Nehemiah 7:4-73

Home. What comes to mind when you hear that word? Home. Do you think of your own bed, sleeping on your own pillow? Do you think of being with loved ones, where the whole family is together, and whatever room you wander in is filled with people you love the most, who love you the most? Home. It’s the place where you can be yourself. You don’t have to be “on”, you don’t have to pretend, you can let your hair down and laugh as hard and as long as you want. And people get you, they understand you, they get your sense of humor, they know what makes you sad. Home, they say, is where the heart is, and when you’re home, your heart is full and happy and content.

But what if you’re not home. And what if you haven’t been home in a long, long time. In fact, for most of your life, you haven’t been home. For most of your life you’ve lived somewhere else. And you’ve lived in a place where you can’t be yourself, because most people don’t get you. They don’t understand your deepest joys or your greatest fears. You’re not safe, where you’ve been living most of your life.

But it’s hard to picture home. When we’ve never been safe, we can’t really imagine safety. When we’ve never experienced real joy, we don’t really know what it looks like. When we’ve never been home, then going home is frightening, it’s risky. Home is not the safe place it’s supposed to be.

This is how many people, even Christians, see death. Death, for believers, is going home. Death, for believers, is going to the place that is safe and filled with joy, where we can be ourselves with our family, where we are known and loved the most. But believers have been living away from home our entire lives. We’ve heard about home, we’ve read about home. We know home is out there, somewhere. But going home, that’s another thing. The thought of dying creates fear, not joy. Going home, for many, is something to dread, rather than something to anticipate.

The sting of death, the fear of dying comes because sin still has such an effect on us. Sin has bent our minds and made us forget home. Evil has tainted our thoughts and made the image of home blurry and faded and not real. But the Holy Spirit is working on our brains, He’s crystallizing the image, He’s helping us to remember home. And the Spirit does this this morning, through Nehemiah 7. Nehemiah 7 gives us a glimpse of going home. There are many other glimpses throughout scripture. We see home in Genesis 1 and 2. We see home in Revelation 21 and 22. We even get glimpses of home when we see the church praying and worshiping and living in community in Acts 2.

But here in Nehemiah 7, we see God’s people coming home. They were living in exile, like we are now. They had been living in Babylon for 70 years. Most of the people had never actually lived at home, they’d never actually seen home, they had never seen the city of Jerusalem. But their hearts had never stopped yearning to return to where they belonged.

And in chapter 7, God’s people are returning, they’re arriving where they belong. They’re coming home. Listen to home. In some ways, this picture will be a pretty good description of heaven. We can imagine home as we hear these verses. In other ways, the text will just reveal how much more beautiful heaven is going to be. Like in Verse 4:

Now the city was large and spacious, but there were few people in it, and the houses had not yet been rebuilt.

Home is the place that believers will live when Jesus returns to earth. Home is when evil has been removed from this earth. Home is when every knee shall bow and every tongue will confess that Jesus is Lord, when He appears in the twinkling of an eye. And home is big. Home is very large and spacious. There’s plenty of room. In Revelation 21, the city is measured to see how big it actually is. And when it’s measured, the city is found to be 1400 miles wide and 1400 miles wide and 1400 miles high. The walls themselves are 200 feet thick. This is one huge city. And even though we don’t want to take the numbers as literal, we start to get this idea of the size and splendor of home. And not just in the sense of physical space. Home is a big, big world, where there is lots of diversity, and tons to explore. While the road home may be straight and narrow, there is plenty of room for everyone.

Home, as we understand it, is this world, made perfect. Home is this universe, without the curse of sin. Home is the mountains and the valleys and the canyons and the oceans and space and planets and fields and rivers and lakes. Home is anywhere and everywhere, but better, the best, the purest, the healthiest, the cleanest. Water, but water like we’ve never seen it, water like we’ve never tasted it. Sky, but sky that is so blue it seems bluer than blue. This world, but not like we’ve ever seen it. That’s home. We’re going home. Just think about what you might do in a home that big. Think about spending eternity exploring and living and resting and worshipping and working at home, in this home.

But not everyone is home yet. There were few people in it, says verse 4. Some people had gone home. Some had arrived, but not everyone. And that’s where we find ourselves right now. Many of our loved ones, our husbands, our wives, our moms and dads, our brothers and sisters, some of our children are home with Jesus right now, getting a taste of home. But we, we are still waiting to go home. We’re still craving, we’re still missing home.

