Return to Me
Nehemiah 1:4-11
Let me ask you a question, “How many of you gained weight over the holidays?” Now that we’re in the New Year, how many of you have made New Year’s resolutions to lose that weight? To eat better and exercise? And how many of you have started to work toward those resolutions? Mark Brunner writes, Compared with the renovation God has in mind, our efforts to improve our own lives are as trivial as sweeping a warehouse slated for the wrecking ball. When we become God’s, the old life is over (2 Cor. 5:17). He makes all things new. Tighter chins, firmer stomachs and buttocks don’t reflect the make-over plan God has in mind for each of us. We can make-over our bodies until the cows come home and we won’t even scratch the surface of that divine plan. God’s make-over has everything to do with our hearts and little to do with our appearance.
That is exactly where God begins to deal with Nehemiah. When Nehemiah inquires of his visiting brother about the people in Israel and the city of Jerusalem, what is described is a scene of desolation and the utter hopelessness and despair of the people. And in that moment, Nehemiah’s heart begins to break and God begins His makeover of Nehemiah’s heart. Following God and getting involved in his plan of rebuilding and healing isn’t a matter of the head, it’s a matter of the heart. Up to this point, Nehemiah was living a pretty comfortable life. He was in the service of the king, in charge of all food services. He ate the best food and lived in the palace. He had everything he could want: power, privilege and position. And like most Jews of his day living in Babylon, he had long let go of any hope of returning to the homeland and instead planned to spend the rest of his life living comfortably in exile.
But in one innocent question to his brother, God breaks Nehemiah’s heart which starts him on the journey of his heart makeover. First, upon hearing of the devastation of the Jerusalem and the hopelessness of the people, Nehemiah begins to weep. Weeping is caused by connecting to the pain of God. God’s heart broke the moment he let the Babylonians overrun Israel and destroy Jerusalem and the temple of God. His chosen people had fought amongst themselves, splintered and chosen to follow their own ways rather than the ways of God. And as a result, later Biblical writers would come to understand that the Babylonians were God’s instrument of punishment for Israel. Nothing breaks God’s heart more than his children disobeying and rebelling against him. So let me ask you, when was the last time you wept over the things God has wept over. When was the last time your heart was broken over what New Orleans had become before Katrina and what happened to it as a result of Katrina? The first step is connecting to the pain of God.
This pain is so intense that secondly, Nehemiah stops everything that he’s doing. He just sits down. Before you ever connect to the heart and purpose of God, you must stop, sit down and quit being so busy. Busyness is the way we medicate shallowness. You have to sit down and take an assessment of what is broken in your life, your relationships, in your home or in your community. Third, Nehemiah mourns. Weeping is connecting to the pain of God but mourning is carrying the pain of God. If you connect to God’s pain but then never carry that pain or deal with it, you will never experience the miracle of God in your life. Unless you carry the pain of God, the miracle or the action of God will never become a reality in your life. Fourth, he fasted. Fasting is that time when you hunger for something greater in your life. You become dissatisfied with the status quo and want something different, something greater than what you currently have in your life. It is a time of focusing on God and listening for His voice and His promptings. Nehemiah mourned, fasted, and wept for some days and all this is a prelude to his praying.
Prayer is one of the overriding themes of the book of Nehemiah and the secret to his success. The prayer in chapter one is the first of 12 different prayers recorded in the book. Nehemiah begins with prayer in Persia and closes with prayer in Jerusalem. His prayers are filled with adoration (chapters 8 and 9); thanksgiving (chapter 12); confession (chapters 1 and 9); and petition (chapters 1 and 2). It’s a story of compassionate, persistent, personal and corporate prayer. Prayer gives Nehemiah perspective; it widens his horizons, sharpens his vision and dwarfs his anxieties.
We learn several things about prayer from Nehemiah. First, prayer is grounded in a concern for others. This was not a personal concern, but a concern for what was happening in Jerusalem and to the Israelites. This is the starting point of prayer. It’s so easy for us to stay uninvolved and unaware, even when you’re surrounded by devastation and broken lives. For many of us, our reaction has been to turn inward and focus only on our own problems rather than the pain and brokenness around us. Nehemiah does just the opposite and this leads him to prayer.
Second, before you act, pray and wait. Notice that Nehemiah doesn’t immediately begin working on solutions but instead prays before he acts. That can be very difficult for us, especially when we’re facing a problem or a decision to make. Waiting for an answer or God’s leading can take time and often when you’re in a crisis, time is the last thing you feel like you have. For Nehemiah, his is a rather lengthy, prolonged, sustained time of prayer. Nehemiah 2:1 says, “In the month of Nisan (the 1st month of their year - 4 months later) in the twentieth year of King Artaxerxes….” If you track this on a Jewish calendar, you will find that Nehemiah prays for four months before an opportunity to speak to the king appears.
