Title: How Do You Rebuild After a Disaster?
Text: Nehemiah 1-6
Thesis: Things get done when we pray, take action, and persevere until a goal is accomplished.
Series: The Bible in 90 Days Whole Church Challenge
In our reading this week we have leapt through the “Period of the Kings” during which God ruled his people through kings anointed to lead his people. In the week past we read of Saul, David and Solomon. We read of Israel’s being divided into two kingdoms: The Northern Kingdom and the Southern Kingdom. We read through the reigns of 20 kings of Israel and 19 kings and 1 queen of Judah. The rule of the kings was a succession of reigns in which, none in the case of Israel and nearly all of the kings of Judah, failed to do “what was right in the eyes of the Lord.” Consequently the people of God, true to the cyclical nature of their relationship with God, were sent into exile.
Now years had passed and the people of God were gradually being allowed to leave their place of exile and return to their homeland. But upon their arrival they found all that what had been was now lying in ruins.
The book of Nehemiah begins by stating: “These are the memoirs of Nehemiah son of Hacaliah.” Nehemiah tells of how he was permitted to return to his homeland to rebuild the city of Jerusalem and the Temple. The story is about how God used Nehemiah to re-build after a devastating disaster.
Introduction
This past week we learned that Sarah Palin has finished her memoir, “Going Rogue: An American Life,” just four months after signing her book deal with HarperCollins Publishing. “Going Rogue” was initially to have been released in the spring of 2010 but will now be released on November 17.
In a different AP article written by Hillel Italie, two days after HarperCollins announced the upcoming release, Amazon.com and Barnes and Noble.com report that her pre-release book orders make “Gong Rogue” their #1 Best-Seller.
Jonathan Burnham, publisher of HarperCollins states in regard to her memoir: “It’s her words, her life, and it’s all there in full and fascinating detail.” (Hillel Italie, AP National Writer, Palin finishes memoir, ‘Going Rogue,’ out Nov. 17, news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_books_palin/print)
Our story today is also a memoir. The book of Nehemiah begins, “These are the memoirs of Nehemiah son of Hacaliah.” You could say, “It’s his own words, his life, and it’s all there in full and fascinating detail.”
Nehemiah tells his story… it is the story of a man who is deeply saddened by the devastation of his homeland. Jerusalem, which had once represented the presence of God, had become a disgrace to the people.
Nehemiah desperately wanted to return to his homeland and oversee the rebuilding of Jerusalem and the temple.
The story begins with the exchange of despair for a dream.
I. Exchange despair for a dream
I said to the King, “Why should my face not look sad when the city where my fathers are buried lies in ruins, and its fates have been destroyed by fire?” The king said to me, “What is it you want?” Then I prayed to the God of heaven, and I answered the king, “If it pleases the king… let me return so I can rebuild it.” Nehemiah 2:1-5
The circumstances are simply but vividly described in a conversation between Nehemiah and his brother. Nehemiah had asked his brother how things were going in the old homeland. And his brother said, “Things are not going well for those who returned to the province of Judah. They are in great trouble and disgrace. The wall of Jerusalem has been torn down, and the gates have been burned.” Nehemiah 1:3
Nehemiah’s initial response was deep and heartfelt grief that prompted him to cry out to God for help. In 1:11 he tells us that he prayed, “Please grant me success now as I go to ask the king for a great favor. Put it in his heart to be kind to me.” We do not see Nehemiah running off on an emotional wild-goose-chase. His was no knee-jerk reaction. He did not speak without thinking. He did not act without having given thought to what he was to do.
He prayed first. Prayer is the best way to align our desires and dreams with the will of God.
A Littleton, Colorado mother tells of how her eight-year-old son Jonathan, who plays on a hockey team, came home announcing that his coach was having a contest. The winner would receive two tickets for a Colorado Avalanche National Hockey League game. She said their son competed hard, but the tickets went to another boy. She said that on their way home there were tears of disappointment.
So she said to her son, "If the desire of your heart is to go to an Avalanche game, you should pray about it."
They discussed that God was not a Santa Claus, who gave us everything we want, but that we should tell him our desires and leave them in his hands. At bedtime that night Jonathan made his requests known to God. "God, this is Jonathan. I’d like to go to an Avalanche game. I know you are busy with a lot of other things, but I’d really like that." She and her husband didn’t know about their son’s prayer.
The next day her husband came home from work with news that a friend had given him tickets to watch the Avalanche practice. It wasn’t a game, but Jonathan was excited.