But, we’re going home. Jesus made sure of it. His death and His resurrection guaranteed our way home. And the rest of chapter 7 describes us going home. Maybe the numbers and the strange names get in the way. Maybe it’s as hard to see the joy in Nehemiah 7, as it is to remember that dying is going home.

But look, notice, see God’s people going where they belong, returning to the home they’ve never experienced, the safety they’ve never enjoyed. Verse 6:

These are the people of the province who came up from the captivity of the exiles whom Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon had taken captive

These are the people of God who are coming home. And through the numbers and the strange name, we notice something about these people. We notice that they each have different skills, different gifts. There are singers. There are gatekeepers. There are priests. In other passages, there are stonecutters and carpenters. They’re not all alike. But they all have gifts. And they use those gifts as they return home. Working together, working in unison, their gifts have a place in their new home. The people of God have come home and the people of God are going to work.

As we see the people of God returning, we notice that there are a lot of them. Totaling up the numbers, there’s about 50,000 people coming back to Jerusalem. Verse 66:

The whole company numbered 42,360, besides their 7,337 menservants and maidservants; and they also had 245 men and women singers.

50,000 people coming home. Can you imagine? Everywhere you look are people weeping with joy, coming to a home that has never been seen. Tens of thousands of people singing and walking and looking around and worshipping. The people of God are coming home.

And as we see them arrive, we notice something else. We see that even though they are the people of God, even though this is home, that not everyone is from the same nationality. Verse 61:

The following came up from the towns of Tel Melah, Tel Harsha, Kerub, Addon and Immer, but they could not show that their families were descended from Israel

The people of God were not just Jewish. In verse 61, they might have been, but they weren’t sure what their heritage was. They were not Babylonian. They were not Egyptian. They were not Jewish. They were God’s people. The boundaries of nations were breaking down. God’s people were being drawn in from all the nations. God’s people were coming home.

Home. Does that sound good? If Jesus is your Lord, if Jesus saved your life, if Jesus bled and died for you, then you’re going home. And you’re going home with a lot of people. When we see the people of God at home, the number is 144,00, over twice as many as here in Nehemiah. Again, the numbers are the point, it’s the size of the numbers. Our family is huge. Imagine thousands and hundreds of thousands and millions, maybe billions of believers, filling this earth with their song and worship and praise.

And work. Because all of these people, each of us have our own set of gifts that we will use at home. You know your gifts. Some of us can quilt, and some of us can’t. Some of us can carve, and some of us can’t. Some of us can grow things, some of us can write poetry, some of us can bake and cook, some of us can use numbers really well. Each of us, every single one of us can do something, and do something well. And when we get home, we’ll be doing what we do well, we’ll be using our gifts. And we’ll be learning new gifts. I would really like to learn to make beautiful things, like carving or carpentry. I can’t do that right now, but give me an eternity to learn, and I’ll probably get better. We will work, we will do things, at home.

And this family is made up of people that are not just us. Our family comes from all over. There are Inuit believers at home. There are Saudi Arabian believers at home. There are Jewish believers, Indian believers, Native American believers, and yes, Dutch believers. And all of us have different memories and experiences, we grew up with different customs, we spoke different languages. But we have this in common: we love Jesus. We love Jesus with Arabian and Native and Indian and Inuit and Dutch hearts, and we all love Jesus.

And we’re going home. Did you get a glimpse of home, through Nehemiah 7? But the beauty of home is not the colors or the bigness, it’s not being with family and friends, it’s not living for eternity. The beauty, the real beauty, is being with the Father, because of Jesus, through the Holy Spirit. Going home isn’t going to a place. Going home is seeing a Person. We’re home, when we see the face of Jesus. We’re home, when we see our King. We’re home, in that twinkling of an eye, when Jesus finally returns.

And so, today, we get a taste of home, through communion. We’re not there yet, we can’t see His face yet, but we can eat His flesh, we can drink His blood. We can get a touch, just a taste, of being with Jesus. We can get a glimpse, just a peek, of being home. And this peek, this glimpse, through Nehemiah 7 and through communion, this glimpse gives us hope. It gives us courage. It keep us watching and waiting and hoping, hoping for home.