Too often, we know nothing of this kind of praying. We give up if nothing happens after a week of praying. We consider that to be long-term praying. We’ve been conditioned to a fast food mentality in every area of our life including, prayer. We figure if nothing happens within a week then we just need to do what we feel is best. Instead Nehemiah shows us that there are times we need extended vigils in prayer. We don’t think at the outset of a problem that we may need to settle in and prepare for the long haul. We expect quick answers to our prayers. And when we don’t see the answers we want, we question the value of prayer. But David Yonggi Cho says this is when we move to "Task Praying." Once you start praying about something, our task is to hang on until you have your petition answered. We are to pray persistently about that same concern until your prayer is answered. Don’t let go of God until He answers your request.
Third, have conviction in God’s character. Nehemiah prays, “Lord, the God of heaven, great and awesome God, who keeps his covenant of love with those who love him and keeps his commandments.” The problem with a lot of people is that they don’t really know God. O, they know of God but they don’t know God. So their prayers are kind of like trial balloons sent up to God to see who He is and if in fact he is faithful to His word and promises. What I know is this, you pray a lot differently if you’re not sure who God really is than if you really know God, His word, His promises and His character. When you do, there is an assurance and confidence in your prayers which comes only from knowing the one true God.
Nehemiah knew that God was not only able, but also willing to respond to his prayer. He called God “Lord” which means owner, the one who owns me, not the one who helps me but who owns me. He then refers to His Lord as the “God of Heaven”, acknowledging that his God was beyond the earthly realm and above all other gods. He next refers to Him as “great and awesome.” God deserves to be honored, revered and feared by all because of who He is.
Finally, Nehemiah describes God as the one who “keeps His covenant of love.” God is truthful, faithful and can be trusted. In every generation, God has renewed this unbreakable promise he’s made to his people. For God said to Abraham: “I will establish my covenant as an everlasting covenant between me and you and your descendants after you.” What does that mean? God never divorces. So when God makes a covenant commitment, even when you are unfaithful, God will remain faithful. His love will never leave you. That relationship and all that comes with it can never be broken. Romans 11:29 says, “For God’s gifts and call are irrevocable.” God says, I want you and I’m going to wait for you. Jesus said, “You did not choose me but I chose you and appointed you that you might go and bear fruit.” Because God has chosen you, when you stay under God’s covenant of love then God assumes the legal obligations of your provision and needs. In the same way that Giovanna and I are saving to pay for Luke and Mattie’s college, and let me remind you kids this is the four your plan we’re talking about, not anything stretched into five or six. We’re assuming the responsibility to not only raise them but send them out equipped that they would be fruitful with their lives. Jesus is saying as long as you are under my covenant of love and living it out, I will provide for your needs in life. This is the God to whom Nehemiah prays and why he does so with such confidence. Because he knows God and he understands God’s character, he prays with great confidence.
Fourth, he is then moved to confession. Before he gets to any petition for himself or even Jerusalem and the Israelites living back home, he confesses his sins to God. Verse 6: “I confess the sins we Israelites, including myself and my ancestral family have committed against you.” When you truly understand the nature, power and authority of God and are in his presence, then you are moved to confession. God becomes the mirror by which we can see ourselves for who we really are: imperfect sinners who have rebelled from God in our lives. This is what happened to Isaiah when he encountered God, “"Woe to me!" I cried. "I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty." Isaiah 6:6
Until you can name your brokenness and confess your sins, you will never experience the miracle of God’s forgiveness in your life. And until you move to confession, God can never begin the rebuilding process of your life. In fact, a lack of confession becomes a stumbling block to a person’s prayer life. In his book, Why Prayers are Unanswered, John Lavender tells a story about Norman Vincent Peal. When Peale was a boy, he found a big, black cigar, slipped into an alley, and lit up. It didn’t taste good, but it made him feel very grown up…until he saw his father coming. Quickly he put the cigar behind his back and tried to be casual. Desperate to divert his father’s attention, Norman pointed to billboard advertising the circus. "Can I go, Dad? Please, let’s go when it comes to town." His father’s reply taught Norman a lesson he never forgot. "Son, never make a petition while at the same time trying to hide a smoldering disobedience."
