PROTECT THE INTEGRITY OF PRAYING “THY WILL BE DONE” BY PRACTICING THE GOLDEN RULE
Jacob Eshleman was a wealthy German-Jewish nobleman whose vast land holdings, granted to him by William Penn in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania in the 1700s became a good steward of his investment by reaching out to aspiring young men across the Atlantic to come to Colonial America “in search of a better life”.
Eshleman recruited hard-working tillers of the soil who hoped to earn the right one day to have their own little piece of God’s green earth by contracting with captains of ships sailing from Philadelphia and Baltimore to Northern Ireland where there had occurred an influx of poor Presbyterians who had fallen on hard times in Scotland and had fled to Ireland in the hope of earning a livelihood for survival.
This breed of hard working warrior-type Scots-Irish - willing to take up arms if need be to protect themselves from tyrants - would be so welcome in the William Penn territory, not only because of their tireless work ethic but also their strong sense of clan loyalty that often had to act defensively. With war against oppressive ruling factions looming on the horizon in Colonial America, fight-to-the-finish men of strong character and resolve were just what the American colonists needed.
Indentured servanthood was the manner by which most of the Scots-Irish were recruited to come to America. Gladly young men of vision when shown a copy of the Eshleman contract, for example, excitedly responded to their chance to become “servants” to noblemen in the colonies, serving five years of hard labor in exchange for freedom that would include 50 acres of land to call their own!
One of Eshleman’s Scots-Irish indentured servants that sailed from Belfast, Ireland in 1746, and came ashore at the port of Philadelphia - where they had to be examined as to their character and intent, then sworn in by a court official - was a 27-year-old Scots-Irishman by the name of Robert Cunningham – my 3-great grandfather . . .
Why would a Bible teacher use a story of how his family got started in the “New World” to introduce a lesson based on the life and times of an Old Testament character?
Though the stories occurred 2,100 years apart (446 BC -- 1746 AD), the plots and the points to be made are pretty much the same: about noblemen leasing property to peasants who, in some instances, were being mistreated, yet remained loyal to their masters - until a nobleman named Nehemiah, who had a heart for doing the right thing, took on all his fellow noblemen who were taking advantage of a good thing to enrich themselves - pointing out to them that self-serving actions were harming the cause for which all of them had fought, and that it was high time to return to doing God’s Will - merging who they say they are with what they do (faith-practice paradigm), thereby strengthening their witness as people of God, sharing opportunity to help others gain self-respect by earning a self-fulfilling livelihood.
Doing God’s Will - by praying “Thy Will be done” then actually doing His Will as best His people understand it --- we protect the integrity of who we say we are by what we do (and please don’t try to separate the two). Do the right thing, as did the 1700s AD nobleman Jacob Eshleman . . . as did the 400s BC nobleman Nehemiah when he became aware of the depth of corruption involving his fellow Jewish noblemen – Nehemiah 5:1-13 . . .
Here we have a Jewish nobleman whose love for his ancestral home was so deep that he had given up his luxurious lifestyle in Persia to return to his beloved Jerusalem - to help restore his fellow countrymen’s faith in God and to lead in the rebuilding of the city that had been destroyed by enemies of God.
What Nehemiah found when he “got into the trenches” with his Jewish countrymen “blew his mind”: Schemers occupying positions of power sacrificing their country’s ideals for personal gain.
Nehemiah learned of this dark side after he had rallied them to the cause of doing God’s work of restoring and rebuilding - only to have some of them see the success of the project but greedily see their chance to “cash in” on it and get out of it all that they could for themselves.
Whereas Nehemiah had earlier faced the fury of foreigners whose empires were being threatened because Nehemiah was successfully fulfilling his promises . . . it was his turn to get angry when he learned what was going on by self-serving opportunists who claimed to be God’s people but whose deeds contradicted their professed faith in God, their professed love for their countrymen.
As it turned out, the faith of some of them was not faith in God but faith in the power of the positions they occupied to get rich at the expense of the working class who by now had been conditioned to depend on the system for sustenance.
Into that situation of internal conflict – insiders sacrificing their country’s ideals for personal gain - there came a nobleman just as adept and just as smart as these heisters, yet one who had sacrificed his comfort for the sake of his country.
1. Nehemiah hears the complaints of hard-working fellow countrymen. We’re starving . . . we’re going broke . . . we’re being used as pawns by money grabbers who claim to be on our side . . . we’re being abused by unmerciful taxation . . . we’re caught in a self-defeating cycle with no way out.
2. Nehemiah confronts the problem. Don’t we know by now that this man, living in luxury, sent by the Lord God to be His instrument of restoring and rebuilding, is going to do something about this situation, as he promised he would? Yes! But not before he gets angry at, and fired up by, the messed-up situation! Folks, “righteous anger” is being angry at the things that grieve the heart of God – not the things that “bug” Godless secularists!
God is grieved as was Jesus when people who profess they care about the things of God act as if they never heard about the righteousness of God. and just go on doing things that benefit themselves but that bring harm to those they say they care about.
3. Nehemiah presents his case – in such a way that the room got real quiet as the pangs of guilt pierced the hearts of sinful schemers . . . Don’t you just love it, that, before he confronted other sinners, Nehemiah had a conversation with himself . . .
Nehemiah’s case: You mistreat people of your own country . . .You make the heathen look gracious compared to the way you treat your own countrymen once you get them back from slavery . . . Why not treat your own people the way you would want to be treated if the shoe were on the other foot?
4. Nehemiah brings his case home by calling for a turn around. He called for a turnaround by the turncoats! Stop it. Get it right. Don’t do it again. Sign a promise that you will do unto your fellow countrymen as you would have them do unto you.
The nobleman Nehemiah gave up his “not a care in the world” lifestyle for the sake of his countrymen - to restore faith in God and to rebuild the city which enemies of God had torn down. Nehemiah set a caring example in many ways - and he would not want them enumerated - but there’s one thing about him that, to me, was his strong suit - to be emulated: He did not ask anyone to do anything that he himself did not do!
In that way (listening to complaints, confronting the problem, presenting his case, bringing the case home to the crux of the matter) Nehemiah literally shook things up! From the ecclesiastical priesthood to the government brotherhood to the civilian neighborhood, the nobleman Nehemiah shook them all up!
Unaccustomed as they were to having a “layman” talk to them so plainly - in not-always-complimentary fashion - the powers-that-be inside the walls nonetheless acknowledged Nehemiah’s success and finally came around to his common sense point of view. Thus, in their remorse, they returned what did not rightfully belong to them and promised to stop their self-serving ways.
And why did the whole assembly resoundingly say “Amen”? They heard Nehemiah pray that if any of the elitists did not keep their solemn promise to do right toward their countrymen, God - not Nehemiah - would shake them up and shake them out! Folks: Smart people do not want to be shaken up or out by the Lord God! Amen? With that thought in mind, we understand fully the concluding sentence:
“Then the people did as they promised”! Go in peace . . . Go in the spirit of prayer . . . Go practice the Golden Rule! Amen.
