In former days, cities relied on strong exterior walls to safeguard their people and wealth, equipped with extensive defense mechanisms like moats, towers, and gates to keep enemies at bay. The book of Nehemiah recounts a critical time when such a wall was essential for the protection of God's people. Around 445 BC, a remnant of Jews returned from Babylonian exile to find Jerusalem's walls in ruins, leaving them vulnerable to attack and the influence of the pagan world. Nehemiah, the Persian emperor's trusted cupbearer, was deeply troubled by this news and sought permission to return and rebuild the walls. Upon arriving, Nehemiah secretly surveyed the wall's dilapidated state by night, aware that some would resist the rebuilding effort, seeing no danger in living unprotected. The rebuilding process, detailed in chapters 3 and 4, was arduous and met with discouragement, with the wall only half-completed and rubbish everywhere. Threats of attack further dampened spirits, but Nehemiah inspired renewed effort by assigning each family a section of the wall near their home, ensuring personal investment in its strength. God has assigned His people the task of building a spiritual wall as well, to protect against the influences of satan's world. This involves maintaining high standards, encouraging one another, and praying fervently for protection and strength. Just as Nehemiah's wall was fortified through collective effort and prayer, so must God's people work together to restore spiritual defenses in the church and their homes. Beyond the communal wall, each home must be a sanctuary, actively guarded against worldly influences that could breach personal spiritual defenses. Like Nehemiah, God's people must survey the state of their spiritual walls in the church, homes, and lives, recognizing the urgent need to rebuild. This begins with restoring a strong relationship with our great God, ensuring that His presence fortifies against the dangers outside.

In the historical account of Judah's restoration, the rebuilding of the wall around Jerusalem under Nehemiah's leadership stands as a significant endeavor. After the Babylonian captivity, a remnant of Jews returned to Jerusalem, initially focusing on rebuilding the Temple. However, the city remained vulnerable without a protective wall. Nehemiah, arriving in 444 BC as a civil leader, took on the task of constructing this wall to safeguard the Temple and the city, both symbols of the church and its members. His role was to provide defense and separation from external threats, ensuring the community's security. The process of rebuilding the wall was fraught with challenges. Opposition from surrounding enemies, such as Sanballat, Tobiah, and others, brought mockery and threats of violence. Despite this, Nehemiah inspired the people to persevere, organizing them to build with one hand while holding a weapon in the other, ready to defend their work. Families were positioned to construct sections of the wall in front of their own homes, heightening their resolve to protect their loved ones. Through prayer, vigilance, and strategic planning, the wall was eventually completed, joining together to form a barrier that both defended and separated the inhabitants from external dangers. Biblically, a wall represents two spiritual necessities: defense against outside influences and separation from those who threaten the community's integrity. In the case of Jerusalem, the wall's completion marked the city as whole, symbolizing a return to civilization and order. It stood as a source of pride and beauty, a testament to the people's dedication and cooperation under divine guidance. Just as God provided protection through a pillar of fire for the Israelites in Exodus, separating them from their pursuers, the wall around Jerusalem served to protect and distinguish the people within from those outside. This act of building, though physically demanding and opposed, reflects the broader spiritual effort required to maintain separation and defense against pervasive external influences.

A wall symbolizes protection and separation at one and the same time. The building of a city wall required costly expenditure of money, time, and labor on the part of its citizens. God requires that His people build a wall and become a wall and stand in the gap. Jeremiah was made a defenced city and brasen walls against the whole land. He girded up his loins and arose to speak all that God commanded. The sequence of events regarding Judah sinning, God warning them, God tearing down or removing the wall of His protection, allowing Babylon to conquer them, the Jews then being scattered into captivity, and then seventy years later released, returning to Jerusalem, rebuilding the Temple, then rebuilding the wall under Nehemiah is one of the patterns given for instruction. The third sermon was titled Building the Wall, and God tells His people that they must come out from among them and be separate. They must flee from Babylon spiritually and live lives separated spiritually from the surrounding social environment. To do this they must build a spiritual wall between themselves and it, and indeed they must themselves become a wall if they are to succeed in this way of life. It is obedience to truth that erects the wall and separates from Satan and this world. The primary use of the word translated sanctify is to set apart or to separate. The root of that word means to cut out and indicates difference. Holiness indicates set apart and clean, meaning like God, set apart and undefiled, set apart and not filthy, set apart and ready and willing and doing the will of God. This is what causes holiness, and the holiness that is produced is the wall that stands between the people and the world. The zealous determination in which the people obey determines how much of the wall is going to be built. If they merely believe, no barrier is built. The wall was built because the people had a mind to work. The same principle applies now. The wall will be built because of work, and it is a spiritual work. The labor is nonetheless costly. It has already cost the life of Jesus Christ, and it requires lives as well. What is said about building a wall is a matter of developing a relationship with God through learning more of God's truth, and of course prayer, overcoming sin, and resisting the influences of the world. It is a matter of growth in love, in making practical godly use of love in relationships with each other, in families and on jobs. It is being patient, honest, and humble. It is being kind, thoughtful, caring, concerned, sacrificing, generous of spirit, bearing one another's burden, encouraging, forgiving, and not holding grudges. It is a brick-by-brick, stone-by-stone process of overcoming human nature's self-centeredness. It is a matter of letting the world see the witness of lives in everyday matters. The people in Nehemiah's day, while aggressively building the wall around Jerusalem, had to be ready at a moment's notice to rise and defend their position for their own lives and for the lives of their families. Nehemiah positioned those people where they were building right in front of their families' homes. Those people went forward under their leader Nehemiah, standing and working at the wall which was separating them from the world and was at the same time, as it rose to its permanent height, providing them individually and the Temple with evermore protection. All the while they were ever on guard and ready to defend whatever they had built. It is in this manner that the people become a wall and will be ready and willing to stand in the gap in the defense of the Church of God and its brethren and the name of God. Holiness is the wall. Holiness surrounds Jerusalem, and all those who will be in it will be holy.