The practice was held at the Pepsi Center in downtown Denver. She said their seats were only eight rows up from the glass surrounding the ice, right above the player’s bench. Seeing that some boys were standing by the glass, Jonathan went down and joined them. Thrilled to be so close, he watched his favorite player, legendary goalie Patrick Roy, at work.
Suddenly, Patrick Roy skated over to the bench. He had broken the blade on his hockey stick. As the trainer handed him a new stick, Roy looked at Jonathan and pointed. The trainer took the broken stick and handed it over the glass to our son. Jonathan held the stick above his head as if he had won the Stanley Cup. His smile could have powered the entire stadium.
Patrick Roy’s stick now hangs on his wall, but it is more than just a precious souvenir. It reminds our son of God’s goodness. God always has our best and his glory in mind, and he is able to answer our prayers with more than we could ask or imagine. (Submitted by Denise Boone, Littleton, Colorado, PrachingToday.com)
God certainly has his hands full, so to speak, but God is not too busy to hear the prayer of a disappointed little boy. Whatever your point of disappointment or despair may be, begin with prayer.
While disappointment and despair compel us to pray for God’s intervention… having prayed does not mean we simply sit back as if our role in the working out of God’s plan is over. In Nehemiah’s case, he did indeed pray about his disappointment and his desire and dream to go to his homeland to begin rebuilding what had been laid to ruin. But despite having prayed, it was still his dream and he needed to be moving in that direction.
In pre-power steering days, when you sat behind the wheel of a car that was not moving it was very hard to turn the wheel. However, when the car was moving it was relatively easy to steer. That is something of the principle at work when we find ourselves in the center of a circumstance in which we are asking God to do something. It is easier to steer us, so to speak, when we are moving in the direction of our dream.
So as he shared his dream with King Artaxerxes, God opened the way for him to return as the King agreed to not only let him return to Jerusalem but also financed the rebuilding project.
Desires and dreams are wonderful and imaginative… but that is all they are unless we give those desires and dreams legs. A worthy dream must be implemented and that happens by doing something to make it happen.
II. Transform desire into a doing
I went to Jerusalem, and after staying there three days… by night I went out through the Valley Gate toward the Jackal Well and Dung Gate, examining the walls of Jerusalem, which had been broken down, and its gates which had been destroyed by fire. Nehemiah 2:11`-13
Upon his arrival in Jerusalem, Nehemiah set about determining what had to be done. The devastation was extensive but just how extensive? No one knew of the burden God had placed on his heart and no one knew that he was there to do something about the devastation and ruin of the city of Jerusalem. So saying nothing to anyone, he did a tour of the wall around the city. Then, having assessed the damage and having a sense of the enormity of the task before him, he went to the officials of the city and said, “You know full well the tragedy of our city. It lies in ruins, and its gates are burned. Let us rebuild the wall of Jerusalem and rid ourselves of this disgrace.” And they replied, “Good! Let’s rebuild the wall!” So they began the good work. They began doing what was necessary for the dream to come true.
I have enjoyed following BBC’s Robin Hood series. Episode 3 of the third year is titled “Lost in Translation.” The storyline of this episode focuses on the (evil) Sheriff of Nottingham blackmailing the Abbott of Kirklees Abbey. For years, the Abbott had been secretly translating the bible from Latin into English so the common people could interpret the bible for themselves. This is of course blasphemy to a church that at that time wanted to keep the interpretation of scripture in the hands of the church.
The Sheriff threatened to burn the Abbott’s handwritten English translation unless he helped him capture Robin Hood and frame him as a heretic of the Church. The Abbott weighed the life of Robin Hood against the loss of his life’s work and decided it was better that one man to be burned at the stake than for the English bible to be lost to all the people. So Robin Hood was arrested and charged as a heretic. In the scene where the Sheriff lights the wood that is intended to burn Robin at the stake, the Abbott had a pang of conscience and announced to the crowd that Robin was not the heretic but in fact it was the Sheriff who was the enemy of the Church and the people. At that… the Sheriff stepped forward and tossed the Abbott’s handwritten translation of the bible into English into the fire. The life’s work of the Abbott is lost… the English translation is destroyed.
In the final scene of the episode the Abbott is seated at his desk with a copy of the Latin bible, a stack of parchment, his quill pen and bottle of ink. The Abbott smiled, leaned forward and began to write, “In the beginning…”
In this story the life’s work of a priest was lost… his dream was destroyed. He was in despair but he transformed his despair over his destroyed dream into doing something constructive about it. He began again.