Many of us never get to repentance in our prayer life. We might feel bad about our sins or or even regret our mistakes. And though we know God is good, we hesitate to confess. The only way you will ever be able to get real and confess your sins to God is if you trust in His grace and unconditional love. God will never divorce you. But confession is more than saying you’re sorry. Confession isn’t just repentance, it’s also the commitment to change, a commitment to change whatever behavior, attitude and beliefs which have led me to sin against God. There are two characteristics to Nehemiah’s confession. First is Intensity. Overwhelmed by concern about his sin and in awe of God’s character, Nehemiah gave himself to passionate and prolonged confession. He prayed day and night, spending every free moment of time in God’s presence. Second is Honesty. Nehemiah made no attempt to excuse the Israelites for their sin and actually owned his own part in their culpability. He surveyed the grim record of Israel’s past failure, and knew that he was not exempt from blame. He prays, “I confess the sins we Israelites, including myself…we have acted very wickedly…we have not obeyed…” It would have been easy for Nehemiah to look back and blame his ancestors but instead he looked within and blamed himself. He prayed, “Lord, I’m wrong. I not only want to be part of the answer, I confess that I’m part of the problem.” He didn’t try to candy-coat his sin. He owned it and claimed it.
Fifth is connecting your petitions to the promises of God. While Nehemiah spent time in confession, he doesn’t wallow in his failures and those of the Israelites. While he owns what he did wrong and he also expressed confidence in God’s promises. Nehemiah recalled the words of Moses about the danger of Israel’s apostasy and the promise of divine mercy. If Israel disobeyed, they would be sent to a foreign land. That had been fulfilled. The second part was that when the captivity was over God would send them back to Jerusalem. They were still waiting for that to be fulfilled. Nehemiah prayed, “Lord, the first part is true. We’ve disobeyed and we’re in captivity. But Lord, you’ve made a promise to bring us back home and that has not happened yet. I’m claiming your promise that you’ll make it happen.” God encourages us to hold him to His word and Nehemiah connects his prayer requests to the promises of God.
And then Nehemiah concludes his prayer with a commitment to get involved. All prayer concludes with commitment. Prayer is never meant to be an end in itself. It’s a prelude to action. Prayer is making yourself available for God’s great purpose. He didn’t pray for God to send someone else he simply said, “Here am I, send me!” Nehemiah says OK to God but there was a great risk involved on his part. He very well could have lost his life by askin`g the King to release him to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem. When he says yes to God, he says yes to taking a great risk and ultimately to making a great sacrifice, for he is going to have to leave his comfortable existence and move to ground zero and begin rebuilding in a devastated area amongst demoralized people. This was no easy task and would come at great sacrifice which we will see in the weeks to come.
Mark Brunner tells of a friend who asked: “What have you sacrificed lately in light of all the sorrow, desolation and bloodshed that have gripped the world?” He cited the gifts to his church and a check recently sent to a charity focusing on rebuilding houses that have been destroyed in natural disasters. These, along with my regular gifts to the Salvation Army, the Red Cross and several other ministeries, I felt well-qualified me as one who “sacrifices.” Then his friend asked: “What did these gifts replace in your life?” I thought for a moment and answered, “I don’t know. They probably haven’t really replaced anything.” “Then you have not sacrificed at all. While you have truly given, you have not sacrificed.”
During his reign, King Frederick William III of Prussia found himself in trouble. Wars had been costly, and in trying to build the nation, he was seriously short of finances. He couldn’t disappoint his people, and to ask the enemy for funds was unthinkable. After careful reflection, he decided to ask the women of Prussia to bring their jewelry of gold and silver to be melted down for their country. For each piece received, he gave a decoration of bronze or iron as a symbol of his gratitude. Each decoration was inscribed, “I gave gold for iron, 18l3.” The response was overwhelming. These women prized their gifts from the king more highly than their former jewelry. The reason, of course, is clear. The decorations were proof that they had sacrificed for their king. Indeed, it became unfashionable to wear jewelry, except a cross of iron for all to see. Thus was established the Order of the Iron Cross.
Prayer leads to commitment, not just to giving but to sacrifice. What differentiates sacrifice? To sacrifice means to give of something that costs the giver in terms of self, time or money. A sacrifice costs. It is more than a token effort or a mere gift. A sacrifice means something in terms of not only how it affects the receiver, but how it affects the giver. A willingness to give is laudable. But, when that willingness stops short of pain, it demonstrates a lack of commitment to the God who blesses us with all things in the first place. A willingness to exchange things in our lives, riches for poverty, our time for someone else’s, our convenience for an inconvenience, is the true meaning of Christian sacrifice which is grounded in prayer. It is our Order of the Cross--the cross of Jesus Christ.
