You can make an old car look like new with body work in a fresh coat of paint, but if

you pop the hood, you may see a completely different picture. Today on Truth For Life,

Alistair Begg shows how Nehemiah, after dealing with attacks from outside, found new threats from within.

Our God and our Father, we come to you expectantly that you will speak to us through your word.

We certainly long that beyond the pages of Holy Scripture and beyond the voice of a mere man,

that we may encounter you, be encountered by you. So speak to our waiting hearts we pray and

show us ourselves and show us your greatness and your glory and match if it pleases you the needs of

our lives to the truth of your word today, for we pray in Christ's name. Amen.

When we concluded chapter four, some of us might have been tempted to believe that having raised

the wall to half its height, having been able to defend it against these initial attacks of the

enemy, that all would be well. But in actual fact, it isn't so. They had managed to contain and to

control the external threat, but they had not dealt with the notion that was about to creep upon

them, indeed to unleash itself upon them, which was to come from a surprising source, namely from

within their own ranks. In the reading of chapter five, some of us may also be tempted to believe

that it's a kind of remote chapter somewhere far removed from our own time and circumstances,

but yet a more careful reading points out that it is actually a very contemporary chapter,

having to do with taxes, loans, money, status, and the effect that those things have upon the

lives of individuals, and more pressingly the effect which these things have upon the lives of God's

people. The building of their walls had been able to contain what was outside, but it was

ineffective in tackling what was inside. And since unity of purpose and harmony of disposition

was absolutely essential to the effect of completion of this great project, the evil one would know

that if he could get God's people disunited, disgruntled, at war with one another,

...