Doing means getting started and sometimes getting started means we take a good honest look at what needs to be rebuilt in our lives, i.e., we assess the damage, so to speak. And then we begin the good work. Whatever it may be, we start anew, “In the beginning…”
It is a good thing when a dream gets its legs and doing begins to make it become a reality. But getting started is usually the easiest part. It is finishing that really makes a dream done.
III. Persist through the damage until the rebuilding is done
So the wall was completed on the twenty-fifth of Elul, in fifty-two days. When all our enemies heard about this, all the surrounding nations were afraid and lost their self-confidence because they realized that this work had been done with the help of our God. Nehemiah 6:15-16
Sometimes I am tempted to jump to the end of a book to see how it turns out rather than read the whole story. That is essentially what our reading of Nehemiah 6:15-16 feels like… We move from chapter 2 where a disappointment is turned into a dream to chapter 6 where just fifty-two days later the work is done and the dream has come true.
Life is seldom that simple. Rebuilding a 401 K after a devastating recession takes time. Regaining lost equity in our investments and our homes takes time. Rebuilding a broken marriage is not a fifty-two day undertaking. Recovering from a debilitating addiction is not an overnight accomplishment. We do not just bounce back when we suffer the loss of a loved one. Rehab is sometimes a long process and regaining strength and mobility following an illness or surgery is not without considerable effort. Rebuilding a conflicted relationship requires the rebuilding of trust.
Life is largely a matter of facing and either overcoming or succumbing to obstacles.
Nehemiah and the people helping him had to persist through two things:
1. They were literally ridiculed and threatened by opposition.
Between chapters 2 and 6 is an incident in chapter 4 where we read of how two ring-leaders, Sanballat and Tobiah mocked them and even rallied others to attack Jerusalem and disrupt the building.
“They plotted together to come and fight against Jerusalem and stir up trouble against it. But we prayed to our God and posted a guard day and night to meet this threat. Those who worked carried materials in one hand and held a weapon in the other.” Nehemiah 4:8-9 and 17
2. The project itself was absolutely daunting.
Nehemiah also commented about the enormity of the task in chapter 4. He wrote, “The strength of the laborers is giving out, and there is so much rubble that we cannot rebuild the wall… the work is extensive and spread out, and we are widely separated from each other along the wall…” Nehemiah 4:10, 19-20
Getting from damage to done is never a simple leap… there are obstacles. There are people who may not only disagree with you but resist what you want to do. And sometimes the sheer enormity of what needs to be done is so overwhelming, the easiest thing to do is to drop the dream. But that is not the God way… Nehemiah’s rallying cry was, “God will fight for us!”
Walter Payton spent his entire career as a running back for the Chicago Bears. He was one of the most prolific running backs in American football history. He was a nine time selection to the pro-bowl, at one time held records in yards rushing, touchdowns and number of carries, and was inducted into the Football Hall of Fame in 1993. His motto and also the title of his autobiography was “Never Die Easily.” By that he meant that at the end of every carry he would give added effort… if he was about to be forced out of bounds he would lower his shoulder and crash into the tackler rather than simply step out of bounds. (www.wikipedia.org/wiki/walter_payton)
He was only 5-foot-10 and 202 pounds, which was not particularly big but he set an all time rushing record of 16,726 yards. During his twelve-year career, Walter Payton carried the football over nine miles. But what is most impressive is that he was knocked down on average of every 4.4 yards of those nine miles by someone bigger then himself. But he kept getting up, and he kept getting up, and he kept getting up. He persisted and persisted and persisted until his work was completed. (Bill White, PreachingToday.com)
Whatever rebuilding you are doing or hoping to do or however daunting the resistance or the enormity of the task may be… persist. Do not become weary in doing what is right and good.
And you will be able to say and others will acknowledge, “This work has been done with the help of God!”
Conclusion
There is an old anecdote told of how one day the Devil had a yard sale in which he displayed all his tools for his yard sale customers. There was hatred, jealousy, deceit, lying, pride and many others, all very expensively priced. But over to the side of the yard was a tool that had obviously been used more than any of the others on display. It was also the most costly tool on display. That tool was labeled, DISCOURAGEMENT.
When questioned, the Devil said, “It’s more useful to me than any other tool. When I can’t defeat my victims with any other tool, I use discouragement…” (John Yates, “An Attitude of Gratitude,” Preaching Today Tape No. 110)
What is your point of discouragement or disappointment or despair or disaster? What in your life is in shambles? That very thing may well be what God is asking you to begin rebuilding.
Like Nehemiah we begin with prayer for God’s guidance and help. Then we assess the situation and get to work. As we work we persevere through and overcome all obstacles until, with God’s help, it is done.
