God’s good and acceptable and perfect will, believe it or not, awaits your willingness (Rom 12:1-2).
After all the work done since Zerubbabel and his company arrived, through Ezra and Nehemiah’s influence, and the people’s hard work and sacrifice, it would have been a fiasco if only a few people lived in the city. We read earlier, “Now the city was large and spacious, but the people in it were few, and the houses were not rebuilt” (Neh 7:4). Imagine those mighty walls and impressive gates protecting—next to no one! The majority of the people had finally been able, after so long a time, to return to their ancestral properties. Can you see them rebuilding the fences, retraining the vines, tending the gardens? This was home! But something had to be done for their capital. There were leaders there, no doubt members of the ruling class, whose family homes were already in the “holy city.” So it was decided that “the rest of the people cast lots to bring one out of ten to dwell in Jerusalem” (Neh 11:1). The people wouldn’t consider this a matter of chance. No, the way they had received their tribal territories in the first place was by lot ( Jsh 14:2). And they believed what Solomon wrote: “The lot is cast into the lap, but its every decision is from the Lord” (Prov 16:33). In fact, lots were used in determining the Lord’s will all the way until Acts 1:26, after which the indwelling Spirit came to every believer. But notice this. While we might say the matter was in the hand of a sovereign God, this in no way negates the personal choice of those selected. “And the people blessed all the men who willingly offered themselves to dwell at Jerusalem” (Neh 11:2). The rest of the chapter records those living in the city (vv 3-24), and those living in “the villages” (vv 25-36 ). No one is displaced or misplaced when they’re in the center of God’s will.