus Christ which has been peace and rest to ourselves, Christ has thereby called us to this work. (3) The possession of His love gives the commission; ay, and it gives the power. All can preach who can say, "We have found the Christ."

A. Maclaren, A Year's Ministry, 1st series, p. 111.

References: Nehemiah 3:28.—Homiletic Quarterly, vol. iv., p. 547. Nehemiah 3:30.—Homiletic Magazine; vol. xi., p. 17.