Then I, myself, will be a protective wall of fire around Jerusalem, says the Lord. And I will be the glory inside the city! Zechariah 2:5 NLT
As best we can tell, it is a historical fact that after the walls of Jerusalem were destroyed by the Babylonians, probably in 586 or 585 BC, they lay in ruins for some 140 years. It was not until Nehemiah came from Persia about 445 that they were finally rebuilt. This is all the more surprising when we remember that the Judeans returned from exile in 538. So, whatever the conditions might have been during the exile between 585 and 538, the city was populated after 538 for nearly 100 years without defensive walls.
At least in the beginning there were political reasons for this fact. The city had a history of rebellion, and the Persian emperors at least once stopped the rebuilding (Ezra 4:18-22). But I would like to suggest another reason, which is spiritual. The religious trend of that day was syncretism (inclusivism?). That is, all religions are essentially the same; one god is as good as another; we all believe essentially the same thing; differences are unimportant.
It seems fairly clear that the Judeans took the same attitude: they had no spiritual walls, and thus no physical ones either. I wonder if that attitude was also supported by twisting scripture. To Zechariah God had said he would be a wall of fire around Jerusalem. So, perhaps people were saying, “We don’t need to go to the expense and effort of rebuilding the walls, because our (syncretized) Yahweh is going to protect us.”
But the fact is, for us humans the spiritual and the physical are inseparably connected. What we do with our bodies is an infallible indicator of where our spirits are. We can say all we want about how much we love Jesus, but if we will not, for example, make the effort to get out of bed on Sunday morning to go share that love with other believers, and encourage them in their walk, we lie. What we do with our bodies tells any onlooker where our souls are.
Called To Be Transformed 